Should accommodation be a priority for political office seekers?
We are in the political season again and Ghanaian politicians are making a lot of promises as far as the education sector is concerned. From the provision of free SHS to of free school sandals, there seems to be a battle among politicians to win the hearts of stakeholders in education and those of the electorate with each presidential aspirant promising to do one thing or the other to enhance or ensure quality education in the country.
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As a stakeholder in education, I commend these politicians for their discernment to do so much to make education accessible and affordable to the ordinary Ghanaian. If these promises are genuinely implemented, they will go a long way to empower the citizens and bring about the needed national transformation and progression for the betterment of the entire populace.
Challenges with tertiary education
But while there is so much talk and promises about making basic and secondary education free and accessible, very little is heard about enhancing access to tertiary education in Ghana. In fact, even though the government is making efforts to expand tertiary education by establishing new universities and converting the existing polytechnics into technical universities, there are still a lot of factors that make tertiary education inaccessible and unaffordable to the ordinary Ghanaian. School fees in our nursing training colleges are unreasonably high (about GH¢ 5,000 a year), and a similar situation exists in the colleges of education. Our university and polytechnic students live in constant fear of being asked to pay astronomical utility bills and just recently, students of the University of Ghana had to agitate to avoid paying utility bills which were reported to be around Gh¢2,000.
Lack of accommodation
While there are many problems confronting quality education delivery in our tertiary institutions, I will like to narrow this discussion to the lack of accommodation which is adversely affecting the quality of education being provided in these institutions but seems not to be a matter of concern to policy makers.
I have seen a lot of GETFund -unded projects in many tertiary institutions across the country. From lecture theatres to students’ hostels, the attention seems to be focused on providing facilities that will create a congenial environment for the students to learn. Though this is commendable, the apparent neglect of the welfare of teaching and administrative staff in these tertiary institutions over the years as far as the provision of office and residential accommodation is concerned has created a very dire situation in our tertiary institutions.
Office accommodation is a major problem in many tertiary institutions in Ghana. The majority of lecturers in our polytechnics and new universities do not have offices. Even though the situation is better in the public or traditional universities, office accommodation remains a challenge. The workload in our universities is so much that many lecturers have more than three lecture periods in a day. If a lecturer without an office has to take three lectures in a day and the first lecture starts at 7:30 a.m and ends at 9:30 a.m, where does the lecturer stay to prepare for the rest of the lectures? Lecturers also serve as the first point of contact between students and the institutions. If a student has a problem and needs to see a lecturer for counselling or advice, where does the student meet the lecturer for that to take place?
Residential accommodation
The problem of accommodation is not just limited to offices. Residential accommodation for staff in tertiary institutions is also a major problem which needs to be addressed. Tertiary institutions such as the universities are there to create knowledge for the development of society. That knowledge is developed by the lecturers through research while the administrative staff create the needed environment for academic work to thrive. Many senior members in universities start their day as early as 3:00 a.m and some close as late as midnight. Because their work involves a lot of thinking and brain work, they need a quiet environment devoid of noise pollution and unnecessary distractions.
Unfortunately, majority of these members of staff do not and cannot have access to residential accommodation on their campuses due to the non-availability of these facilities. Many of them, therefore, rent accommodation in town and many of those accommodation facilities are located in environments that are very hostile to the work of these members of staff. Another problem with the town accommodation is that even with cash in hand, it is very difficult to come by decent accommodation and the few ones available are so expensive that their prices have compromised the allowance that these institutions pay to their staff as rent allowance.
Many senior members, therefore, have no choice but rent rooms in hostels occupied by their students. Can you imagine the situation where lecturers and their students meet at the end of every month to share the cost of electricity and water bills?
University products
With all these challenges confronting education delivery in our tertiary institutions, staff of these institutions, especially lecturers of Ghanaian universities, are lambasted and lampooned anytime a product of theirs failed to live up to expectation in the job market. So much is expected of our universities, but very little is given to them to meet that expectation. There is nothing wrong with criticising our tertiary institutions if they fail to fulfil the mandate for which they were set up but before those criticisms come, they should be provided with the basic facilities such as office and residential accommodation for their staff.
The writer is a lecturer at the
Department of Communication Studies
University of Cape Coast
Cape Coast