Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
>>Male Presenter: Thanks for coming, everyone. OK. Robert de Sorbon, James Pierpont, John
Harvard, Patrick Awuah. One of these is not like the others. Three of these men founded
universities destined to change the face of education on a continent. John Harvard just
gave a bunch of books and got a school named after it.
Of the remaining three, we're very lucky to have the only one who's in a position to actually
tell us what he did, why he did, and how he did it. In 1989, I think it was, Paul Maritz
is very fond of telling the story of how he met Patrick back when they were both at Microsoft.
And Paul Maritz is now the CEO of VMware, Chairman of the Board for the Grameen Foundation.
As Paul tells this, he says he met this kid who confided in him that he didn't want to
spend his entire career at Microsoft. He wanted to go back to his home country and found a
university. And Paul said, "Well, good luck with that." [clears throat] And thought to
himself, "Well, you know. Everyone needs dreams."
And it was eight or nine years later. Patrick left Microsoft to go to the Haas School in
Berkeley, where he developed a business plan for creating a self-sustaining liberal arts
university in Ghana. I think it was four years later, Ashesi admitted its first students.
It's now ten years after that and the tenth anniversary of Ashesi, Ashesi students are
already changing the face of education in Africa.
Ashesi students are in basically impossible demand. They're recognized for their ethics
and their critical thinking skills as the future leaders of government and of industry.
And the large schools, the private and the public universities in Ghana, are actually
getting pressured. They're being told they need to change a little bit, become a little
bit more like Ashesi.
So, the name Ashesi comes from the Akan word for "beginnings." And was inspired by the
quotation from Goethe, which is, "If there is anything you can do, or dream you can,
begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic. Begin it now." So, today I'm honored
to have with us and to introduce somebody who embodies both the boldness, the genius,
the power, and the magic of beginning something. And I'm pleased to introduce Patrick Awuah,
who began it all.
[applause]
>>Patrick Awuah: Thank you very much, Pablo. So, what I thought I'd do this afternoon is
just tell you the story of Ashesi--of why it's here, of what it is today, and what it
is going to become in the future as we plan the future of this institution. So, Ashesi,
as you can see on the slides--on this first slide--is really about a new Africa.
And so, when I left Microsoft to start on the journey to build this university, I wasn't
actually thinking about just the fact of building a university. What I was really concerned
about was contributing to what's a renaissance on a continent. And what I was thinking about
was the future happiness of an entire people.
This is what I set out to do. And the question is, why start a university? So, imagine that
you are just a guy or a gal at Google or Microsoft. And you wanna change the future of a continent.
And you don't have the financial resources personally of Bill or Larry [laughs] or people
like that. But you want to change a continent.
What do you do? Where do you begin? For me, it was trying to figure out, is there some
catalytic thing that I could do that would, in the long run, very long-term, achieve the
result that I wanted, that I sought. And I did a simple exercise at some point with friends
and family in Ghana, where we would look at different problems.
Any problem. Health care, infrastructure, governance, education, you name it. And ask,
"Why is this the way it is?" And we would get a set of answers for each of those problems.
But then, take each of those answers and ask, "Why?" And try to drill down to figure out
is there something that seems to be fundamental across all these problems.
And as we did this exercise, one thing stood out. And that thing was leadership. Leadership
is defined by all the people in positions of influence--the decision-makers--and what
they were doing, whether it was making the wrong decisions or just accepting the status
quo as it was, or even being corrupt. And so, and this is a very strong signal, right?
So, I started to ask the question about--
[phone rings]
about how leaders are created. And that took me to take a second look at education, from
primary school through graduate school. And what I found was--and again, higher ed made
a big signal for a couple of reasons. One is, I visited university campuses where the
classes were huge. You would see hundreds of students, even over a thousand students,
in a classroom, with one professor.
And the classroom was physically not big enough. So, students would be standing outside on
the verandas looking through windows for lectures. I spoke with some of my own colleagues who
studied computing in college. And whose education in computer science involved writing code
on paper, not actually running anything through a compiler or testing code, and getting graded
on paper.
And so, this was one thing I saw. It was very troubling. The second thing was data that
was telling me that only, at the time, about two percent--and it's still about five percent
today--but back then, about two percent of college age kids, 18 to say 24- year olds,
were in college in Ghana. And the problem with two to five percent is it's too small,
but also, by definition, the people in college across sub-Saharan Africa will run their countries
one day.
By definition. If you're in college, if you're among the two percent, or today the five percent,
you will be the ones who--. They would be the ones running the courts, running the schools,
setting health policy, building infrastructure, etc. So now, for an individual thinking of
what to do with limited resources, it seemed like, OK.
If I could address this two percent problem, this five percent problem, I could achieve
catalytic impact long-term. Because if I could change the way these leaders are educated,
then there would be a sea change in Ghana. And if we could do it across sub-Saharan Africa,
imagine a continent transformed.
So, this is how I got to decide what to do, to think of developing ethical leaders who
have the ability to innovate, to be creative, to not accept the status quo as it is. And
so, I quit Microsoft and I got scared. So, every, it seemed every other day or so I would
wake up and wonder, "What am I doing?" And then, I saw these words.
So, I typed them up and I put them on my mirror. And I'd read them every day. Every day. So,
the day I decided, I realized actually, that I was committed, I said, "Wow. This is the
beginning." And that's why Ashesi is called what it's called--the beginning. So, we've
come a long way in ten years. This is a picture of our campus, our permanent campus, when
it was under construction.
We have 500 students. We started with 30 in 2002. We've deployed world-class technology.
So, kids who study computer science not only design code, but they actually run code and
have a real experience. We have 370 graduates. A hundred percent job placement within six
months of our graduating classes.
A beautiful campus. And increasing global recognition. So, this is an amazing thing
to be a part of. But you know what amazing is, right? Google is amazing. And at the heart
of it is liberal arts core curriculum. When I came to the United States for undergraduate
education at Swarthmore, I experienced an education unlike anything I had seen up until
that time.
Professors who wanted me to think. Professors wanted me to tell them what I thought, who
wanted me to be analytical, both in a qualitative and a quantitative way. And who wanted me
to have a breadth of vision. And they demanded this of all the students who went there. And
so, an education that was the exact opposite of the rote learning that I'd been through
up until that point.
And so, we've implemented that at Ashesi--this mix of the liberal arts with computer science,
business administration, and MIS. That's what we've done in our first ten years. And the
results are staggering. This is data from a study that was done by a team of MBA students
from Berkeley. They came to Ghana and they went around corporate Ghana asking, "How would
you rank university graduates in this country?"
And Ashesi stands out. And we think that it's really because of our incredible focus on
the liberal arts core, our focus on teaching people, young people, to have integrity and
to care about what they do and about their impact wherever they are. Ninety-five percent
of our graduates stay in Africa. I said, as I told you, they all get jobs.
Most of them are in Africa, which is great. The five percent that are not in Africa, are
typically pursuing graduate education in the United Kingdom or the United States. So, we
proved our educational model. And we built a permanent campus. The question is, where
do we go from here?
[pause]
We're going to continue to do all the things that we're doing--classrooms that encourage
conversation and discussion, interaction between students and faculty and students interacting
with each other in debating with each other. Spaces that inspire people, that invite people
to gather and to really ask this question, "What is the good society? What should it
look like on this continent? And how do we achieve it? What is our role in achieving
it?"
[pause]
We have a requirement for community service at Ashesi. So, it's this balance between saying
we really want ethics and civic engagement to be central to what we do, but it's something
we can't force. So, we say, "Well, you've gotta do it before you graduate."
But we set just a small amount of hours required and hope that students will do more. And they
all do more. In 2008, an amazing event occurred on campus, where a student body in Ghana decided
to adopt a student-run honor system and to come to the faculty and say, "We will not
cheat on exams. We will not tolerate those who do."
And the reason, ultimately, they decided to do this is because, if you think about it,
cheating in exams in a classroom is what corruption looks like when you're 20 years old. And if
you have an institution that tolerates that, you're building, or you're nurturing future
corrupt leaders.
If you have an institution that does not tolerate that, then you're developing future leaders
that you can trust with a central bank, who you can trust with the lives of people and
infrastructure that those people will live and work in. And so, this is an amazing event.
We stepped out of the classrooms for exams.
We don't proctor exams. And students hold themselves to this rule. Now, of course unfortunately,
we always have a few students who do try to cheat in exams. And fortunately, their peers
hold them accountable. They're brought before a judicial committee that includes students.
And they are held accountable.
And to see this happening and the interest that it has generated, not only within our
campus, but outside our campus as the accreditation board has initially been very skeptical about
it, as corporate leaders have spoken out in favor of it, as high school students are so
fascinated by this thing, that when we go talk with them about Ashesi, this is a thing
they most want to talk about--about this society, this community that has decided that it will
no longer tolerate corruption among its ranks.
[pause]
So, what next? We call it "Vision 20-20." And I'll run quickly through it. And again,
the process for getting to what we do, what we're going to do. As we set about thinking
about the next ten years of Ashesi, we asked ourselves, "There's so many things that we
could be doing. How do we decide which ones to do and which ones to not do and which ones
to postpone?" Right?
And we decided, "Well, let's go back to our mission statement." And our mission statement
is to educate a new generation of ethical, entrepreneurial leaders in Africa. Africa.
And we asked, "For what?" The answer is what I started with--to drive a renaissance on
the continent, to change a continent for the next generation.
And in order to do that, we realized we needed to be educating people for industry and for
government. And so, we set about starting from where we are today, figuring out what
are the things that we need to do to educate leaders for industry and government. And we
have three broad areas that we're going to address.
First of all, we're going to strengthen our base, which is the people in our community.
We're going to focus on diversity in excellence. Our mission statement talks about Africa.
Not Ghana. Africa. So, this will become a more pan-African institution. We will grow
from a current ten percent of our student body being from outside Ghana to between 30
and 50 percent being from outside Ghana in the next ten years.
We will maintain gender balance. We have achieved it. We have approximately 50 percent of our
students are women. We will provide more scholarships so that we continue to increase economic diversity
within our ranks.
[pause]
We will create facilities to strengthen campus culture. So, more housing so that more people
from diverse backgrounds live and learn together. You look at a place like Ghana. It's a country
the size of the state of Oregon.
There are over 50 different languages spoken there. They're Christians and Muslims and
many other religions in this country. If you look at Africa, the diversity is even greater.
And it is very important that these young people live and learn together. Because we
have committed to that, and because we have committed to engaging in a conversation, in
2006, Ashesi students elected a woman as Head of Student Government for the first time in
Ghana's history.
And within two years after that, three other universities have done the same thing. This
is a sea change that we talk about--setting an example that changes an entire country
and what it believes to be possible. We're going to develop a fund specifically to attract
and hire Africans in the diaspora to return home.
We found that there are many people who want to come back home, who have student loans
they have to pay off, and therefore, need to be on a US salary scale in order to do
that. But if we can have funding to just take care of those loans, then they can return
home and be on a local salary scale and make their contribution to their continent.
So, this is going to be another thing that we focus on. The next thing is to broaden
our impact. Now, for this, we've decided on three areas that we're going to tackle. The
first is engineering and applied sciences. Computer science and MIS, we're already doing,
fit into that. But we're going to get into electrical engineering, computer engineering,
mechanical engineering.
And we took the time to go talk with companies in telecommunications, in the oil and gas
industry, and also in light manufacturing to guide what we do. And so, these are the
majors that we're going to do next. These will be leaders for industry. But actually,
the systems design mind will be incredibly helpful in government as well.
And the engineering program will have not only strengths in systems and design thinking,
but also in entrepreneurial thinking. The second area is management and economics. So,
to add economics to the business degree and to learn from the examples of Latin America,
where a few countries developed such strong undergraduate programs in economics, that
their top graduates came to the United States for their PhD's through the best PhD programs
here.
They've returned to their countries. They're running central banks, ministries of finance.
They're presidents and they've changed their continent. And we think that we can replicate
this in Africa. And finally, law and society. So, economics and management is leaders for
industry and government policy. Law and society, leadership for government for civic society.
It turns out that a lot of kids in high school who have an ambition to enter government,
look to political science and law as the path to get there. And so, we're going to meet
that need. It is also the case that those countries that have strong rule of law are
the ones that do the best economically and socially in terms of human rights, civil rights
and so on.
And of course, all of this will be based on a liberal arts core, which is central to everything
that we do. Engineering is the first thing that we're going to engage and we're basically
designing the curriculum and the buildings, the labs, and so on. I would like to invite
you to join our community. Follow news from Ashesi.
Invest in Africa's future. And by the way, I think Google is doing an amazing job of
investing in Africa's future. And I see lots of companies that look at that map that you
have of a continent that is dark and say, "Oh, there's nothing there." And I talk to
Googlers and what I hear is, "Oh, it's not lit up. Let's go light it up."
I mean, that's, that's fantastic. And I invite you to continue to do that. Visit us. I think
that this is one of the most compelling projects in Africa. And your visit is actually super
important for our students. What do I mean by that? In any organization, in any society,
in any country, there is an understood performance horizon that people see.
People have a performance horizon. And it is really important when somebody within that
community pushes the envelope, pushes that horizon a little higher and demonstrates to
others that actually, our performance horizon can be higher than it currently is. And I
have found that when our students engage with people like you all, who have an incredibly
high performance horizon, it helps reset what they aim for in the future.
And that's why I'm inviting you to visit. Be part of the solution. Come guest lecture.
It could be a day. It could be a week. It could be a whole semester--everything in-between.
Service technical advisers to help us with our own IT systems on-campus. Or, to assist
a students who's working on a project for his or her senior design project.
These are all super important. And finally, please be an online advocate for Ashesi. Help
spread the word. I think that it is very important in this world that when something good is
happening in a corner, that we shine a light on it so others can see and follow. And so,
come join us. We'd really appreciate it. Thank you.
we're taping, I'm asked that either you go to the microphone there or that I hand you
>>Male #1: How did the other universities react when you set up Ashesi?
>>Patrick Awuah: Well, when we first started, I think there was a lot of skepticism on different
fronts. I mean, first of all, I was 35 years old and I was gonna start a university. And
just to give you some context, a 35-year old in Ghana is considered a small boy. And so,
there were people, quote unquote.
So, there were people who were just skeptical because a young person was going to do this
and didn't believe it could happen. There were people who, the liberal arts approach
is so different. The idea that a student applies for college and is required to take a breadth
of subjects before they specialize was new.
And so, there was some skepticism about that. But ultimately, we were allowed to proceed.
And I think that there is, today, very widespread acknowledgment that the Ashesi experiment
is delivering really good results. And so, people are starting to take a much closer
look at what we're doing and thinking through how they might replicate it as well.
[pause]
>>Female #1: I'm sorry. Hi, my name is Nikki. And I have a question that has to do, I guess,
with corruption. Last January or so, I was at Ashesi before you made the new campus.
>>Patrick Awuah: OK.
>>Female #1: And I was listening to a presentation by the founders of DreamOval. And they're
talking about all the great projects they've done with the Grameen Foundation, with nursing
in the Northern Region as well as all the different solutions that they created. But
one of the issues that they brought to light was that even though they have great products
and they're able to execute well on it, there's always this cultural notion of bribes, especially
when you're trying to secure certain government contracts.
>>Patrick Awuah: Right.
>>Female #1: And different things. And I know one of my friends recently moved back to start
a company in Ghana and talked about the issues of giving bribes to get off the ground. And
it seems like that's a larger cultural problem that even with great leadership, you have
to have that across the board. And have you thought about that? Or, how are ways that
you're looking at that in the community?
>>Patrick Awuah: Right. OK. So, that's a good question. I mean, we're in an environment
where, particularly when you're dealing with government offices, there's this endemic culture
of people asking for bribes in order to let you do what you're doing or for them to do
their jobs. My response to that has been fairly simple.
We just don't do it. And the thing is, what I found is that when it really comes down
to it, you can get things done without paying bribes. You might be slowed down a little
bit, but when it becomes very clear to people that this is not going to happen, then they
let you get on with it. OK? And for me, I think, you all know about bucket lists, right?
There's a set of things that you wanna do before you kick the bucket. Well, it's actually
important to also have an anti-bucket list, right? The set of things that you're not going
to do before you kick the bucket.
[laughter]
And this is one of those things that's in my anti-bucket list. So, my view of it is
first of all, if you do it, then things get really messy because then they've got you.
And they'll never let you go. And if you don't do it, it pushes you to, first of all, work
with those organizations and those institutions that don't do it, which is a much healthier
way to be anyway.
And apart from that, I think that you eventually will get things done and you'll get--. My
experience has been the people who have put pressure on me for this, I think after the
fact, respect me more for the stand that we've taken at Ashesi. And this is what I encourage
everybody to do.
[pause]
>>Male Presenter: As the organizer of the talk, I get to ask some questions, too. Which
is, so, at Google we're a technology company. And when your only tool is a hammer, everything
looks like a nail. So, looking at this, the first thing that's spinning through my head
is, "How can we throw technology at the solution? How can technology be thrown at the question
of educating ethical, socially aware, liberal arts students?"
I'm sure you've thought a bit about that. Could we get you to spend a couple of minutes
hypothesizing how technology could help you go one or two more steps along?
>>Patrick Awuah: OK. So, first of all, let me just say that technology has already played
a role in the work that we're doing. And I'll tell you different kinds of technology and
the roles they played. So, when Ghana first set off on this path for democracy, mobile
phones and FM radio turned out to be extremely important for making sure that our elections
were fair because people had mobile phones at the polling stations and they could call
in and report if something was going wrong.
Technology is being deployed in Ghana today with the voter registration to do biometric
registration for voters. So now, it's really difficult for people to do multiple registrations.
And when they do, they get caught. So, technology can play a role to the extent that it enables
things to be more transparent and hold people accountable. OK?
In terms of the particular role of how do you educate people to have integrity, that's
a more difficult question because I feel that, for Ashesi anyway, it has required high touch.
It has required many, many conversations in classrooms, outside the classroom, about the
age-old question of what the good society should be in our country.
And you need to do that. But I also, two years ago, the accreditation board asked us to stop
the honor system. It wasn't so much, they were concerned about the idea that students
say they're gonna be honest, but they didn't believe that if we weren't proctoring exams
assumes we're not in fact cheating, OK?
And so they asked us to stop it. And this resulted in a big--. I got copied on hundreds
of letters that our students wrote to the accreditation board. And I read every letter.
It was--. And we all, this thing hit the news. I was on television. Students were on radio
and television, talking about it. So, this was technology broadcasting an event that
was happening in this small school in Accra.
And then, of course, there was just this huge conversation that took off on Twitter and
Facebook with students from other universities questioning our students about whether this
was real or not. So again, technology was a platform where the intimate conversation
that we had had on campus was now getting out into the broader community.
And I know that there's students. We did an ethics conference and there were students
from other universities that came. There were some students from the University of Ghana
that came to Ashesi and asked to have lunch with me to talk about this. And they heard
about it because technology helped broadcast it.
So, I think, I see technology as a basic infrastructure that helps us get the word out. And over time,
will facilitate a conversation, a two-way conversation as well.
[pause]
>>Female #1: Hi. Sorry. I had another question.
>>Patrick Awuah: OK, sure.
>>Female #1: [laughs] Another thing I noticed when I was back in Ghana at Ashesi, was that
the founders of DreamOval as well as other entrepreneurs had really great ideas and really
innovative products, but getting VC funding, internally in Ghana, or getting the resources
was, seemed very difficult, either one, because they were too young, so they thought maybe
it was some scam or two, just because it wasn't as readily available.
And so, how does one look at, I guess, the issue of bringing the resources and the talent
together in Ghana versus, I guess, places like Silicon Valley, where it's just readily
available?
>>Patrick Awuah: Right. So, that's a very good question. Silicon Valley is an amazing
place. And venture capital has been an incredible factor in driving what is happening here.
We don't have that in Ghana yet.
But I am pretty optimistic that as we see more clearly what's happening in the rest
of the world, there is a possibility for this to also come to Ghana. I think that it's been,
it's very important that DreamOval is essentially pushing the envelope, right? This performance
horizon that I talked about. And if you came to Ghana 20 years ago, you wouldn't see a
bunch of young people, which, as big an ambition as those guys have, right?
To have a 24-year old, a group of 24-year olds say, "We are going to implement mobile
money and we're going to change the world for all these poor people who are unbanked,"
is not something that you would have seen, but you see that today, because of the work
that we're doing in Ashesi. And I think that as we see more of those kinds of attempts
that that also will attract capital to support people like that.
I really hope that we can have more of an incubation culture in Ghana and on the African
continent. I mean, there are other institutions that are beginning to do this. There's an
organization called Meltwater that is doing this is Ghana. And I hope that we'll see more
of that in the years to come.
[pause]
>>Male #2: Hi. So, what do I want to say? Yeah. You were talking about bringing, expanding
the offering for things like electrical engineering.
>>Patrick Awuah: Right.
>>Male #2: And there are now online courses like those from MITx--
>>Patrick Awuah: Right.
>>Male #2: which are making a follow into this. Can you make use of this? Would it help
what you are doing?
>>Patrick Awuah: Yeah. I mean, our faculty look at MIT OpenCourseWare quite a bit. We
have a relationship with those guys where we actually even get a local copy of it. So,
they take snapshots. So, we actually have locally hosted OpenCourseWare on campus. And
I can tell you that as we're designing the electrical engineering program, that's one
of the sources that we've looked at to guide us.
[pause]
>>Male #3: Hi. With only a few percent of the people who are of a suitable age to go
to college, going to college, I can see how a step in the quality of education and the
ethics of education can make a real contribution to society. But in places like the US where
lots of people go to college and ethics is on the decline, what strategy can we adopt?
[laughter]
>>Patrick Awuah: OK. So, look. I think that the United States and other advanced countries
need to never forget the basics. OK? I think that there's some classical ideas that sometimes,
as we pursue technology and advancement, we start to think that Plato's "Republic," or
"The Allegory of the Cave" and things like this no longer apply.
But there's some ideas that really are timeless. And I think that it's very important that
all institutions of learning pay attention to the idea that ethics is important and that
civic engagement is important. I would also like to say that there is a dark side in the
world. And those guys, they have no qualms about indoctrinating people with bad ideas.
OK?
And the way to counter that is to make sure that we are lighting up people's minds with
the basic things, those timeless ideas. Venture capital, this whole model of financing young
people and having patient capital and putting money into a company without a lot of collateral
or any collateral, that wouldn't work if there was no trust.
You need a high-trust environment for this whole phenomenon to be successful, right?
So that's my view of it.
[pause]
Hi, Brigitte.
>>Female #3: How are you?
>>Patrick Awuah: Good.
>>Female #3: I have a few questions. One, given the kind of environment in Ghana in
terms of employment, you mentioned that 100 percent of the students get employment. Curious
about where that is? I know that a lot of the traditional companies, the tel-cos and
the banks, tend to dominate. And in that environment, two things.
Do you think that they're able to make change? Like, do you think that they are having an
impact outside of themselves? Only because the hierarchical nature of the environment
basically says you're small, you be quiet, this is how we operate. The other side is
compensation. So, I know compensation varies incredibly drastically in Ghana.
>>Patrick Awuah: Right.
>>Female #3: So, understanding, do you see your students being rewarded more on the compensation
side? 'Cause I think that's gonna be a big factor in keeping them local in the long term
and not going to Nigeria. [laughs]
>>Patrick Awuah: Right. So, those are very good questions. So, we see our students actually
climbing up the corporate ladder wherever they go quite quickly. And I assume that increased
compensation goes with that.
So, I think that resolves itself. I talk with chief executives in the country who have now
decided that Ashesi is going to be a key place to hire from, particularly because they're
engaged with succession planning. And they're looking for people that they think can rise
up into middle management and eventually, into executive management.
And they think Ashesi is a place that they can get those kinds of people. So, that's
encouraging. Those are very encouraging conversations for me to have. Your other question had to
do with jobs, right? And again, I think it comes down to the basics. If somebody is well-educated
and is a problem-solver and has an entrepreneurial mind, and you put that person even in a corporate
structure, they will come up with new ideas, new ways for the organization to grow.
And so, for example, when an Ashesi alum goes and works in a bank and goes to their manager
and says, "There's this whole population of people who are unbanked. And we need to be
thinking of a strategy to reach those guys." And managers convince management to pursue
that. Now, that bank is growing, right?
It's now expanding to look at a segment, a market segment, that they hadn't before just
because of this one person who had the idea. And as it enters in that segment, they'll
be jobs that come with that. Recently, GE entered Ghana and they hired from Ashesi to
open up their Accra office. And now, the company is working multimillion dollar deals in the
country.
And that's going to generate more jobs in Ghana. And so, when I started this project,
I said to myself, "This is a long-term play. It's gonna take a couple of decades or maybe
three decades for me to see the full impact of the work that we're doing." In the meantime,
just paying attention to what are the steps that we're taking and what are the little
glimmers that we're on the right path? And I think that it's, so far it looks promising.
[pause]
>>Male #4: Hello. I'm interested in knowing more about your students. What are the criteria
to get into Ashesi? And what barriers do they face during their education that might prevent
them from graduating and being successful in a college? And what, how does the college
help them achieve that success?
>>Patrick Awuah: OK. So, Ashesi student body is very diverse. So, we have students from
poor, rural villages or even urban slums. We have students from quite affluent families
and everything in-between.
So, it's very dispersed. Now, their academic background, as you might imagine, is different,
right? So, the kid who grew up in a rural village went to an under-resourced school,
maybe went to a school and didn't even have a math teacher. It's at a disadvantage. When
we make admissions decisions, what we do is we look at a standardized national exam and
the accreditation board has minimum standards for admission.
We certainly will not go below those standards. But more importantly, we look at the person.
So, we do interviews. Students write essays. We try to really understand who this person
is. And the idea is, the kid who's self-taught and got a "C" in math is often just as bright
as a kid who went to a really good school and got an "A" in math.
They just didn't have the resources. And we need to give that person an opportunity. And
we need to provide the resources to help that person. So, for example, having a learning
lab where they can go and get extra help with math and English and things like that. Those
things are very important to help people get through.
Now, once they're--. So, that's part of the answer to the second part of your question.
One of the things that prevent people from being successful in college, interestingly,
some of our students who have struggled the most are from quite affluent backgrounds.
And part of the reason they struggle when they're in college is because they just don't
have that fire in their belly.
The stakes are not as high. They're not as driven. And sometimes, that's a problem. And
so, that's something that we're grappling with. So, you'll have a few students who will
flunk out academically. There's some students who will be expelled for ethics violations
if they do it enough. There's always a second chance given to people, depending on the severity
of the offense.
But so, we have a few people that fall into that category. It's something that we have
to do to just make the point that, "Hey, this is who we are." And then, there's a third
group that's very difficult to deal with. When we give financial aid, and we give a
significant amount of financial aid every year, but what we do is we commit all the
financial aid dollars we have available upon entry.
In fact, it's never enough, OK? And then, after the fact, it may be a couple of years
in, as students' family circumstances change, they can no longer afford the fees. There
are a few students who drop out because their families are no longer able to afford the
fees. And that's very difficult, but it is what it is. I mean, we need--.
One of the things that we're trying to do is to raise extra money, sort of emergency
funding, and the executive team at Ashesi set up an executive emergency fund that we
contribute to ourselves. And certain categories of students. If there's been a death in the
family, a parent has died, or there's some other major incident like that, they can apply
to that fund to get funding.
But again, even that funding is limited, right? So, those are the things that cause problems.
[pause]
>>Male Presenter: I think we have time for one last question.
>>Female #3: I'm last? OK. So, you talked about wanting to change a continent.
>>Patrick Awuah: Mm-hmm.
>>Female #3: So, what are your ideas for making Ashesi scale?
>>Patrick Awuah: The big scale question. Well, let me say that, first of all, when I started
Ashesi, I had this idea that one day there would be like, ten Ashesi's in Africa. And
franchise is not the right word because we're not for profit.
But there would be family of schools around the continent that have the same mission,
they share the same ethos, that perhaps operate differently depending in terms of particular
courses they offer, depending on where they are on the continent. And I was gonna be the
one to make it happen, OK? So, then I got started.
And believe me, [laughs] it is really hard. So, what we, where we are now is to say, "OK.
We've done the first phase of our project, the first ten years." Hugely successful in
my view. And we're doing the second phase, which is about really identifying a few very
high-impact areas that if we do will be transformative in Ghana--just public, private.
And then to say, "Well, we're going to invite students from all over the continent to experience
this." And they'll go back to their countries and make change. We have examples of this.
We have someone who went back to Liberia who is making a big difference. There's somebody
who went back to Sierra Leone who is making a huge difference.
And just expand it that way. Now, once we've built the model, then the question is how
do we take that and scale it. OK? And it's dawned on me that the way to take it and scale
it is I need to build up my organization. We actually need focused minds on how do you
take this and replicate it? And depending on funding levels and so on, we may or may
not need other Patricks to execute this.
And I think that the leadership is really important. Now, this one has been super difficult
because funding was very scarce when we started. It required somebody who was absolutely dedicated
and persistent and willing to go through a bunch of stuff. Those people are hard to find.
But, and so, those projects need to go through that same pain.
Then, we will need to find people in those countries that have that persistence and that
dedication, who are gonna go through the pain to get it done. It's gonna be crucial. And
it's hard to find those guys. Now, if there's funding for it, then it may be different.
But I haven't figured it all out yet. But it would be really cool if we could replicate
Ashesi.
So, that's why the second answer is replicating the idea. So, there's replicating what we've
done and there is looking at other institutions that already exist, that already have infrastructure,
that already have people, and say, "Can we, is there a way that we can inject the Ashesi
DNA, the Ashesi ethos into those institutions?"
And that also is gonna require sitting down and thinking about exactly how we do that.
But those are the two ways that, I think, eventually we will look at the scale question.
>>Male Presenter: Thank you, everyone. Thank you so much for coming, Patrick. I know there
>>Patrick Awuah: Thank you very much.
[applause]