Helena Selby
3 December 2008
opinion
Tertiary education has always occupied a greater role in the lives of the youth in the country. It provides them with the needed and vital know-how, to enable them cope with existing challenges in the global economy. It has often been the obligation of the tertiary education level, to educate the youth to whichever level of education they would like to reach.
Gone were the days when the majority of the youth were very worried when approaching their tertiary education level. This anxiety was due to the reason that the existing tertiary institutions were not enough, making admission very competitive and difficult.
However the situation seems a lot more different, with the emergence of numerous private tertiary institutions. The youth, no matter the course background, is able to get a rightful private tertiary institution to attend. It must be noted that though private tertiary institutions make the same impact on their students, just like the public institutions do, little deliberation is given to them, in terms of funding by the government.
Private tertiary institutions in Ghana
For a private tertiary institution to be recognised in Ghana, it must be affiliated to a public institution for the purpose of quality assurance. But, they however are not funded by government, even though they are obliged to be affiliated to a public institution.
Professor Stephen Adei, Rector of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), in a lecture, stated that the surfacing of private tertiary institutions began in the 1990's, to add to the University of Ghana which was in 1948, followed by the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in 1962, and the University of Cape Coast in 1971.
In the space of ten years - 1998 to 2008 - other smaller universities like the University of Development Studies, Tamale, became an autonomous university in 1992, and University College of Winneba in 1994 and the rest of them followed up. The existing private tertiary institutions so far, include the Central University College, Ashesi University College and Catholic University College.
According to records, the lowest tuition fee a private university charges is about GH¢650, and the highest about GH¢1,065, which makes it quite impossible for the youth coming from a poor and average home to afford.
To him, the reason for the emergence of these private universities, include the pressure and shortage of public funds to respond to the increasing demand for higher education, and failure to provide enough variety, or differentiation of institutions and programmes by the public sector.
Failure to understand the demand in the 'market' and respond with flexibility of times, and convenience of location by public institutions, was another reason.
What is more, the failure to provide security within public institutions, as a result of strikes, violence, occultism and poor working conditions in public institutions, in the recent past. People have the surety that with the private tertiary institutions, there is no way any uncertainties would emerge, since they are not state-owned.
Private tertiary institutions and students
The existence of private tertiary institutions though, is deemed to be beneficial to the youth and most mature students, but for those who find themselves in embarrassing financial situations, the situation seems not to be beneficial at all.
For some of the youth, these private institutions give the chance to those who did not score the needed grade for the tertiary level. Considering the grade, and they not being willing to re-sit their exams, they prefer to enrol in a private institution to prevent the wastage of their years.
For those who have the have the required grade, and do not have the needed money to finance their education in the private institutions, they only have to wait for the yearly enrolment in the public institutions.
According to some of these students, in the private institutions, financing one's education is very difficult. One needs to be helped out, in terms of tuition and other needed materials. Even in the case of the mature students, who even work, their monthly salary is not even up to a semester of tuition.
However, since private institutions depend solely on tuition and fees to finance their operations, they have no option than to maintain the status quo or even increase it. For the public institutions, a student loan scheme was introduced three decades ago.
Professor Adei indicated that in October 2002, students from private universities were included in the student loan scheme, funded by the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), to help students in the payment of their tuition.
A student loan trust was established in 2005 to replace the SSNIT funded loans, which faced problems, including government not paying its share, and loan recovery.
Public tertiary education funding
At the lecture, it was revealed that until the founding of the Central University College, all universities in the country were publicly owned. Despite the fact that there are now many of private university colleges, they seem not to matter a little in public policies.
The public tertiary institutions, except GIMPA, are mainly supported by the government from the public purse. The National Commission for Tertiary Education reports that in 2006, the government disbursed to the public universities and polytechnics, a total of GH¢93,110,582, out of which GH¢79.73 million went into salaries, GH¢116million administrative expenses and GH¢15.8 million service activities, leaving a mere GH¢2 million to cover investment costs.
Capital projects and scholarships are being funded from the Ghana Educational Trust Fund (GETFund).
Additionally, public support for the universities includes significant contribution for infrastructural development through the GETFund, largely for infrastructural development, scholarships and student loans. As far as the public universities and polytechnics are concerned, their main sources of funding are annual budget allocations from government, and government grants (GETFund).
There are also internally generated funds, like tuition fees from foreign sponsored students, students cost sharing fees, rent from staff accommodation and faculties, interest on staff loans, returns on commercial activities, and externally funded research projects.
The lecture brought about the realisation that government educational policy scarcely includes private tertiary institutions, as mainstream activity. The result is that they are at the mercy of professional regulatory bodies. There, therefore, is the need for a policy shift to see private tertiary education as the mainstream agenda item of government. At a certain point, when the history of Ghanaian universities is being outlined, private universities are not mentioned. This, in a way, shows how dominant the public sector institutions are in the minds of people, and that is because of their longer history. However, private tertiary education start-up capital and infrastructural development, comes from equity and family sources, in the few cases where individuals have set up such institutions.
Funding for private educational institutions is mainly by religious bodies, equity contribution by proprietors, loans from commercial sources, with amortization of the loans, and student fees.
Funds are also raised by founding churches, in the cases of churches funding higher educational institutions, like the Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian, Central and Pentecost University colleges.
A new development also, is loan financing for expansion, and this is likely to grow as the institutions grow and their cash flows improve. The institutions will be able to attract loans from banks both local and international. Apart from their source of funding, they also look up to funding from government support, concessional loans, research earnings, private sector, service charges, endowment, heritage and many others.
Conclusion The government ought to acknowledge that private tertiary institutions, though they exist and operate on their own, their expansion and financing would go a long way, should they intervene.
Private tertiary institutions must be recognised as holding the upper hand when it comes to university education, and that the public education cannot educate all the youth in the country at the tertiary level.
The private tertiary education is in to stay, and must be seen as such.
There is the need for government to involve these private institutions when it comes to policy making. ]
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