At a campus that has known many demonstrations over the years, several hundred university and secondary students packed a lecture hall at the University of Ghana on 2 May, clenched fists pumping in the air. Instead of the customary anti-government slogans, the student leaders called out, "Support the fund!" The crowd repeatedly responded with a chorus of, "Invest in education!" They then set off on a march and motorcade through the streets of the capital to solicit broader public backing for the Ghana Education Trust Fund.
The fund, currently under consideration by Parliament, is one innovative response to the financial strains afflicting Ghana's schools, from the primary level up through the universities. It has become patently clear to many Ghanaians that the government, despite significant budgetary allocations, simply cannot keep up with the rising costs of education or the growing public demand for more schools, of better quality.
How to pay for education has been a politically sensitive issue in Ghana,
especially at the universities, where students are well-organized and are
accustomed to free tuition. In late 1999 students briefly went on strike
to protest rising "user fees," the charges that university administrations
levy on students for accommodations, meals and use of laboratories and libraries.
The University of Ghana, Legon, just on the edge of Accra, is the country's pride. Founded a half-century ago, it has produced many outstanding scholars and leaders, some known across the continent and internationally. But while Legon remains in relatively better condition than many campuses in Africa, it too is feeling the strains: classrooms and dorms are overcrowded, the libraries have few new books or journals, laboratories lack essential equipment, and the faculty is poorly paid.
The government faces difficult choices. Since 1992, the constitution mandates free and compulsory basic education for all. With about 30 per cent of Ghanaian children still unable to attend primary school, this means that more of the education budget must shift to lower-level schools. As a result, "there is not much left to go around," notes Deputy Minister of Education Mohamed Ibn Chambass, who is responsible for higher education.
"The moral issue is very sharp," Mr. Chambass told Africa Recovery. "Do you spend more money to increase the education of those who are privileged enough to have primary, secondary, and now tertiary education? Or do you limit funding at the tertiary level and concentrate on getting the 30 per cent enrolled, who would otherwise be condemned to illiteracy?" At the same time, he added, "we know that higher education has such a great impact on the process of growth and development, that we should not minimize its importance."
Higher education is essential if Ghana and other African countries are ever to solve their problems of food security, health, good governance and other developmental priorities, adds Mr. George Benneh, a former vice-chancellor of the University of Ghana and currently chairman of the National Council for Tertiary Education (NCTE). "Unless we have well-trained, skilled people from our universities and science and technology institutes, Africa will continue to depend on outsiders," he says.
According to NCTE enrolment figures, the universities' financial constraints have been compounded by a sharp rise in the number of students over the past decade, a veritable "massification of student intake," as Mr. Benneh calls it. This increase reflects in part the growing population of secondary-school graduates, many of whom would like to go on to the tertiary level.
In the 1990/91 academic year, Ghana's three existing universities (University
of Ghana, University of Science and Technology in Kumasi and University
of Cape Coast) had a total student enrolment of 9,997. By 1998/99, their
combined student population had rocketed up to 26,394. In addition, the
new University College of Education in Winneba and the University of Development
Studies in Tamale, in the north, had another 5,107 students, bringing the
overall total to 31,501 (see graph, next page). Despite this increase, notes
Mr. Chambass, the universities still can admit only 25-30 per cent of those
who qualify, even with very strict admissions standards.
Beyond some cosmetic improvements, the universities' infrastructures have not appreciably expanded over the same period. This has brought deteriorating conditions and quality, with too few facilities and faculty to handle the larger student body. Just to meet basic maintenance costs, much less any expansion, the universities have been obliged to increase various student charges.
Many students acknowledge the need for such charges, but bristle at their rising levels, arguing that those from poorer families are finding it difficult to meet the expense. While they accept "cost sharing" in principle, they insist that the government and other sources assume the lion's share.
Mr. Emmanuel Adjei Domson, president of the National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS), believes that part of the problem lies with the economic policies prescribed by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). The government, he told a high-level National Education Forum in November 1999, has failed to sufficiently fund education "just to meet and satisfy World Bank and IMF conditionalities" limiting public expenditures. He asserted that higher education is "a public asset for the public good," and that "education is not a commercial commodity but a social service and should never be operated on the principles and assumptions of market fundamentalism."
To help generate new financing for education, the NUGS had proposed for several years that a special trust fund be established. In January 1999 President Jerry Rawlings incorporated the proposal into his annual address to Parliament, and a technical committee subsequently recommended its broad outlines. Parliament currently is negotiating the specifics of the Ghana Education Trust Fund, designed to raise about 200 bn cedis ($54 mn) in additional educational financing annually.
How the fund's resources will be raised and allocated are not yet finalized, and certain aspects are controversial. Some have proposed raising the current 10 per cent value-added tax (VAT) by another 2 per cent, with half the additional amount going to the fund. A VAT increase, however, will likely be unpopular with the general public. The NUGS, while supporting the fund overall, has dissociated itself from the tax-increase proposal, suggesting instead that 1 per cent of the existing VAT be reallocated to education.
Less controversially, some have proposed new taxes on alcohol, tobacco, entertainment, hotels and other activities, levies on business earnings, an "educational lottery," and voluntary contributions, from individuals, churches, corporations, alumni associations and local communities.
Prominent individuals in Ghana's three impoverished northern regions, where enrolment is especially low, are organizing a comparable fund to benefit students in and from the north. Numerous local government assemblies are putting together scholarship programmes for particularly needy or disadvantaged students.
Only part of the national fund will go toward the universities. The Ministry of Education has proposed that 40 per cent of the fund's resources be allocated to basic education, with the remainder divided evenly between secondary and tertiary institutions. Parliament, however, may decide to alter the formula.
The government may be keen to use the trust fund to bail out the student loan scheme, which has accumulated a large debt due to unpaid loans (in part because university graduates have had a hard time finding suitable jobs). But many Ghanaian educators would prefer that a significant portion of the fund be used to upgrade infrastructure and hire more faculty.
Whatever the precise outcome, the process of launching the fund has set off a national dialogue over education financing. It is not limited to parliamentarians and government officials alone, but involves the NUGS and other student organizations, teachers' unions, school administrators and countless individuals concerned about the state of Ghana's schools. Women educators have used the opportunity to press for ways to improve female enrolment and performance rates, including at the senior secondary and university levels.
Mr. Abednego Kofi Agyepong, the Greater Accra regional chairman of the Ghana National Association of Teachers, sees this heightened public interest as one of the fund's most positive features: "The creation of awareness is a step in the right direction."
Since 1987, donors have contributed $65 mn to tertiary education in Ghana, including $45 mn from the World Bank for its 1993-98 Tertiary Education Project.
The World Bank, which currently has no active higher education undertaking in Ghana, judged its earlier project as only "marginally satisfactory." In its view, university enrolments grew too rapidly, without commensurate attention to sustainable funding mechanisms or a "coherent" overall programme beyond basic education. The latter criticism is shared by some Ghanaian experts. Ghana very much needs an overarching "master plan" for education which integrates its different components, argues Mr. Baffour Agyeman-Duah, associate executive director of the Centre for Democracy and Development, a non-governmental thinktank.
Once a "credible programme
to provide good quality higher education at a sustainable cost" is
in place, says Ms. Janet Leno, the World Bank's senior education specialist
in Accra, "donors will be more than glad to come in to support this
important effort."
Not all donors, however. Some officials have tended to question the value of higher education in Africa, stressing basic education instead. Such a simple counterposition stirs anger in Accra.
Ghanaians should be able to develop their talents to "the highest level," says Mr. Joseph Abbey, executive director of the Centre for Policy Analysis, a respected development policy research body. "Why should we, in sports, be able to compete with the best in the world, but when it comes to developing other talents, somebody says that it is inappropriate?" He wondered whether donors wanted Africa to remain dependent on foreign technical assistance, thus ensuring continued jobs for their own nationals.
Addressing the donors "who think that what is good for Africa is
only basic education," Mr. Benneh asked in similar terms: "Do
you want Africans to be just hewers of wood and drawers of water, or to
advance?" Given Africa's development needs and the rapidly evolving
world economy, he concluded, "We need higher education to move into
the new era."
