UG City Campus SRC wants subsidies on fees
Students of the University of Ghana-Accra City Campus (UG-ACC) have called on the government to, as a matter of urgency, subsidise the fees they pay each academic year.
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According to them, the fees paid by each student were increasingly becoming exorbitant, resulting in a high rate of deferment and drop-out by students.
The call was made by the Students’ Representative Council (SRC) President of the UG-ACC, Mr Andrew Adjei, while addressing fresh students for the 2014/2015 academic year in Accra.
Establishment of the UG-ACC
Established in 1962, the University of Ghana-Accra City Campus, known then as the Workers College, was to enable workers to improve their intellectual capacity and enhance their careers their through formal education.
The establishment of the City Campus made it easier and convenient for workers who could not attend lectures regularly on the Legon campus to do so at the city campus but on fee-paying basis.
However, Mr Adjei explained that the reason for the establishment of the college had died out, since majority of regular students on the Legon campus were also now admitted to the city campus by the university authorities due to what he described as unbearable pressure on the main campus.
“As of now, over 95 per cent of the students on the UG-ACC are non-workers. This emphatically shows that the motive for establishing this campus has been defeated, thus, the profile of students at UG-ACC has totally changed, hence, the need to change the fee-paying status,” he stressed.
Fees paid in each academic year
He added that in the 2012/2013 academic year, students admitted to offer degree programmes paid GH¢1,366 and GH¢1, 715 for Humanities and Administration respectively, while diploma students paid GH¢851 and GH¢1,025 also for Humanities and Administration respectively.
In the 2013/2014 academic year, he said students paid GH¢1, 614 and GH¢1,981 for degree programmes in Humanities and Administration respectively, while diploma students also paid GH¢1,073 and GH¢1,253 for Humanities and Administration respectively.
UG-ACC students sidelined
He said the large margin between the fees paid by students of UG-ACC and those on the Legon campus, proved that those at the UG-ACC had been marginalised, describing that as an unfair treatment on the part of university authorities.
Difficulty in getting accommodation
The SRC President said currently students on the city campus are being admitted from the various regions of the country, some of whom do not know Accra very well or have any relatives in Accra, adding that “students have been deprived of accommodation facilities on the city campus and left to their fate.”