Dear Prof. Kwaku Asare,
Your latest remarks, arguing that “no degree is useless,” miss the entire point of Hon Dr. Osei Adutwum’s reformative vision. You are defending the certificate; Hon Dr. Osei Adutwum is defending the mind. Let us be clear: He never employed or used the word “useless.” He did not attack the names of programmes, Development Studies or BA Education, as you apparently claimed. He attacked the intellectual vacuity that occurs when a programme prioritizes credentialism over cognitive independence. When a degree produces graduates who are passive recipients of others’ thoughts rather than active, critical solutionists, that degree, regardless of its title is indeed useless to humanity.
Professor, as legal analyst, you must know that the law you propound and teach is only useful when it is enforced. Anything more is useless. So too are academic ideas and degrees when they do not bring redemption to human and community development. They become useless. And you know very well that true measure of a degree is critical thought, not mere certification. You simply cannot afford to be so out of context, sir. Again, Hon. Elder Dr. Osei Adutwum did not once use the word “useless.” He selected his words with great care, ever conscious of his ethical duty as an educator and his standing as a virtuous Christian.
1. You conflate “employment” with “usefulness”
You argue that Development Studies graduates find jobs in NGOs and government, and that BA Education graduates contribute to policy and administration. But is securing a job the same as being a critical thinker? Hon Elder Dr. Osei Adutwum is not fighting for employment statistics; he is fighting for intellectual emancipation. Even if he does, how many of the Development Studies and Development Education graduates have secured jobs? As you yourself once warned on JoyNews, education must not rely on “memorization and the uncritical acceptance of others’ research.” If a graduate secures a job but cannot weigh evidence independently, cannot distinguish truth from deception, and merely implements inherited bureaucratic routines, that degree has failed its primary moral and intellectual duty. It becomes a tool for administration, not for transformation.
2. The “transferable skills” you list are meaningless without critical thought
You mention critical thinking, research, and policy analysis as if they are automatically conferred. They are not. They are cultivated. Elder Dr. Adutwum rightly warns that an education built on rote memory, while discouraging independent judgment, carries a dangerous “moral bearing.” A student who sacrifices their reasoning faculty for a certificate becomes susceptible to manipulation, unable to discern right from wrong. That is the true “uselessness” he speaks of. Listing skills on a curriculum does not guarantee their presence in a graduate’s mind. The question is: does the process of earning that degree force the student to “exercise the ability God has given us” to search and weigh evidence for themselves? If not, the degree is hollow.
3. Your economic argument is a deflection
You argue that a weak economy can make even engineers and doctors unemployed, implying that blame should not fall solely on universities. This is a red herring. Elder Dr. Adutwum’s argument is not about employment; it is about human potential. The Wright Brothers had no degrees, yet they invented flight amidst economic hardship. Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle had no parchment to hang on their walls, yet they shaped civilization because they lived close to nature, sharpened their imagination, and brought forth physics, anatomy, and renaissance. They were “solutionists and resolvers.” A weak economy does not stop a truly critical thinker from creating value, it compels them to innovate. Your defense of degrees as mere job-tickets strips education of its higher purpose: to cultivate “power and goodness” above mere information, and “character” above intellectual acquirements.
4. You are defending the very system you once criticized
It is baffling that you now defend these programmes so institutionally, given your own history. I recall you challenging educators to move beyond passive acceptance. Today, Elder Dr. Adutwum is echoing that same counsel, yet you frame his words as “unfortunate and overly simplistic.” Are you now taking offence at your own former warnings? When a man feels he knows all there is to know about education, even the man on the street will humble him. You cannot, as a law professor, claim that a degree is inherently useful while ignoring whether it produces independent thinkers who “will stand for the right though the heavens fall.”
5. The real issue is the mind, not the market
You call for curriculum reviews and labour-market forecasting. These are administrative band-aids. The real reform Hon Elder Dr. Osei Adutwum champions is deeper: training youth not to be mere reflectors of other men’s thoughts. True education is the harmonious development of the physical, mental, and spiritual powers, preparing a student for joyful service to humanity. The degree that does not train students to champion independent thought is useless because it produces slaves of circumstance rather than masters of it.
My advice to Professor Kwaku Azar Asare is, please stop taking the word “useless” as a personal attack, since Hon Dr Osei Adutwum never mentioned it in that manner, rather as haile professor start engaging with its substantive meaning. A degree is not sacred; the mind that earns it is. If that mind has not been forged in the fires of critical inquiry, then that degree, no matter its prestige, is indeed a relic of a bygone era. Hon Elder Dr. Adutwum is not taking us backward; he is pulling us out of the intellectual stupor that celebrates credentials over creativity and conformity over conviction.
Let us not defend the structures of mediocrity. Let us instead champion an education that produces clear thinkers who can “stand for the right though the heavens fall” and not just for a job. That is the timeless, urgent reform we need.
Osɔfo Nii Naate Atswele Agbo Nartey
Biblical Psychologist, Community Support Specialist and Human Development Expert . GaDangme & Asante Cultural Advocate.