Editorial:Legon Sets The Pace

The University of Ghana (UG) Legon is setting up an endowment fund to address the impact of growth in areas such as finance, accommodation, curriculum development, governance and administration, that negatively affect the academic institute. The support received under the fund is expected to lessen the burden on the University in the recruiting, training and socialization of staff and students, and setting up and maintaining of standards, as well as examinations, and awarding of certificates. The Ghana News Agency (GNA) quoted Mr. Kofi Annan, Chancellor of the UG, at the second congregation of the university, which was held in Accra for 4,500 graduating students for the 2009/2010 academic year. Mr. Annan, a former United Nations (UN) Secretary General, called on all stakeholders in the education sector to support the endowment fund when it is launched, to address the challenges posed by the growth of the University. �If the problems of higher education can be reduced to the problem of growth, it will in turn reduce those of inadequate resources,� he stressed. The issue about the funding of tertiary education has been a major problem confronting this country. Whilst those who attended University in the 1960s and 70s had a whole room to themselves, and also had access to excellent facilities, the situation is not the same today. Students in state-funded universities are crammed into rooms as their sleeping place. At the various lecture theatres, students struggle to get seats to listen to lecturers. This development has been attributed to population explosion, and our failure as country to put up the needed facilities to match up with it. In an attempt to address this problem, the government introduced the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) to help raise funds to finance education infrastructure in the country. For close to ten years the GETFund has been in existence, the problem associated with infrastructure has still not been resolved. This is not to say that the GETFund is being misappropriated, no! That is not what we are trying to say here. What we want to drum home is the fact that it is still not adequate to solve problems of our tertiary institutions. It is based on this that The Chronicle welcomes, as good news, the report that Dr. Kofi Annan, Chancellor of the University of Ghana, has decided to set up an education endowment fund to help address some of the challenges facing the university. It is our hope that when the fund is finally launched, the alumni of the university, in and outside the country, would see it as an opportunity to contribute their quota towards the development of the university. It is also our conviction that other state universities would emulate the example that Legon is about to set, in order to help raise additional funds to solve some of their internal problems.