MORE QUALITY FOR LESS MONEY: THE CHALLENGE OF FUNDING TERTIARY EDUCATION IN GHANA SINCE 1992

Abstract

Growing competition for national and global employment has lately compelled Ghanaians to demand higher quality from tertiary institutions. In spite of this expectation, tertiary students, parents and other stakeholders are often reluctant to pay for this quality. Many of these stakeholders concede that quality comes at a cost but contend that the levels of user-fees demanded are outrageous having regard to the levels of remuneration in Ghana. This paper examines secondary data from Ghana on policy reforms aimed at improving quality in the educational sector since independence. Then a review of reforms specifically on the tertiary sector since 1992 follows. It examines the roles of bodies having oversight responsibility for the tertiary sector as well as survival strategies that tertiary institutions have adapted to regain public confidence in them and their relevance for national development. The paper concludes that past neglect of the pre-tertiary sector in providing learning aids and learning environments together with frequently imposed educational reforms produced certain deficiencies difficult for tertiary institutions to rectify with increasing under-funding in them as well. The paper recommends that the solution to the perceived falling standards lies in a manifested investment in the pre-tertiary and tertiary institutions as national priorities to regain public confidence in the performance capabilities of tertiary graduates.