No degree is useless – Prof. Kwaku Asare slams Dr. Yaw Adutwum

By Yaw Opoku Amoako July 5, 2026

A prominent legal scholar and governance theorist has challenged a former Education Minister’s blanket condemnation of certain university programmes as fundamentally worthless, arguing that the characterisation reflects a dangerously reductive understanding of what tertiary education accomplishes and how knowledge translates into labour market value.

Prof. Kwaku Asare, writing through social media, took direct aim at comments attributed to Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, who had reportedly described Development Studies at the University for Development Studies and the BA Education (Non-Teaching) programme at the University of Ghana as “degrees to nowhere” — academic pathways that fail to equip graduates with marketable competencies.

The exchange emerged from an appearance by Adutwum on the Konnected Minds Podcast, where he questioned whether certain university disciplines genuinely prepare students for labour market entry.

His remarks sparked social media debate regarding the utility of academic disciplines whose vocational trajectory appears less obvious than engineering or medicine.

Asare reframed the entire conversation by rejecting the premise underlying Adutwum’s critique. The scholar acknowledged that universities bear accountability for graduate outcomes but insisted that dismissing entire academic disciplines as worthless represents intellectual laziness masquerading as accountability.

University education, Asare argued, serves purposes transcending the immediate pipeline to specific employment categories. Academic rigour in humanities and social science disciplines cultivates competencies that employers across sectors value: critical analytical capacity, research methodology, effective communication, policy analysis capability, project coordination and systematic problem-solving.

These transferable skills enable graduates to navigate diverse employment contexts and adapt to evolving professional demands.

Asare provided concrete evidence that the programmes Adutwum had disparaged actually facilitate employment across multiple institutional domains.

Development Studies graduates populate government agencies, international development organisations, civil society institutions, development finance operations, consulting firms and research institutions. BA Education (Non-Teaching) graduates contribute to educational policy formulation, curriculum innovation, institutional administration, assessment design, educational technology development, human resource systems and public service execution.

The real accountability question, Asare contended, is not whether a discipline possesses abstract value but whether universities adequately equip students with competencies matching labour market realities.

That requires institutional commitment to curriculum responsiveness, regular programme evaluation, forecasting of emerging skill demands and pedagogical emphasis upon digital literacy, quantitative reasoning and entrepreneurial orientation across all disciplines.

Yet Asare rejected what he characterised as oversimplification of graduate unemployment causation. Economic conditions profoundly shape labour market capacity to absorb skilled workers regardless of disciplinary background.

A contracting economy produces unemployed engineers, lawyers, accountants, physicians and computer scientists with equal ease as it generates unemployment among humanities graduates.

Blaming universities alone for employment outcomes whilst ignoring macroeconomic stagnation obscures systemic dysfunction.

Meaningful improvement in graduate outcomes demands simultaneous progress across multiple domains. Educational reform must strengthen institutional accountability and curriculum relevance. Economic transformation must generate sufficient employment opportunities to absorb the skilled labour that universities produce.

Political systems must transcend the degradation Asare characterised as “machines of patronage, profiteering, polarization, and propaganda” and instead deliver the institutional competence and developmental orientation that expand rather than constrict opportunity structures for skilled workers.