Jayee University College on the rise

Twenty years ago, a private individual, Mr John Emmanuel Donkoh, took up the challenge to support the government’s efforts at providing tertiary education for the nation’s youth.
He started a secretarial school in a wooden structure located at the Young Men Christian Association (YMCA) Hall, in Accra, with 18 students. The school was then known as Jayee Institute.
No sooner had the school started, than a new place at Adabraka was secured to make teaching and learning more conducive.
Mr Donkoh in those years was spurred on by the desire to give the youth wandering the streets employable skills they could hold on to for good. That need included addressing a skill or knowledge deficiency that could result in making the youth employable and good citizens.
Many challenges confronted this budding institute through the years but with resolve and zeal the enterprise was bound to succeed.
Jayee introduced other professional courses to make the existence of the school more relevant to the needs of the day.
A lot of thinking, research and support went into the decision to include Journalism, Public Relations and Marketing at the Diploma Level to the existing courses.
The National Accreditation Board (NAB) granted the institution approval to take a step further to commence degree courses, necessitating a change in name to Jayee University College (JUC).
In tandem to its growth, the school, in 1999, moved to its current location, in the plush atmosphere of McCarthy Hill on the Mallam-Kasoa road.
It is now a pride of 61 strong working force of staff and lecturers and about 500 youthful men and women from all over Africa pursuing either degree or diploma courses in Journalism, Public Relations, Accounting, Secretaryship and Management Studies, Bilingual Secretaryship, Human Resource Management and Information and Communication Technology (ICT).
Because the college finds training to be a cost-effective solution to define need, it has taken into account current job demands and has tailored its courses to meet these demands, earning a success rate of 85 per cent and 75 per cent in external and internal examinations respectively.
Records indicate that as of December 2007, the college had trained about 3,233 students and out of this, 2,791 qualified for Diploma certificate and 210 of them being foreign students.
Today, JUC professionals are either working within the length and breadth of national industry or are pursuing further courses at home or abroad.
It is therefore not surprising that the college over the past few years has been decorated with the “Most Enterprising Institute of the year 2004 Award”, “Ghana Industrial Pinnacle Award (Certificate of Achievement) in 2005” as well as the Noble International Award 2006”.
The new status of JUC has made it imperative to reconstitute the governing body.
The 13-member governing council comprises seasoned professionals in their respective fields and chaired by Professor Jophus Anamuah-Mensah, former Vice Chancellor of the University of Education, Winneba.
In spite of its achievements the management is still resolved to chalk up more succeesses. The management has acquired land at Weija, a distance of two kilometres from the school, to develop into a modern university college, with ultra-modern school block, an administrative block and other facilities to make teaching and learning conducive and responsive to organisational needs.
Because profit-making was not the sole aim of setting up the institution, the college, in response to its corporate social responsibilities, provides assistance to at least five gifted needy students each year. About 140 of such students have benefited from the scheme since 1999.
According to the president of the college, the Communication Science programme was introduced to erase the perception people have that Jayee is still a secretarial school.
He said females were the strength of the school as they performed better than their male counterparts.
He pointed out that JUC has the vision of becoming the best tertiary institution in management and journalism in Ghana.