Member of the NDC Manifesto Committee on Education, Clement Apaak, has justified the party’s plan to eliminate academic fees for all first-year students.
During the NDC youth manifesto launch in Accra on August 12, their flagbearer, John Dramani Mahama, pledged to implement this policy to assist students facing financial difficulties.
Speaking on the Citi Breakfast Show with Bernard Avle on August 13, the Builsa South MP explained that many WASSCE graduates are unable to pursue tertiary education due to financial barriers.
He emphasized that the proposed policy is designed to address this challenge if the NDC secures victory in the upcoming general elections.
“One of the challenges students face is their ability to pay fees and it has recently become obvious that the number of students who write WASSCE and proceed to the university is not encouraging and this is because the money to pay fees is a problem.
“When we engaged with youth groups on how to resolve this, waiving off fees for first-year students came up strongly.
“From the figures that we have, if we are to go by some information that has been put out by our good brother Kofi Asare of Africa Education Watch, they estimate that if one was to look at the number of students who took up places in tertiary institutions in the 2023/2024 academic year, they are less than 200,000 and when you look at the academic fees of first-year students on average, it works out to anywhere between GH¢2,000 and GH¢2,300 thereabout.
“So if we were to use that as a base, we could posit that the policy will cost less than GH¢300 million a year and of course, student numbers fluctuate each year, so it is doable and if we were to pluck revenue loopholes, we should be able to mobilise the resources to fund this proposal.”