This is the second in
my series on Regulating Tertiary Education in Ghana: Regulatory Bodies and
Their Mandates. I admit, my first piece was a bit boring and technical.
Unfortunately, educating a country with internally generated/directed
development is not a joking matter. It is the yoke that seeks the break the
neck of the serious minded educationist. We only laugh when
perceived ludicrous solutions are being proposed by our international
development partners for “non-Ghanaian” owned problems. Discovered and
diagnosed by them only. Even then, this laughter is but a sarcastic one. Don’t
get me wrong, we still posses the humour and jest to hope in the face of
challenging unrelenting educational reform problems. And I digress again. Today
I will try and present the situation as I perceive it on the quest to make Tertiary
Education equally accessible and equitable to all who qualify in Ghana.
The goal of the
Government of Ghana, having jumped on the industrialisation band wagon has been
to provide the job market with the requisite qualified personnel. The initial 4
universities (University of Ghana, University of Cape Coast, KNUST and University
of Education-Winneba) were deemed to be insufficient to produce the required
manpower for the expanding Ghanaian Job market. What was the solution? A very
innovative solution was championed by the Government. Bring in the private
sector. The introduction and acceptance of private participation in Ghana’s Tertiary
Education landscape should not have posed any problems from a regulatory point
of view. After all the NCTE and NAB had experience in managing the fore
mentioned Universities. Valley View, an SDA established university had been in
existence for more than two decades before the mass endorsement of Private
Public Partnership (PPP) of Tertiary Education. The onset of PPP saw the Tertiary
Education landscape expanding rapidly.
Now for a country of
about 30million people, only 15% of this has received Tertiary Education with
about 60% having been exposed to a form of formal education at some point in
their life. This statistics makes Ghana, what the World Bank considers as the
Elitism of Education. The concentration of the Ghanaian population is fairly
even regionally. According to the 2010 census report, only Greater Accra and
Ashanti Region have more than 20% of their population living in urban centres
whilst Eastern Region had about 12% of its population in urban centres. The
other three regions average 8% of their regional population in urban centres.
Why this statistics? Well a look at the existing 60+ Tertiary Education
Institutions will show that about 80% are situated in the Greater Accra Region,
whilst Ashanti is hosting 10% the remaining 10% is shared by the other 8
regions. What is of import to note is that almost all the Tertiary Education
Institutions are situated in Regional Capitals with the exception of Colleges
of Education which may be District Hosted. Deductively then, the Capital Accra
is host to 80% of Tertiary Education Institutions.
The statistics
presented above throws a harrowing and wavering shadow for the future of
education, especially where the mantra of equity and equality is being chanted.
After all Accra is responsible for only 24% of the national urban dwellers. One
must not forget that Ghana is a country of Urban-Education drive. The rural
communities have been ignored, forgotten or under served in the delivery of
education. At least at the basic level, even if situated under trees, and
staffed by poorly qualified personnel there is some level of education being
accessed (quality is another story for another day).
One may ask,
1. Where are the
regulatory bodies for Tertiary Education?
2. Is there any policy
on the situation of Tertiary Education Institutions in Ghana?
3. Is there Equality and
Equity in the delivery of Tertiary Education in Ghana?
In answering question
1, I must say that I am yet to come across any policy frame work on the
localisation of Tertiary Education Institutions. Yes the regulatory bodies are
present. However internal and intra agency rivalry has incapacitated them. The
NCTE in failing to stamp its authority on the tertiary landscape left a gaping
hole which NAB tasked with assuring quality had to struggle to fill. Their
methods may not be the best, however “half a loaf…”. The NAB and NCTE are thus
caught in a Jacob-Essau Struggle. The NABPTEX after several calls to disband
it, it is currently endearing itself to the quasi Tertiary Education
Institutions. One wonders what will become of them when the Governments call
for Technical Universities Materialise (Darwin’s Evolutionary theories come to
mind here; when a species specialises in only one food source, the extinction
of such a species is directly linked to the survival of said food source).
These cross agency struggles has left the private sector to map out Tertiary
Education to suit their personal goals; profit generation.
I will not forward an
argument for Equality nor Equity, for the charges of accessing Tertiary
Education, even when its available is astronomically high. Given that majority
of the student population is coming from middle and low income families, makes
the fees for education at this level nothing short of economic miracles to
maintain/afford. Well at a forum, a presenter jokingly said that Ghanaians are
“managers”, they are paid peanuts which should have starved ants, and yet month
in and month out, they manage to scrape by. When asked: Masa how be?? A Ghanaian worker is
more likely to respond: Masa we are managing.
Conclusively, Tertiary
Education is not equitably accessible to Ghanaians even though the 1992
constitution mandates it nor is it equally available to all Ghanaians.
Sometimes I worry that in our quest to make Tertiary Education equally and
equitably accessible, we may sacrifice quality. In the face of poor
regulation, the mice of the educational field are
reeling in the harvest. Government may be making in-roads in establishing Tertiary
Education Institutions again, but if this agenda is not decoupled from the
political partisanship approach, it may never achieve its set target. The
questions of Why set up a tertiary Institution? Where to locate it? Who will or
can access it? and What is the mandate of such an institution?; should guide
government and the regulatory bodies in their quest to make education equitable
and equally accessible.
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