UG’s 2% discount on fees inadequate – NUGS

The National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS) has described as inadequate the 2% discount on the 15% fee increment given to some students by the University of Ghana.

The Council of the University of Ghana has approved this one-time discount for some students for the 2022/2023 academic year.

The development was borne out of an impasse which occurred between UG Management, the National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS), and the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) over the 15% increase in fees.

Stakeholders and Parliamentary Select Committee on Education called on the University to consider offering a discount on fees to lessen the burden on students.

Reacting to this, the President of NUGS, Dennis Appiah Larbi-Ampofo, said the student body was expecting a 5 percent reduction. 

“The Union is not happy because we believe strongly that qw have made a strong case. At the time of the discussions, if my memory serves me right, we were expecting it to be dropped to 15% as the threshold had indicated. In our presentation to GTEC and Parliament, we were very clear that the justification of the fee by the University of Ghana was not something we could work with, purely because it went beyond the threshold. It was an open fact by everybody.”

“We were hoping that we would have had a minimum reduction of about 5 percent. Unfortunately, we have 2 percent to contend with. Going forward, we will scrutinise the communication that will come from GTEC as well so that they won’t tell us that the communication from GTEC wasn’t clear,” President of the National Union of Ghana Students noted on the Eyewitness News.

Meanwhile, a member of the Communications team of the University of Ghana, Professor Ransford Gyampo said the institution should rather be commended for the gesture. 

He said if NUGS is really interested in demanding a reduction in fees, it should also call on other universities in the country to learn from what the University of Ghana has done.

“If they are championing and articulating the interest of students in Ghana, then they should go to the other universities and make a similar appeal to them to reduce their fees by 2 percent. If they are not doing so, then I think they are not being fair to themselves and students,” Prof. Gyampo argued on Eyewitness News.

The discounts apply to full fee-paying programmes, programmes at the Accra City Campus and distance education programmes.