Campaign Against the Privatization and Commercialization of Education (CAPCOE) and its partners in the education sector have made a passionate appeal to the government to continue to absorb the full cost of staff salaries in public tertiary institutions in order to maintain tertiary fees at reasonable levels.
The call, according to the group, is premised on the fact that it is the responsibility of the government to provide equal access to tertiary education.
According to CAPCOE, the government’s proposed policy to wean off public tertiary institutions from its payroll and provide them with an annual ‘block amount’ would compel these institutions to attempt to generate their own revenue to pay a substantial part of their staff budget.
It indicated that though the proposed policy would contribute to fiscal discipline when implemented, it will however come with potential undesirable outcomes including charging unrealistic higher fees and reduction in access to tertiary education by the poor.
A statement issued by CAPCOE and its partners including NUGS, USAG, Ghana National Education Campaign Coalition, All Africa Students’ Union and the Africa Education Watch indicated the proposal does not only depict policy incoherence but also contradicts the government’s own plan to increase Gross Tertiary Enrolment (GTER) from 18% to 40% by 2030.
Equitable access through the removal of cost barriers, it noted, are key strategies to achieve this audacious enrollment target.
“We are also informed of the justification being made by some members of UTAG and Vice-Chancellors that charging realistic fees is the way to go in improving quality, citing the examples of European countries that have successfully implemented similar cost-shifting initiatives.”
“It is noteworthy that the existence of adequate safety nets for poor students through a responsive student’s loan and a meritorious, transparent and accountable scholarships systems has been critical to maintaining equity regardless of the introduction of fees in these countries.”
According to CAPCOE, in the case of Ghana the equity context for the introduction of fees is absent because the students’ loan and scholarship systems are not responsive to the needs of poor students as both are disbursed towards the end of the academic year, instead of arriving before the academic year when poor prospective students require funding to honour their admissions.
Public scholarship schemes, it said, continue to operate in opacity without any accountability or certainty of access based on merit.
CAPCOE warned that in the absence of adequate safety nets to protect poor and needy students, the proposal will increase the cost of accessing tertiary education and pose a major economic barrier to accessing tertiary education by the poor.
The statement proposed additional measures that it said if the Minister of Education considers will reduce fiscal pressures on the education budget without necessarily transferring any part of the responsibility for tertiary salaries to the tertiary institution.
The measures, CAPCOE said, include intensification of domestic resource mobilization to shore up local revenues to finance social services provisioning; Urgently passing and implementing the Exemptions Bill with the same priority given to the e-levy; drastic measures to minimize financial waste in the education sector by departing from the culture of single source procurement items and adopt the culture of competitive procurement to assure greater Value For Money in the education sector; and invest in an export driven economy by promoting value addition to raw materials such as gold, cocoa and crude oil to enhance foreign exchange earnings potential and reduce inflationary pressures.
