Ghana's universities face delays in re-opening
Ghana's three universities are facing delays in getting re-opened for the 1984-85 school year due to lack of funds to support the full cost of feeding students. Although the government has conceded to pay up this term at a nominal rate of C34.00 per student per day, it has given indication that parents and guardians will have to pay the full cost of feeding their wards in the very immediate future, possibly from the second term in January 1985.
This is yet again another slap in the face of university education in this country judging from the officially stated justification for this thinking that since parents and guardians pay for their wards in pre-university institutions, they could as well continue paying at university level. That to my mind is unreasonable for if that be the case, would it not be fair to relieve them of the burden once their wards get to the tertiary cycle instead of prolonging their burden of expenditure?
Government has the obligation and the capacity to foot the entire bill of university education even under our present dire economic circumstances. If the PNDC sets its priorities right and not indulge in wanton gallivanting across the globe to say 'Hello Comrade' to every self-proclaimed revolutionary who is celebrating his day of glory, it should be able to totally finance increased expenditure in university education.
One way, in the short term, is for government to reduce or abolish frequent overseas trips by political aides and functionaries and revolutionary delegations, which trips and scholar- ships are more of a drain on the nation's resources than the cost of supporting the universities (see inset).
The cost of university education has become something of a millstone around the neck of the government so in the short term, the finance has got to be found and this can be done by severe pruning and cut-backs in other areas of expenditure such as defence and expensive overseas trips as afore- mentioned. The rate of C34.00 a day fixed by University Workers Defence Committees is utterly insufficient and the decline in student diets is likely to get worse and worse and generally materials, books and equipment are going to be hard to get.
Although the Education Commission has recommended that boarding and lodging fees be paid by students and for a re-activation of a Loans Scheme for school fees, there is concern among the public about the mode of effective implementation of these recommendations. First of all, the impending action by the government to ask students to pay their fees directly or by loans will be at variance with its stated commitment to end the class system in the society which such proposals are sure to accentuate. Secondly, it will defeat the government's goals of ensuring social justice and equal opportunities for all.
The present system originates from the immediate post-independence era when the need for skilled manpower in a growing buoyant economy called for fee-free university education. Since then, there have been incessant calls for a re-appraisal of financing university education. The Dowuona Commission of 1970 and the Evans-Anfom Commission of 1975 are symbols of national attempts to seek solutions to the problem. The Progress Party government led by the late Dr Kofi Busia adopted the Dowouna recommendations in 1971.
However, the military government that followed it modified this scheme and introduced the textbooks loan scheme. The dismal failure of this scheme is that no effective machinery was instituted to collect the repayments. Enquiries at the Bank of Ghana have revealed that out of nearly C40 million paid out as loans, only about C150,000 were recovered in a period of ten years or so. Co-operation between banks and employers was never forthcoming and besides, the easy dispersal of graduates to different locations inside and outside the country made collections of re-payments extremely difficult.
While government bears the ultimate responsibility of financing university education, it can at the same time create avenues for the universities to invest their resources profitably in agriculture, real estate development and hostelling, literature publishing, research and consultancy services. Again the government should consider the establishment of, for instance, a University Finance Fund (FFF) to which all employers engaging a certain number of graduates will contribute a 'Manpower Tax' which will in turn be re-invested at home and abroad. Large-scale exploitation of the nation's prime resources such as minerals, oil, etc. will have to attract substantial contributions to this Fund, especially wholly foreign owned companies.
It is only by exploring these practical programmes that the nation can ensure and assure access to higher education for all and sundry now and for the future generation.
Anyone who doubts the value of university education to our national life should take a closer look at the composition of the various branches of the PNDC ruling body politic: About forty per cent of current PNDC appointees and many Secretaries of State were at one time or another officials of the National Union of Ghana Students or SRCs of the three universities. What is painful is that these groups of people are now presid- ing over the possible decimation of free higher education.
They who bombarded their fellow students with scientific socialism in the 1970s are now shouting that higher education is a privilege and not a right which only those who can afford it should pursue. There are a lot more government functionaries and Secretaries who have left their posts temporarily as university lecturers on full pay and who obtained post-graduate degrees overseas at state expense and are now living free of charge at Continental Hotel while on service to government in Accra.
Yet all of them are wallowing in hypocrisy and colluding to decimate as head of State. our free higher education inheritance without abashment or sensitivity. Herein lies the utilisation of the nation's resources expended on university education. As to whether it has been for better or worse, only posterity will be able to judge.
Better education outside Ghana?
(1) 80 Ghanaians flew to Moscow in August to study in the USSR for periods ranging from four to six years. Among them revolutionary cadres, youth groups, Peoples' militia committees who are to study medicine, engineering, architecture, law, etc. All those chosen to study law are several laymen of the Public tribunals. In fact, there have been reports of fistfights, and catcalls about nepotism and bribery in the selection of candidates for the tribunal law students. These 'Soviet Scholarships', according to informed sources, entitles each of the participants to full study leave and extra subventions payable by the Ghana government to the students.(2) The Acting Secretary to the National Defence Committee has gone to Tbilisi in the USSR ostensibly to attend a Soviet Solidarity Committee Conference.
(3) 28 Ghanaians flew to Libya recently made up of winners of an essay competition 'The third universal theory' organised by the Green Book Study Club, and others selected to study Arabic in Libyan Colleges.
(4) A 14-member delegation visited Bulgaria in July to attend a 10-month leadership training course. (5) An 8-member delegation went to Libya to attend the 15th anniversary celebrations of the Al-Fateh revolution.
(6) A 16-member delegation went to Ethiopia to attend the 10th anniversary celebrations of that country's revolution. (7) A 200-member party attended the August 4 celebration of Sankara's Burkina Faso.
....and many, many more. And yet...yet, the government is bitterly complaining of how to get cash to re-open our universities. Where are our priorities as a nation, as a people? How long are we going to sit down silent, apathetic and insensitive to the brutalisation of our future generation? Sacrificed on the altar of half-baked socialism? For how could anyone justify the impression that the Afienya Leadership Training Institute and the Ajumako School of Languages are inferior to those in Bulgaria and Libya?
