Counsellor and Educationist, Dr. Daniel Fenny has called on the government to prioritize job creation for tertiary students who are struggling to secure jobs after school rather than making university education free.
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has promised to ensure that Ghanaian students get access to free education in public universities.
He made this known at the Global Education Summit held in London on Thursday, July 29, 2021, adding that making tertiary education free would grant more people access to education just like the Free SHS programme.
However, Dr. Fenny thinks otherwise, he said the government should use that money to address the unemployment challenges in the country.
“Anytime we want to implement a policy in this country especially when the policy affects a group of people, like the free SHS affects students and the parents. What research do we conduct with the interested parties to know that, going forward our decision is informed by the parent? “When the free SHS was implemented in 2017, has the Ministry of Education gone to the schools to conduct a research to collect feedback from the students to know the challenges of the programme,” he quizzed.
“So if you sit somewhere and go like I have done free SHS so tomorrow I will bring free University, is it that you think people are happy about the current running of the free SHS” he said on Plan B FM ‘Nkosuo Nsem’ with Ohene Addo.
He added that, the country has the resources to fund free tertiary education, but rather we should use it to create jobs for the teeming youth who are struggling to secure jobs after leaving school.
He added that he knows a lot of people argue that Ghana does not have money to do all this things and quickly added that he believes the country has money to fund this free tertiary project.
“If you wake up every morning and you hear the amount of money that people are pocketing, corruption and issues about money in this country you will be surprised. Even the $100m going into the construction of the National Cathedral can fund tertiary education for three years. Therefore, I want to tell the government the problem of the University student is not the payment of fees, but employment; so they should use that money to create jobs. That is why I said they need to conduct a research to know the problem of the tertiary student. They should use the money to open companies in every region so the student will know that after school there is a job somewhere,” he concluded.
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