Prioritising support for needy students

Education is the bedrock of any society. It helps to shape and form the character of the youth to grow to become responsible adults.

Although parents have a major role to play in their children’s character formation at a certain age, education is a major influence on the socialisation of many people. 

No doubt the educational budget of all governments, even including advanced countries, is very high.

In Ghana, we have the Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education (FCUBE) programme that is supposed to compel all parents to send their children of school age to school.

Various institutions, such as the churches, corporate and voluntary organisations, have instituted interventions to provide scholarships for brilliant, needy students to pursue further education.

But these interventions are not enough to take care of the educational needs of the teeming youth, most of whom drop out at the secondary school level. 

Admittedly, there is a phenomenal growth in access to education at all levels in the country. The only level where there is some kind of limitation by way of support by the private sector is the second-cycle level where there are few private senior high schools.

Even with the expansion at the tertiary level, quite a large number of students are unable to gain admission to the universities. Besides access, there is also the question of cost, with many parents unable to foot the bills. 

In the 1970s, the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) Students Loan Scheme was introduced to provide for the needs of those in need of financial support to pursue tertiary education.

After many years of implementation, the SSNIT Loan Scheme was inundated with a poor repayment regime, such that it became difficult to sustain the programme.

The government, in an attempt to save SSNIT from the debt overhang, established the Students Loan Trust Fund (SLTF), whose sole mandate is to give loans to students to pursue tertiary education and also monitor the students after a period to recoup the investment.

Unfortunately, it appears the same “virus” of non-repayment of the loans that afflicted the SSNIT loan scheme has affected the SLTF.

The Daily Graphic of yesterday disclosed that over 35,000 beneficiaries of the scheme owe the fund GHc78 million, with some of the people taking the loans as far back as 2005. 

The Daily Graphic’s concern has always been the scope of these loan schemes. We think that instead of opening up the scheme to all students, numbering about 350,000, it will be more prudent to identify the needs of students and extend the loans to those who are in need.

If the loans are targeted at the needy, we think the bureaucracy in managing the scheme will be reduced and the efficiency of the SLTF will be enhanced.