Privatization of accommodation in public universities is perilous

The University of Ghana Hostels with a capacity of 26000 beds, which was to be built at the University of Ghana, Legon, with partnership between the university and six banks was a dream come alive as long as finding a solution to the perennial problem of accommodation in our public universities is concerned; this was an assertion made by Prof Tagoe, Vice Chancellor of the university of Ghana.

My search for the authenticity of this assertion was fuelled by the significant relief that students and for that matter Ghanaians would experience should the proclamation of a dream come alive be true. After sixteen weeks of research and appraisal of the assertion of a dream come alive, I stand to reckon that it is not enough for university professors, politicians or student leaders to say that our public universities are affordable just because the academic and auxiliary fees published in the newspapers are affordable compared to other private institutions. University fees mentioned remain incomplete until the accommodation component is also let known. The fashion these day s is the university authorities publishing the academic user fees and calling them school fees to create the impression that once you can afford the academic user fees which in most cases is affordable, your finances can manage one academic year. This is not the case at all since after having paid the academic user fees which range between 1.5-4 million, one has to now find means of paying for accommodation ranging between 3-9million for private hostels within and without campus premises With the infamous in out out out policy now having gained national orientation, only first year students are accommodated in our public universities. This means should you consider the average of 3million cedis academic and auxiliary fees and 1.5 million cedis residential facility user fee totaling about 4.5million cedis for one academic year, one might be tempted to believe from the word go that university education in public universities is for all and not the privileged. This impression is very deceptive and misleading since no university degree is completed in a year; a statement reminding us of the fact that there are three more challenging years to be endured outside the halls of residence as stipulated by the in out out out policy. With 99% of the hostel structures in and out of campus charging an average of 5 million cedis, coupled with academic user fees of 3 million, the outstanding three years of university education in the hostels costs an average of 8 million per academic year. Books, photocopies, and food would bring the total cost to an average of 15 million per academic year. This is the gospel truth, this is the reality, and I believe strongly that it is about time we revisited the cost of education in our public universities knowing too well that it is not only the academic user fees that determine the affordability of public university education but that the cost of accommodation can make the ordinary Ghanaian with a gifted brain eschew public university admission forms .This phenomenon of privatization of accommodation in public universities is so worrying since it raises the cost of each academic year thereby making our public universities pseudo private institutions when compared to other private institutions like Ashesi university where an average of two thousand dollars is charged for academic user fees and five hundred dollars for accommodation . If the cost of university education per year in a private institution like Ashesi university costs 30 million and that of Kwame Nkrumah University of Science Technology (KNUST) costs 15 million, where in lies the so called public fa?ade of KNUST. If one can afford 15 million a year, obviously such a person stands a higher chance of affording 30 million a year and might as well go to Ashesi so he or she would be certain of paying fully for the cost of tertiary education without the rhetoric of governmental support. With the scanty residential facilities being responsible for the rising cost of university education in our public universities, one might expect our university authorities to start thinking ways of adding some halls to the already existing ones even if not accommodating enough to take all the 25 thousand students featured in each university register.

Since August 1961 when KNUST attained its university status till date, only six halls of residence have been built. Interestingly all these halls were built between 1959 and 1968 by the CPP government led by Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah. Six halls, each with the capacity to admit about 1200 students were built in less than a decade at a time when the total student population could be housed by just one of the six halls or at most two of the halls. Nkrumah didn?t build just lecture theatres leaving the provision of housing facilities to a few who were rich by then to privatise housing in the public universities so as to further consolidate the wealth of the wealthy. In fact Nkrumah didn?t just accommodate all student but through credible and visionary outlook , thought of those of us yet unborn so that we too, the not too privileged but talented could access the halls and afford tertiary education. The lectures who existed about 50 years ago, very much unlike the ones we have today, did not start going into the business of raising private hostels to exploit students and enrich themselves all in the name of helping government remedy the accommodation problem but rather used their intellectual prowess and PhD acumen to impress the then government of the need to build more halls that could not only take care of the existing generation but also of generations yet unborn. KNUST, led by the late Prof Andam went for a loan facility from Ecobank for the erection of a residential facility tagged hall seven .

The banks were asking for close to 500 million a year in servicing the loan, an amount which the university tried to raise by charging an average of four million without success, ultimately resulting unsurprisingly in a takeover by the GUSS chain of hostels, a chain of hostels located in the heart of campus, funded by lecturers who should have been impressing upon government to expand residential facilities, and not only that but also managed right from the KNUST administration block. The circumstances that I endured in the university as an ordinary Ghanaian student with formidable talent were so challenging, humbling and demoralizing that failure to articulate this collective plight so as to remind us all of its existence and need to consciously remedy it would be overwhelmingly devastating to the future of this country.

Honestly, it is difficult to survive this accommodation quagmire and still feel a sense of patriotism after graduation and this is a major factor accounting for the mass exodus of our pool of talents as well as the absence of a sense of allegiance to this country in most of the university graduates of today. The absence of a sense of allegiance to Ghana in most university graduates of today and an insatiable craving for travelling outside Ghana right after school after having tasted the frustrating financial conditions in our university coupled with the threat of perennial frustration of the attempts of tens of thousands of ordinary Ghanaian students to experience university education in this era of intimidating accommodation prices obviously make the current accommodation situation in our public universities a priority case that warrants an immediate, empirical, intuitive, sustainable governmental intervention and not the absolute, unmitigated, profit motivated, self center d, student insensitive inputs of private hostel developers

I am convinced that if the condition persisting at the castle was so disgraceful that 35 million dollars could be secured in the form of a grant by the Ghana government for a presidential palace, the squalor that reigns vis a vis residential facilities on our university campuses, stand a better chance of attracting millions of dollars from our foreign benefactors for affordable residential facilities in our public universities.

I remain inclined to the thought that if just a quarter of the zeal and fervor and above all will shown by government in raising two entirely new stadia within 24 months is channeled into residential infrastructure, we could realize at least one hall every five years in each of the five major public universities in Ghana. If the university of Ghana and KNUST, each, sells about 20000 university admission forms each costing about 500,000, and still cannot raise at least one hall of residence when salaries to its lectures are paid by government, I comfortably and consciously pitch camp with those calling for serious auditing and declaration of gross income made by our public universities against their expenditure.

The six halls in KNUST bag an average of seven billion cedis from charging residential facility user fees, with an average of 3 billion being used in the running of the residential facility yearly. With such a fact very much at the disposal of many apart from me who have been in the university and been part of administration at the student level and hall realm, I have every reason to believe that the outstanding four billion which remains vis a vis running of the halls could be used to raise at least one hall every seven years. It is true that private participation in accommodation is necessary in finding a therapeutic regime for the cancer of accommodation plaguing our public universities; on a similar scale, it is blatantly untrue and flagrantly dishonest, the impression being created by authorities of our public universities that total private participation without any governmental intervention and or institutional augmentation of already existing university residential facility is the key to unraveling the puzzle surrounding accommodation in public universities. Total government provision of residential facilities for Ghanaian students is an unrealistic demand, and that, we the students don?t expect but at least an augmentation of residential facilities on public universities is genuinely not impossible .A request which is fair by every measure considering the fact that recent governments have augmented academic user facilities tremendously. As long as we continue to live under the shadow of the truth that the university of Ghana hostels can be afforded by a privileged few and would gradually make ordinary Ghanaian students with tremendous talent shy away from university education, our quest to label uncontrolled privatization as ?the birth of a novel doom rather than a dream come alive?, would remain unabated and uncompromised. It is about time we realized that until the majority of Ghanaians who remain unenlightened, unpolished and devoid of the brightness that comes with tertiary education are saved with the creation of a just and affordable educational system, the few elite and polished ones cannot be rescued from the threat of an atomic bomb fashioned with the ignorance, frustrations, discontentment, disenchantments and indignation of the bulk of the Ghanaian public.

BERNARD,OKOE BOYE
dragadra@yahoo.co.uk KNUST-SRC VICE PRESIDENT, 2005. SMS, KATH. KUMASI

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