A former Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana, Emeritus Professor Ivan Addae Mensah has defended the cost sharing policy at the University saying it saved the school from collapsing.
The policy ensures that students pay a portion of their tuition fees.
[contextly_sidebar id=”MRbIcVLuk1nIPA0Oqr6NSDibxPg2WctX”]Professor Addae Mensah, who was Chairman of the Committee of Vice Chancellors during the introduction of the policy, said public universities would have not survived about 10 years ago if government had not heeded to his proposal.
Even though many students in public universities at the time were not in favour of the policy, Professor Addae Mensah said it had largely contributed to making universities in the country autonomous.
“At the time I took over as Vice Chancellor, our internally generated funds were just about 1.5 percent of our total and by the time I was leaving, we were generating about 25 percent of our own funds”, he said.
He was speaking on the Time with the Legends segment on the Citi Breakfast Show on Thursday.
According to him about 97 percent of government’s subvention at the time was being used to pay salaries of university teachers and other workers, saying, “you cannot run a university with 3 percent of what government gives you. Somebody has to pay something from somewhere”.
So many years of after a successful implementation, Professor Addae Mensah said he was happy the policy was accepted.
“I presented my paper at the CVC meeting and it was overwhelmingly accepted. Some contributions have to be made by those who benefit from the service. Of course, we can’t charge in full what it cost to train one person. We did all the analysis showing how much it cost to train one student from the humanities all the way to medicine and engineering. We started with three percent, gradually it has increased”, he said.
Click below to listen to full interview:
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By: Eugenia Tenkorang/citifmonline.com/Ghana