Principal of the St. John Bosco’s College of Education Prof. Joseph Amikuzono wants tertiary education in Ghana to be made free.
Prof. Amikuzono believes making education at the tertiary level free of charge will increase access and help the country train quality human resources for its development.
“As to whether tertiary education should be free or not, I’d say yes, if we have the money, we can make tertiary education also free. Again, what’s the reason? Because we simply want to be able to produce quality human resources,” he stated.
Speaking in an interview on Breakfast Today on Dreamz FM, the academic argued that the country is capable of financing the education of every citizen from elementary to tertiary if it is committed to doing so.
Even if it will not be made entirely free, it is his wish that tuition fees for some essential courses will be absorbed to enable the training of the best of professionals for such fields.
“If it’s not even free for all the courses, at least, it should free for some essential courses. The disciplinaries that we really need urgently, I think we can make them tuition free so that people can come in there and be trained so that they can come out and help us develop”.
He added, “We simply have to restructure our budget and we put our money where our mouth is. So if our mouth is in building high quality human resources, let’s put our money there and let’s forget about the other things that we really do not need to invest in”.
But in implementing a no fee policy at that level, Prof. Amikuzono wants the country not to lose sight of other aspects of tertiary education including the provision of physical infrastructure.
Ghana, in 2017, began the implementation of free Senior High School education after more than two decades of introducing Free and Compulsory Universal Basic Education (FCUBE).
In recent times, there are talks around the possibility of extending the no fee policy to the tertiary level, with the two leading political parties promising to absorb fees for some categories of tertiary students.
Specifically, the National Democratic Congress, the leading opposition party, has pledged to absorbed academic fees for level 100 students while the governing New Patriotic Party is promising free tertiary education for Persons with Disabilities.
