Professor David Millar, immediate past Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University for Development Studies, said government’s decision to bring private universities into the tax net would marginalise students from the three northern regions.
The Youth Institute for Democratic Initiative (YIDI -Ghana) humbly calls on Government to restore the tax exempt status of private universities in the country. Considering the inability of public universities to admit the ever increasing number of Senior High School graduates annually, private universities serve as the only hope and option for thousands of Senior High School graduates who are unable to attend public universities due to inadequate number of facilities at public universities.
The President of the Catholic Institute of Business and Technology (CIBT), Very Reverend Jonathan Ankrah, says private universities should be seen as major contributors to national development rather than money-making ventures.
Education in Nigeria is nothing to write home about. The present standard is at its lowest level. Good enough, the Christian private universities have contributed, in no small measure, to the raising of the standard. However, we should ask ourselves if these private universities are meeting the needs of those who really want to acquire qualitative education but are limited financially?
At the first graduation of 45 pioneers in Bachelor of Science degree, Business Administration; Bachelor of Science degree in Public Administration; Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science and of course Bachelor of Arts, Study of Religion and Church Administration, the Vice-Chancellor of the Catholic Institute of Business and Technology (CIBT) Monsignor Dr. Jonathan Thomas Ankrah patriotically paddled into the debatable debate surrounding the role of private universities in Ghana.
In 1999, only two private universities existed in Ghana. Now the country’s National Accreditation Board lists 43 private institutions offering degree programs, and most are Ghanaian-owned.
The Chairman of the Conference of Heads of Private Universities, Prof Kwesi Yankah, has called on government to take a second look at the imposition of tax on Private Universities.
The advent of private universities in Nigeria was considered a welcome development for the simple reason that the public universities had become anything but centres for excellence. Aside the endless strikes by the lecturers and the non-academic staff which sometimes lasted as long as one academic session, the neglect of federal and state universities by successive governments has also resulted in a situation in which students of these universities were never certain as to the number of years they would spend for their degrees.