The Centre for Continuing Education (CCE) for Distance Education at the University of Cape Coast (UCC) is developing a GH¢3.4 million study centre in Accra to further increase access to higher education.

The project, which is being funded from the university’s internally generated funds, is expected be completed within 18 months, and will provide comfortable and adequate lecture space for students enrolled in the programmes and reduce the dependence on other institutions for lecture halls.

At the launch of activities to mark the centre’s 10th anniversary celebration, the Vice Chancellor of UCC, Prof. Naana Jane Opoku Agyeman, said the establishment of the permanent study centres had become imperative.

She said the CCE had acquired plots of land in all the regions and that there was a schedule to move to the remaining regions of the country with these projects.

She lauded the success of the distance learning programme, saying that after 10 years, the number of students on the programme stood at 33,000 from the pioneer student enrolment of 750.

Currently, she said, the CCE had five programmes in Education and eight in Business Studies with 1,786 tutors and 33 study centres, adding that the programme had raised the professional competence and socio-economic lives of many people, including teachers, as a result of upgrading of their academic status.

She pledged that in the near future, efforts would be made to run a second degree programme in Business Administration in Distance Education to complement the regular and sandwich options at the postgraduate level.

Prof. Agyeman called on tertiary institutions in the country to replace unhealthy competition among them with strong collaborations to promote the training of quality human resource for national development.

She commended the current Director of the CCE, Mr Albert Koomson, all past directors and stakeholders who had contributed to the success story of the CCE.

The Chairman of the CCE Board, Prof. D.D. Kuupole, said the distance education programme had lifted high the image of the university in the nation and the continent as a whole.

He promised that the CCE would continue to work to ensure that quality was sustained and improved.

Prof. Joseph Ghartey Ampiah, Dean of the Faculty of Education, who chaired the programme, said with the growing number of students who wanted to have access to university education, the traditional approach to delivering education to students who were physically “on site” in a traditional classroom was no longer tenable.