The University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG) has expressed strong opposition to former President John Dramani Mahama’s proposal to cover academic user facility fees for all first-year university students if the National Democratic Congress (NDC) wins power.
With thousands of eligible students unable to gain university admission annually due to financial constraints, the NDC plans to remove these barriers by paying the fees for level 100 students.
However, UTAG contends that a more effective approach would be to distribute these funds directly to universities as bursaries.
Speaking on JoyNews’ PM Express, UTAG President Professor Mahamoud Akudugu raised concerns about the current financial challenges facing universities.
He explained that government funding to universities has dwindled, forcing institutions to cover operational costs such as utilities.
“It is good news that the government wants to do this, but we at the universities are also concerned about the fact that currently, 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,” Professor Akudugu said.
He warned that without provisions for infrastructure improvements, the influx of students could overwhelm existing facilities.
“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 want a fuller picture of what they want to do at the tertiary level so we can holistically deal with it.”
Professor Akudugu advocated for the policy to be targeted towards needy students, suggesting that universities administer bursaries and scholarships based on student need.
“For us, we believe that this policy should be targeted for equity. It should be 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.”
Executive Director of Africa Education Watch, Kofi Asare, echoed UTAG’s suggestion, citing global best practices.
“The best practice in western countries dictates 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,” he said.
However, NDC Director of Inter-Party and CSO Relations, Dr. Peter Boamah Otokunor, pushed back against UTAG’s proposal, arguing that it could invite fraud. He insisted that the policy should benefit all students to ensure fairness.
“I strongly disagree because it will create room for rent-seeking… there are equally a number of rent-seekers in universities who will also want to take advantage of some of these things,” Dr. Otokunor argued.
“The key thing about policy efficiency is that you must as much as possible remove the human intervention, and now every university runs an electronic system of registration.”
The debate arises from John Mahama’s announcement that the NDC would implement a policy ensuring that first-year tertiary students would not pay academic fees, as part of a broader effort to ease the financial burden on parents.
He also mentioned plans to strengthen the Student Loan Trust Fund to help continuing students cover their fees.