The government of President Nana Akufo-Addo is set to provide relief to tertiary students with the official launch of the ‘No Guarantor’ for students’ loan policy.
Effective this school year, all eligible tertiary students can access loans by submitting their Ghana Card to the Students Loan Trust Fund (SLTF).
The policy builds on government’s comprehensive programme of expanding educational opportunities for the youth and this is a critical first step to ensuring cost is not a barrier to access and participation in tertiary education.
Launching the policy at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi, Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia said students can now go through education from basic to tertiary with guaranteed support from government.
“This was a promise by Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to the young people of this country, and it is gratifying to announce the fulfilment of this promise today,” he stated.
Opportunities for youth
Vice President Bawumia explained that whilst government expands opportunities for young people to acquire skills and become productive citizens, beneficiaries also have the responsibility of ensuring the optimal utilisation of these opportunities.
One of the major obstacles for students who needed to access loans was the need for them to produce a guarantor.
Many do not want to risk putting their pension at risk by vouching for students who apply for the loans, hence the need to take that requirement off.
Only 10% of tertiary students are able to apply for the loan because the current guaranteed scheme is making it difficult for them to apply for the loan.
Benefits to students
The ‘No Guarantor’ policy removes the requirement for student loan applicants to produce a guarantor before accessing the loan.
Students loan beneficiaries are expected to increase from 10% to 60% when the ‘No Guarantor’ policy takes effect this academic year.
Unlike the current system that guarantors are not ready to sacrifice their pension, the ‘No Guarantor’ policy students will only provide a national ID card (Ghana Card) for the loan.
Ghana’s current tertiary Gross Enrolment Ratio of 20% compares unfavourably to 96% in South Korea, 91% in Singapore, 55% in Brazil, 44% in Mauritius and 43% in Malaysia.
Barrier to education
Vice President Bawumia disclosed that evidence shows that the guarantor requirement posed a barrier to access.
In respect of the 2015/16 academic year, he said a paltry 8.6% of the eligible students whose details were submitted by all the tertiary institutions provided guarantors and accordingly accessed loans.
Similarly, he stated that only 8.4% of eligible students were able to access loans in 2016/2017.
For the 2017/18, only 9.8% of the eligible students whose details were submitted by all the tertiary institutions on the student loans portfolio accessed the loan.
Further, in the 2018/2019 academic year, 42% of the 7,552 loan applicants could not submit their completed forms because of difficulty finding eligible guarantors.
Out of the 325,000 eligible students whose details were submitted by all the tertiary institutions on the student loans portfolio, only 9.6% were able to access the loan in the 2019/20 academic year.
Manifesto promise
Vice President Bawumia reminded the general public that the NPP promised to remove the guarantor requirement as a condition for loan access in the 2020 manifesto.
In fulfilment of this promise, the Vice-President said the government has revised the policy; hence, tertiary students will not have to present a guarantor in order to access student loans.
NPP, he stressed, believes in the political and social ideology, which supports every individual in developing and using their abilities to the fullest extent possible.
According to him, the governing party believes that to achieve national developmental agenda of ‘Ghana Beyond Aid’, the need to re-engineer the educational system to produce the necessary human resource base is paramount.
He explained that though Ghana has had a remarkable track record of pursuing human capital development initiatives, the country is witnessing an increasing order of these initiatives that are more inclusive under President Nana Akufo-Addo.
Expansion of education facilities
Vice President Bawumia stated that government has continued to make it a priority since 2017 to expand tertiary education opportunities, implement policy initiatives and reforms in tertiary education, and support all able youth in acquiring important skills.
“Indeed, President Akufo-Addo’s government has proven a demonstrable commitment to building the human capital base of the country and providing educational opportunities for every Ghanaian irrespective of economic status.
“Our commitment as a government is to ensure that every Ghanaian can go to school from primary through to university with cost not posing as a barrier,” he stressed.
Dr Bawumia said this desire and political will and commitment to remove barriers to quality education and make it all inclusive and accessible to all Ghanaians – rich or poor, rural or urban – is a hallmark of the NPP.
The Vice-President said the overall tertiary education agenda has been to increase equitable access to high-quality tertiary education for all citizens by providing relevant courses and researches to young adults within colleges of education, technical universities and mainstream traditional universities.
Removing cost barriers
Vice President Bawumia also touched on the removal of cost to tertiary education which includes restoring the payment of teacher trainee allowance, increasing the student loan amount by 50% in 2017, among others.
In addition to removing cost barriers, he said government also prioritised investments to expand the capacity of tertiary education where the University for Development Studies (UDS) has been split into three autonomous universities as well as added C K Tedam University of Technology and Applied Sciences and S D Dombo University of Business and Integrated Studies.
