Allegations that the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) awards scholarships based on political considerations have been debunked by the Fund’s administrator, Dr. Richard Ampofo Boadu.
He claims that the selection of recipients of the scholarships is based entirely on merit and that the procedure is very open and transparent.
In an open forum discussion hosted by the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences (GAAS) in Accra on the topic of “Financing Higher Education in Ghana: Implications for Equity and Sustainability,” Dr. Ampofo Boadu responded to a comment.
The project “Motivating Higher Education Reforms in Ghana – Towards Equity and Sustainability,” financed by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, included a series of seven policy dialogues, each of which was organized by the Academy.
The project’s objective is to give independent people and organizations a forum to address the continuous issues that the higher education industry faces.
The GETFund Administrator asked higher institutions to look into creative means of fund raising to supplement the assistance provided by the government.
He emphasized that finding additional sources of income is necessary since government money is insufficient to keep these organizations operating.
Kofi Asare, the executive director of Africa Education Watch, has suggested creating a scholarship authority to unite all of the nation’s scholarship providers.
“The reason we are not meeting our tertiary enrollment target is due to actual needy students not gaining scholarships into tertiary institutions. The scholarship system and rollouts should be reviewed.”
“We need a scholarship authority to manage all scholarships in the country and make scholarship rollouts more efficient and effective to help needy students and even prospective students enroll in tertiary institutions,” he added.