NCTE asks universities to maintain 2016/17 fees for now
All public tertiary institutions have been directed to stick to their 2016/2017 academic year’s fees while waiting for Parliament to reconvene to consider and approve their 2017/2018 academic fees.
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The directive is to ensure that the reopening for the 2017/18 academic year is not unduly affected because of the delay in the approval of the fees and other charges.
In an interview in Accra yesterday, the Executive Secretary of the National Council for Tertiary Education (NCTE), Professor Mohammed Salifu, said the universities that had submitted their proposed fees for consideration and approval by Parliament were Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), University of Cape Coast (UCC), University of Health and Allied Sciences (UHAS), University of Energy and Natural Resources and University for Development Studies (UDS).
The rest are University of Mines and Technology (UMaT), University of Education, Winneba (UEW), University of Ghana and University of Professional Studies (UPSA).
Fees and Charges Act
The Fees and Charges Act 2009 (Act 793) mandates all heads of public tertiary institutions to submit their proposed fees and charges to Parliament for consideration and approval.
However, the heads over the years had resorted to fixing fees and other levies without recourse to the law.
The Fees and Charges Act 2009 (Act 793), which was amended by a legislative instrument (LI2228) 2016, sought to safeguard the public against arbitrary and haphazard charges and levying of students by universities.
Parliament on recess
Prof. Salifu explained that even though almost all the public tertiary institutions had submitted their proposed fees, “we still have to wait for a while because Parliament is currently on recess”.
He explained that the situation was what informed the decision to advise the public institutions to stick to their last year’s fees in order not to delay the reopening for the 2017/18 academic year.
Technical universities
For the technical universities, he said only three had so far submitted their proposed fees and listed them as Kumasi, Cape Coast and Tamale Technical universities.
Referring to the specialised institutions, Prof. Salifu said those that had submitted their proposed fees were the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), Ghana Institute of Journalism (GIJ) and Ghana Institute of Languages (GIL).
In addition, he said all colleges of education had submitted their proposals.
Law was unknown
Prof. Salifu explained that this was the first time the tertiary institutions had submitted their proposed academic year’s fees for parliamentary approval.
Most of the heads of institutions were unaware of the Act mandating them to submit their fees, Prof. Salifu expanded, adding that the vice chancellors had assumed previously that approvals by the various councils was sufficient.
“It was felt that since these institutions were all created by various Acts of Parliament, the parliamentary approval was implicit in the authority given to the councils,” he stated.
He said all the submitted proposals were with the Ministry of Education, ready for submission to Parliament.