Funding of Higher Education, Performance Budgeting or Line-Item Budgeting: Issues Arrising

I am an education enthusiast. To a fault I am an idealist, believing in the goodness of mankind. I am delusional in the belief that an educated mind will present and relate more with empiricism in the face of assumptions. Maybe its time I let go of these delusions and believes for I am in Africa now and reality check says I am dreaming. But then and again I have always been a stubborn mule (imagine that) and refuse to wake up. I will dream away and be lost in my beliefs.

This is the third in my series of regulating tertiary education in Ghana. I know I am not following any clear pattern. I will be faulted for not jumping from set-up, through governance and mandate regulations before jumping on the funding band wagon. But Hei, its money and who doesn’t love talking about it.

It is a fact that the most pressing issue of Higher Education in developing countries is that of funding. Left alone and without government restrictions, I am quite sure that most of Tertiary Education Institutions in Ghana would have managed to fund themselves adequately. However we have all witnessed what Educated Elitism can result it; Liberia (even though no one wants to admit to it: the Americo-Liberian and Indigenous Liberian situation), Rwanda and Burundi to mention a few. Yes the various coup d’états in Ghana have been politically driven, however we cannot dissociate the alienation of the then less educated Ghanaian from participation in governance and access to national resources of the country at that time as one of the leading factors. I digress again.

Recently I submitted an abstract to the up-coming Tertiary Education Managers Conference in Australia (September 2013). Though my abstract was not accepted for presentation, I am still thinking of completing the paper for a publication. My topic was on “BUDGETING TRENDS IN HIGHER EDUCATION IN GHANA, COMPARING PERFORMANCE (PROGRAMME) BUDGETING AND LINE-ITEM BUDGETING” I present excepts from my abstract below:

Governments are under pressure to evaluate their own performance. Information about public sector performance can satisfy the public’s need to know, and can be used to show that governments provide good value for money through their actions. Perhaps most important, performance information has the potential to help policy makers to make better budget and management decisions.

As countries develop and incomes begin to rise, public spending tends to shift towards infrastructure maintenance and social programs. The traditional Public Tertiary Education Institutions finance system in Ghana relied on block grant allocations to institutions.

Institutional development was therefore saddles with strict bottom-up budgeting approach, potential future fiscal risk, and operational inefficiency from managerial inflexibility often associated with traditional budgeting meant that innovation was stifled. In the periods following the 1966 coup to the 4th Republic in 1992, Tertiary institutions saw little if any marginal growth. Revolutionaries saddled with the problems of salvaging perceived and actual economic catastrophes, the Tertiary Institutions in Ghana were partially financed via the system of Block Grants. Following a return to democracy, policy makers recognized that Block Grants did not equip institutions to adequately respond to changing demographic profiles and their impact on spending, nor to the need for more intensive use of resources and greater accountability demanded in democratic societies. The challenge of providing tertiary education in Ghana today is not the same as that faced in past. Today the challenge is more in terms of strategic allocation of resources and equity of public spending, and greater efficiency in the use of public resources.

While there are many factors that influence government budgeting decisions, program performance is rapidly becoming a more significant factor. Knowing how well or poorly a program is performing based on a given budget helps resource managers make informed decisions about the allocation and reallocation of finite funds. The ability to make sound resource allocation decisions is increasingly important in a fiscally constrained environment.

Over the years, budgetary allocations and budgetary releases for Tertiary Education institutions have been on a trickle in basis, forcing most institutions to adopt Line-Item budgeting. It’s advantage of simplicity and attention to immediacy has kept Public Tertiary Institutions afloat for the past 30years if not more. In the face of this, evaluating and enforcing best practices amongst tertiary education institutions in Ghana is difficult as there is little if any holding power for the regulatory bodies (National Council for Tertiary Education, National Accreditation Board).

By tracking performance and expenditures of Tertiary Institutions, regulatory bodies can identify areas of challenged, sustained, or improved performance and make recommendations for increasing, decreasing, or maintaining resource levels. The integration of performance and budget also enables regulatory bodies to achieve set standards and norms targets for tertiary education. Thus, making informed choices in assigning resources to those areas that will optimize performance. While this integration process is a terrific managerial tool, the main benefit is that it provides the public with a clear and transparent means of seeing the fiscal stewardship practised by regulatory bodies of tertiary education.

My subsequent write up will seek a comparative analysis between Performance Budgeting and Line-Item Budgeting, in terms:

•           The impact of budgetary systems on Institutional Governance, Regulatory Bodies Coordination and Accountable responsibilities to stakeholders. The associated benefits of budgetary systems that have been adopted by the Ghana

•           Government for financing Tertiary Education, and their impact on innovation, research and development of Tertiary Education Institutions.

Kindly humor me. 

IS THERE DIVERSIFICATION AND DIFFERENTIATION IN GHANA’S EDUCATION??

Any discussion of diversity in higher and Tertiary Education would be incomplete without connecting the conversations to broader aims of the institutions. Universities are founded to pursue knowledge, provide knowledge to a select and willing populace (Students) within its community. In Ghana greater demands for and application of knowledge is touted to be the driving force for the expansion in the education sector.  Thus there is the need for more inclusive learning enrolment, where scholars and students develop and share their intellectual resources in more efficient and timely ways. Allen et al (2006) suggests that to attain diversity, educators need to assess continually the current landscape –success and challenges – as well as future possibilities for an educational institution. The caution here is that in order to forge a more effective tertiary institution, there is a need to model them on an inclusive learning community where policy settings that results in only short-term outcomes decoupled from holistic, long-term transformations are avoided.

The Stony Brook University emphatically point out that, in the development of programs, it would behove on the educator to first, develop an understanding of how different disciplines define, acquire, and organize knowledge; second, to enhance understanding of Ghanaian and non-Ghanaian cultures as well as their reciprocal influence on each other; third, to provide a basis for an examination of values; fourth, to develop analytic, synthetic, linguistic, computational, communication, and information-gathering skills useful for lifelong learning; and, finally, to provide a common foundation for wide-ranging dialogue with peers on issues of significance. Such considerations will encourage students to develop a critical and inquiring attitude, an appreciation of complexity and ambiguity, a tolerance for and empathy with persons and groups of different backgrounds or values, and a deepened sense of self. In short, the goal of the diversity in education is to prepare students to appreciate and be able to function effectively in an increasingly complex world.

Differentiated instruction is the backbone of good teaching. Although every child can benefit from this type of instruction, it is vital for students with learning disabilities. Differentiation can be done in both inclusive regular classrooms, collaborative classrooms, and special education classrooms. Appropriate instruction can ensure that a child is educated in the least restrictive environment necessary to implement her individual education program. Learn more about differentiated instruction.( Logsdon, 2008)

Differentiation happens in a heterogeneous classroom. In such a classroom, students are arranged according to the ability-appropriate assignments they receive at the end of the lesson. Theoretically, students even have some choice in the assignments they complete; they might select the assignment that appeals to their learning strengths and interests. In this best-of-all-worlds "differentiated" scenario, lower-ability students stand to benefit from learning sparks thrown off by higher-level students.(Fischer, 2004)

Having presented the reader with the above explanations on Diversification and Differentiation, I wonder if he/she can assertively identify any of its components in any of Ghana’s Educational Institutions.