The Students Loan Scheme is non-responsive to the real financial needs of tertiary candidates and students… Why?

The nature of the Ghanaian educational landscape has pushed many best students to become the “worst” because they can’t afford tertiary education fees due to financial constraints.

Some bright students end up being involved in what is described as social vice and growing wayward.
The disturbing feeling of such students is aroused when they see their bright future wilting under their eyes at the juncture where they are willing to uplift themselves but the willing power has been crippled.

The right investments yield the best outcome considering all playing factors.

According to the educationist, Mr. Kofi Asare building “responsive tertiary student bursaries and scholarship systems” will melt away the financial constraints challenges students talk about.

He stated that “A country that sits on gold, oil, bauxite, manganese, diamond, lithium, cannot be financing needy tertiary students through social media.”

Delving into admissions, financing it, and loans as support for needy students, Mr. Kofi Asare submitted explicitly that

Every year, many students from the two lowest income quintiles with household income below GHC 15k a year fail to honour tertiary admissions.

By next week, social media will be flooded as usual with needy candidates who have been offered admission without cash.

The Students Loan Scheme (SLS) should have provided support to prospective needy students who have been offered admission, by paying their admission and user fees to enable them to become students.

Unfortunately, the SLS is non-responsive to the real financial needs of tertiary candidates and students.

The average student loan of GHC 2,000/year can only finance the cost of tertiary education for two months-It costs about GHC 15k a year to study at tertiary.

The SLS is always in arrears dating into the past academic year. In 2023, over 30% of applicants, many of whom are poor could not have access due to inadequate funding. This is despite a guarantor-free SL policy introduced a year ago.

The SLS relies heavily on loan repayments, which stands at about 65%. Other sources of financing are GETFund and the Communications Service Tax; albeit irregular and paltry.

It is predicted that, when the first batch of the guarantor-free students graduate, and thereafter, repayments will gradually decline because of the unemployment situation viz an era of no SSNIT guarantors.

Under the guarantor-free policy, the loanee virtually does not start repaying the loan until they start working.

We must improve on secondary to tertiary transition. It is one of the targets we are set to miss if nothing radical happens to catalyze Gross Tertiary Enrolment from the current 18% to the target of 40% by 2030.

However, we cannot improve secondary-tertiary transition as a value addition to free SHS if the posture and financing mechanisms of the SLS is not recalibrated.

The SLS must be re-positioned to first support needy prospective tertiary students to become tertiary students; Pay economically responsive amounts as loans, disburse at the beginning and not after the academic year.

SOURCE: Coverghana.com.gh