Despite the agenda by former President John Mahama to provide support for over 55,000 students enrolled in Ghana’s universities annually, the University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG) has proposed an alternative.
Although UTAG appreciates the effort by the National Democratic Congress(NDC) to support tertiary students, the association believes the policy should target only needy students at the various tertiary institutions.
Again, the association opined that any money for the Level 100 applicants should rather be given as bursaries and scholarships or grants to the universities to administer since they will be able to know the needy students based on their history.
The President of UTAG, Professor Mahamoud Akudugu, in an interview said, “It is good news that the government wants to do this, but we at the universities are also concerned about the fact that currently, the government’s funding to the universities has drastically declined to the extent that only salaries are being paid. Universities are expected to pay their own electricity, utility bills and all the rest.
“So if you are proposing a policy of this nature and there is no provision for infrastructure and the rest of it, then at the end of the day, the students will come and there is no place to sit. So we will want a fuller picture of what they want to do at the tertiary level so we can holistically deal with it,” he noted.
“For us, we believe that this policy should be targeted for equity and besides that, we would have even preferred that this is given as bursaries and scholarships or grants to the universities to administer because they will be able to know who are the needy students based on their history. It should be targeted because that is the only way to create equity when it comes to these types of policies,” Mr. Akudugu added.
Supporting UTAG’s suggestion is the Executive Director of Africa Education Watch, Kofi Asare, who indicated that UTAG’s proposal is the best practice around the world.
“The best practice in Western countries dictate that for bursaries and financial assistance schemes to benefit students, the universities are the ones who must administer them and then report to the scholarship authority”.
However, the Director of Inter-Party and CSO relations for the NDC, Dr. Peter Boamah Otokunor, disagreed.
He argued that UTAG’s suggestion opens the policy to fraud, insisting that all students must benefit from the educational policy.
“I strongly disagree because it will create room for rent-seeking because mind you, in the universities there are equally a number of rent-seekers who will also want to take advantage of some of these things.
“The key thing about policy efficiency is that you must as much as possible remove the human intervention,” he said in an interview on Joy News monitored by The Ghana Report on Joy News.