Current first- and second-year senior high school students will have a hard time accessing tertiary education from the year 2020 when they would have qualified to enter.
This is because the tertiary institutions currently do not have the capacity to absorb the would-be graduates whose numbers have shot up significantly following the implementation of the free senior high school policy by the government.
About 430,000 students gained admission into senior high schools in 2018/2019, 90,000 more than the previous year, according to the Education Ministry.
Even at that level, the Ministry of Education has had to introduce the multi-track system to ease the pressure that most of the schools went through in the 2017/2018 academic year when the free SHS policy took off.
Speaking Tuesday November 27, at a Joy FM public forum, Scorecard to assess almost two years of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) administration, Head of the Department of Economics at the University of Ghana, Prof. Peter Quartey, emphasises the urgent need for the government to invest in expansion projects at the tertiary level.
The Professor of Economics at the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER) puts it bluntly, the universities currently do not have the capacity to let in those who will meet the minimum entry qualifications.
Prof. Peter Quartey says tertiary institutions do not have the capacity to absorb the expected huge number of students who will qualify to enter the universities from 2020.
In 2014/2015 academic year, students enrolled in both public and private tertiary institutions in the country were 319,659. This figure is likely to rise by three-folds prompting Prof. Quartey to alert the government not to wait “till [free SHS graduates] get to the university” before they begin to look for solutions.
Because it will not work, he cautioned.
“Let us start planning ahead because the numbers have doubled [and] the universities don’t have the capacities,” the Professor suggested.
Professor Ernest Aryeetey was Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana in 2015.
In 2015, the University of Ghana with capacity reportedly turned away over 17,000 Ghanaian students who applied to pursue various programmes. The decision was mainly due to the limited number of facilities and staff in the school among other factors.
Prof. Quartey further cited for instance last year, when parents of some 11,000 first-year students who gained admission into the country’s premier university have had to compete for only 3,000 beds, a development he said was “very frustrating.”
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