Ranking member of the Parliamentary select committee on education, Hon. Peter Kwasi Nortsu-Kotoe says the University of Ghana management cannot implement a 15% increment on fees that were not paid by students in previous academic years. The University of Ghana’s management decided in December 2022 to implement the 2019–2020 approved fees and later charge 15% on them after parliament approved the 2022–2023 fees.
Speaking to Univers News, Hon. Nortsu-Kotoe announced that the parliamentary committee has called on the Ghana Tertiary Education Committee (GTEC) to provide information on fees charged to students for the 2021, 2022, and 2023 academic years, to make recommendations which would be presented to the Speaker of Parliment.
The law does not have a retrospective effect. So, if you did not increase it last year, you cannot take advantage of that and increase it more than the approved percentage. We have asked the Ghana Tertiary Education Committee (GTEC) to provide us with information about how much the universities charged for the 2021 academic year and how much they are charging for the 2022–2023 academic year. They are yet to provide us with those things. This week we will be calling on them to do that to the committee secretariat, and they will study it and will make our recommendations to the speaker.
BACKGROUND:
Management of the University of Ghana has justified its position with its recent increment for both academic and residential user fees for the 2022–2023 academic year. In a communiqué posted by Univers News, management explains that in the 2019/2020 academic year, public universities, including the University of Ghana, were given approval by Parliament to increase their fees by 5% cumulatively based on the 2016/17 approved fees. However, university management decided to suspend the implementation of the new fees until 2020/2021 academic year. This was to spare students from a fee increase in the middle of the 2019–2020 academic year.
With the outbreak of COVID-19 in March 2020, coupled with its associated challenges, management accepted a plea from the student leadership (SRC and GRASAG) to further suspend the implementation of the parliamentary approved and gazetted fees until the years 2021-2022 academic year, and it is for this reason that the University of Ghana has adjusted fees for the 2022-2023 academic year upwards by 15% based on the gazetted approved fees for the 2019-2020 academic year.
Story Written By: Kuuku Osei Baidoo
