Special Issue: Considering the global-local relationship in education
Policy Futures in Education
2023, Vol. 0(0) 1–20
Examination of globalisation’s clouts © The Author(s) 2023
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on Ghana’s tertiary education policy sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/14782103231184284
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Fred Kofi Boateng and Usman Abonyi
Educational Studies and Leadership Department, University of Ghana, Legon, Accra, Ghana
Emmanuel Intsiful
University of Tasmania, Hobart, AU-TAS, Australia
Abstract
The paper examined and analysed the extent globalisation and its dimensions impinged Ghana’s
tertiary education policy landscape in global and national historical and contemporary perspectives.
Historical and contemporary policy documents and articles, that help to understand how glob-
alisation and its antecedents have interwoven and permeated the dynamics underpinning Ghana’s
tertiary education policy, were used as conduits for the analysis. Within the context of structural
adjustment and democratisation juggernauts triggered by the West, neoliberal reforms were
initiated in the early 1990s. They were characterised by the liberalisation of the sector for the
establishment of private tertiary education institutions, creation of buffer agencies to ensure ef-
fective stakeholder control in policy and quality assurance of those institutions, initiating laissez-faire
financial reforms and incorporating non-governmental financial responsibility. Nonetheless, they
concomitantly spurred the tertiary education institutions to drift towards entrepreneurialism and
innovation through activities such as research, fee policies and collaborations with vital stake-
holders. Although the reforms were geared towards market, the Ghanaian system of tertiary
education remains a quasi-market system with substantial governmental control.
Keywords
globalisation, reforms, tertiary education, market, government
Introduction
Reorganised in the 1990s through reforms, Ghana’s tertiary education1 system is remarkably in-
stitutionally differentiated. It is composed of private and public universities including technical
universities, colleges of education and agriculture, nursing training colleges, seminaries and tutorial
Corresponding author:
Fred Kofi Boateng, Educational Studies and Leadership Department, University of Ghana, P.O. Box, LG 1181, Accra,
Legon, Ghana.
Email: fboateng@ug.edu.gh
2 Policy Futures in Education 0(0)
colleges and regulated by the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC). The juggernaut of
globalisation can be argued as the force that, among other factors, precipitated the tertiary education
reforms and their aftermath.
This paper examines and analyses the extent globalisation and its dimensions impinged Ghana’s
tertiary education policy landscape in global and national historical and contemporary perspectives.
With regards to structure, the paper foremost discusses globalisation and higher education, followed
by a presentation of the historical context of Ghana’s tertiary education and the creation of buffer
agencies within the Ghanaian tertiary education space. It subsequently focuses on the financial
dynamics underpinning the Ghanaian tertiary education landscape and then highlights evidence of
neoliberal manifestations such as marketisation and privatisation. Research as a revenue generation
valve, university-industry collaborations and then an overview of the response of public universities
in Ghana to hegemonic discourses of globalisation and neoliberalism are analysed. The final section
provides conclusion, implication and recommendations.
Globalisation and higher education
There is little doubt that the discourse of globalisation is deeply affecting higher education
worldwide. The United Nations and Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO)
explains globalisation as ‘the flow of technology, economy, knowledge, people, values, ide-
as…across borders. Globalisation affects each country differently due to each country’s history,
traditions, values, cultures, resources and priorities’ (2004, p. 6). The inflow of various dimensions
such as ideas, values, knowledge and technology as expressed by the UNESCO definition is
mediated or intervened by multinational corporations or transnational organisations rather than
nation-states. Globalisation represents a serious shake up of the social relationships that had
previously been primarily defined through a series of territorially bound constructs. In this sense, it
represents more than simply greater levels of internationalisation, liberalisation, universalisation or
standardisation/Westernisation (Scholte, 2002). Almost any definition of globalisation begins with
the idea that the integration of human societies across pre-existing territorial units has sped up,
assisted in part by the development of new technologies that compress time and space (Marginson
and Sawir 2005; Maringe, 2010). For some authors, the main motor of integration is economic, that
is, the expansion of truly global chains of commercialised production and consumption. Others
focus on the cultural and political dimensions of globalisation as driving forces. Whatever the focus,
central to all theories of globalisation is the notion that interregional and ‘deterritorialised’ flows of
all kinds of social interaction have reached new magnitudes in recent history (Ruggie, 1993).
Globalisation ensures the blurring of territorial national borders. What this means is that
whenever there seem to be some existing barriers, these transnational organisations are used as
agents to permeate such flows (Marginson and Sawir, 2005). There has also been a consistent
argument within the literature that the hegemonic influence of globalisation has to some extent led to
the diminishing of territorial borders of a nation-state. This unveils that the local peculiarities and
conditions are of great importance, as referred to by Ball (2012) andMarginson and Rhoades (2002)
as ‘layers and conditions’. Willis and Taylor (2014) assert that globalisation seems to move towards
a trajectory of both integration and mutual interdependence. Again, there seems to be a continuum
between the tensions of globalisation in the literature; on the one end is homogenisation and on the
other end is heterogenisation in the sense of global inflows and responses of local responses
(Appadurai, 1996).
A brief retrospection of the UNESCO definition underpins the assumption that there are dif-
ferences concerning how institutions and nation-states respond to globalisation. Globalisation’s
Boateng et al. 3
effect is to some extent determined by cultures, resources, technology and a country’s strength. This
unveils that the local peculiarities and conditions are of great importance as Ball (2012) and
Marginson and Rhoades (2002) termed them as ‘layers and conditions’. Willis and Taylor (2014)
assert that ‘universities are not simply shaped by the forces of globalisation, but, as large inter-
national organisations and key sites of knowledge production, they are enmeshed in global pro-
cesses’ (p. 154). Morrow and Torres (2000, p. 44) claim that ‘perhaps no place has been more
subject to these processes of globalisation than the university’. Over the past four decades,
globalisation has become pervasive and emerged as a commercial approach in (re)shaping how
national educational policies are constructed and to some extent dictates the relationship between
nation-state and tertiary education systems at the national level (Gyamera and Burke, 2018; Torres
and Jones, 2013). Besides, within the globalisation template, associated elements such as New
Public Management and neoliberal agenda have influenced the ideology, operations and structure of
tertiary education systems and policies (Maassen, 2012).
Before the advent of New Public Management, the traditional university governance was
branded as inefficient, non-responsive to societal needs and above all by its inability to address the
quality of standards of its core functions (Amaral et al., 2003). Recent public sector reforms which
also include higher education institutions hold the idea that productivity and quality could be best
improved by transforming the public bureaucracy by means of New Public Management (Paradeise
et al., 2009). The idea of strengthening self-management in universities is related to the need to
become more efficient and responsive to the diverse needs of society.
Within the Ghanaian higher education context, the phenomenon of the changing mode of
governance as a result of New Public Management has led to governments acting as referees who
watch over the game and only intervene when the laws are violated. The phenomena have
influenced universities solely responsible for defining their own legitimate goal and position
themselves through setting strategies. The resultant effect of globalisation on most national higher
education policies is to inject effectiveness, efficiency and mimic best business practices and
cultures (Clark, 1998). It has been argued that the changes in governance modes in higher education
institutions are partly inspired by the New Public Management ideas (Intsiful and Maassen, 2017).
Olsen (2007) highlights that as a result of global forces, universities are pressured to transform to
‘service enterprise embedded in competitive market’ (p. 35). These changes could be argued from
the fact that in current times, funding of higher education has been reduced by various governments
(Acquah, 2021). Besides, the changes can be argued that the hegemonic influence of globalisation
has to some extent led to the diminishing of territorial borders of a nation-state.
With the introduction of cost-sharing fees, universities in turn need to generate additional funds
or income from their students (Clark, 1998; Gumport, 2000). The assumption underlying this
reduced funding is that the university, which can also be characterised as a rational actor, will have to
open and depend on the global market and students to generate additional income to support their
activities. This to some extent makes the university adaptive to the demands of society within which
they operate and consider students as their customers. In effect, these pressures force the universities
to adapt to a trend within the organisational field, therefore leading to isomorphism or homogeneity
(Scott, 2001). At the same time some of the environmental pressures from the global scale that have
implicitly become change drivers, as defined by Peterson (2007), includes information commu-
nication technology, issues of quality, issues concerning diversity, socio-economic productivity,
globalisation and increasing resource limitations.
In a contemporary globalised era, as a result of changes in higher education governance modes, most
higher education institutions are operating on performancemanagement systems, output fundingmodels
and strategic alliances framedwithin a cost-benefit analysis framework (Maassen, 2017). This then shifts
4 Policy Futures in Education 0(0)
the focus of steering higher education to an evaluative statemodel (Neave, 1998). Boateng (2010) asserts
that the evaluative state became a dominant discourse when issues of provision of access and equity
(social justice) tended to be predominant when higher education institutions evolved from elite to mass
structure of higher education. It served as a lens through which government regulated and financed
higher education from the 1980s. The evaluative state framework consists of the historical drift from
apriori funding to a posteriori funding. The aprioriwhich involved routine and strategic evaluations and
legal instrumentality was based on trust on higher education institutions to rationally use the allocations
for the intended purposes. Aposteriori funding sought to evaluate after the fact, that is, ascertaining the
extent to which overall targets had met funding objectives through the evaluation of higher education
activities and outcomes (Neave, 1998). In various higher education landscapes, buffer agencies are set up
to mediate between the governments and higher education. The evaluative state as a prime vessel of
economic liberalism is characterised by the conditionality of standardised performance indicators or
benchmarks [set by the buffer agencies] expected to be met by the higher education institutions as they
are expected to account for their relevance in the use of public funds (Neave, 2017).
Historical context of Ghana’s tertiary education
In order to understand the effect of globalisation on Ghana’s tertiary education system, it is essential
to discuss system’s antecedents especially from the 1990s. The poor fiscal management of social and
economic resources of the 1970s and early 1980s (Bondzie, 2020) compelled the Provisional
National Defence Council (PNDC) military junta to adopt the neoliberal reforms of the Bretton
Woods institutions dubbed the ‘Structural Adjustment Program/Economic Recovery Programme’.
They sought assistance to resuscitate the economy which was in doldrums. Some scholars (e.g.
Munene, 2008; Andrews et al., 2012) are of the view that reforms were impositions from the
international financial institutions and further argue that those reforms birthed the tertiary education
reforms in the early 1990s (e.g. Varghese, 2006).
The higher education system, made up of three state universities,2 was characterised by low
access of females in universities, especially in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics
(STEM) courses and programmes; paucity of funds; poor research activity; large class sizes (Arthur
and Arthur, 2016); infrastructural deficiencies; ageing faculty; huge class sizes; low access to
international support and deficiencies in access, equity, quality and relevance (Osei-Tutu, 2021;
Sawyerr, 2004). There is a nexus between the country’s socio-economic and political conditions and
its higher education system. The economic constraints and political instability of the country at the
time accounted for the decline of higher education (Budu and Quashigah, 2013). This prompted the
reduction of budgetary allocations to the institutions, which in turn contributed to the reduction in
staff strength and the exodus of lecturers and administrative staff from Ghana (Sawyerr, 1994).
For decades, the tertiary education sector received little to no attention from the international
development community from the 1970s because of World Bank studies (e.g. Psacharopoulos,
1973, 1981) pointing to lower rates of returns relative to primary and secondary education
(Asamoah, 2017). The findings became the justification for lower investments in and the zero-sum
game in funding tertiary education relative to pre-tertiary education (Marcucci et al., 2008). Public
higher education investments were deemed regressive, distributionally perverse and exacerbating
existing socio-economic disparities. (Bloom et al., 2005; Pillay, 2011).
Nevertheless, the reforms were instituted to make the tertiary education sector responsive to the
needs of the country. The government passed a University Rationalisation Policy in 1986 based on
which a University Rationalisation Committee was created 2 years later as part of the medium-term
university development plan (Boakye, 2020). It accepted the University Rationalisation
Boateng et al. 5
Committee’s 166 recommendations and issued a White Paper, ‘Reforms to Tertiary Education
System’, the perspective of which was to the effect that university education was inadequate in
capacity to meet and address the problems plaguing the higher education system as well as ensuring
the market of the newly created Ghana’s tertiary education system was opened to the world (Bingab
et al., 2016). Hitherto, the University of Ghana, the University of Science and Technology and the
University of Cape Coast constituted Ghana’s higher education system. The term ‘tertiary edu-
cation’ was an encapsulation of the reforms. The sector had to be liberalised for private partici-
pation; conversion of institutions from second cycle to tertiary education status; the creation of
buffer agencies to act as liaisons between government and the tertiary education institutions in
quality assurance, policy and finance; and the roll-back of some of the unlimited powers of the state
to the institutions in governance.
Globally, reforms in the sector were to reduce the political influence in higher education
governance by making higher education more autonomous (Henard and Mitterle, 2003). In the case
of Ghana, the Head of State was the Chancellor of the University of Ghana, the University of
Science and Technology, and the University of Cape Coast, but with the advent of the reforms, the
institutions were allowed by law to choose their own Chancellors (Sawyerr, 1994). Hence, all
postsecondary institutions were reclassified as tertiary education institutions. From this it seemed
the state was on course to be an evaluative one to satiate global and national/local needs. The
changing role of the state in its relationship with the tertiary education sector was quite analogous to
the transition from state control to one of state supervision (Neave and van Vught, 1991). The
triggering of the reform by the Bretton Woods institutions is characteristic of international financial
agencies as global appendages of centre nations interfacing with periphery nations as the gov-
ernment sought the support of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) for the
Structural Adjustment Programme/Economic Recovery Programme. It can be argued, however, that
it was the trojan horse for the transition of third world countries like Ghana from authoritarian
military despotism to democratisation. Policy discourses from then tilted heavily towards dereg-
ulation, privatisation and marketisation albeit appreciably soothed with social justice and equity
clamours and accomplishments.
Institutionalisation: The creation of buffer agencies
The creation of buffer agencies in Ghana’s tertiary education system ought to be situated within the
context of the evolution of the quality movement in higher education within the global historical and
political milieu especially from the 1980s.
Internationalisation of quality, as a means of production tool, had increasingly been pursued by
think tanks in centre countries in the 1980s such as the International Standards Organisation ([ISO]
9000, 1987) and the British Standards Institute ([BSI] 5750, 1979), and accepted by the European
Community as its quality standards (Kenny, 2006). That had a cascading effect on the higher
education sector. The global focus on quality in higher education was prompted by a gamut of
competing factors: control of higher education politically, growth in student enrolments/
massification and their increasing manifold expectations and the control of the higher education
sector financially (Mertova et al., 2010). Governments resorted to quality monitoring using per-
formance indicators or benchmarks to address the aforementioned factors (Kenny, 2006).
Quality assurance in higher education is not a novelty. The traditional approach of universities to
quality was internally based on the notion of excellence by departments or units. It was not
characterised by control and monitoring mechanisms because it was an anathema to institutional
autonomy (Harvey, 1997; Kenny, 2006). External quality assurance in higher education, as a global
6 Policy Futures in Education 0(0)
phenomenon, originated in the 1980s and expanded rapidly in the 1990s with the fall of Com-
munism in Eastern and Central Europe (Woodhouse, 2004) and the adoption of benchmarking (the
American version of quality standards) in American higher education. Harvey (1997) argues that
rather than emphasising on enhancement, the dominant focus on accountability was disguised. It
can be concluded that it was an era when the distrust of the institutional self-regulation of higher
education institutions by government was at its peak.
One of the corollaries of the neoliberally triggered and inspired tertiary education reforms was
the creation of two institutions in 1993: the National Accreditation Board and the National Council
for Tertiary Education, which in 2021 were merged to become the Ghana Tertiary Education
Commission. As stated earlier, the sector had been expanded and there was a pressing need to
regulate and assure its quality. The National Accreditation Board (emanating from PNDC Law 317,
1993) and the National Council for Tertiary Education (emanating from Act 454 of 1993) were
created for the regulation of and oversight in quality and policy of tertiary education in Ghana,
respectively, (Manuh et al., 2007; Tanko et al., 2017).
The National Accreditation Board initiated vital quality interventions and instruments including
institutional and programme accreditation, affiliation of newly established institutions to super-
visory institutions, academic audits, reviews that are cyclical, reaccreditation and institutional
charter (Alabi et al., 2018). These were geared towards ensuring that programmes and institutions
were consonant to the national standards through the evaluation of their processes and outcomes.
After almost 3 decades of relating with tertiary education institutions in Ghana, the National
Accreditation Board further directed them to establishing quality assurance outfits as means to
internally assure quality based on its national guidelines of accreditation. Alabi et al. (2018) remark
that the guidelines to assist the institutions establish such outfits lacked clarity, engendering
challenges on their institutionalisation. Nevertheless, the extant quality assurance units in the
institutions, at least most of them, and associated policies, aligned to the national accreditation
standards are testament to the relative improvement in the National Accreditation Board’s efforts
and indeed the state’s arms-length evaluative means to assure quality in the sector.
The National Accreditation Board, now part of the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission, has
been undertaking accreditation and reaccreditation of tertiary education institutions and their
programmes; chartering institutions that satisfy requirements and so forth. As part of its mandate, it
periodically publishes on its website and in media outlets accredited and unaccredited institutions
and advises the public from patronising the latter. In its evolution, the National Accreditation Board
has had collision courses with some foreign tertiary education institutions and their local partners
over the administration of their operations based on the values of the foreign institutions. A typical
example is the National Accreditation Board in 2010 urging Ashesi University, a private Ghanaian
university, to cease its Honour System which required no invigilators in its examinations, based on
its conviction that the integrity of the examinations could not be enhanced with the Honour System.
Emulating the Honour System of Princeton and Dartmouth College, Ashesi prided itself with this
policy based on the belief that the Honour system rather prompts students to operate in integrity and
hold each other accountable (Adu, 2010). The National Accreditation Board insisted that Ashesi
conforms to the examination policy of utilising invigilators in examinations This development is
indicative of the conflicts between global and local values of tertiary education as globalisation
paves way for such interfaces between local and international institutions.
The National Council for Tertiary Education, also part of Ghana Tertiary Education Commission,
is tasked with the financial steering of tertiary education institutions, policy creation and devel-
opment of the tertiary education sector and advising of the Ministry of Education on tertiary
Boateng et al. 7
education matters. The influence of globalisation in financing and consequently in budgeting is
discussed in detail in the next two sections.
Financing dynamics
The financing landscape of the tertiary education system of Ghana historically and contempora-
neously depicts an ebbing but still dominant grasp of the state on the sector. The annual recurrent
cost per student in tertiary education in Ghana in 1969 was $3800 (Williams, 1974) but had reduced
substantially by 2015 to $1952.493 (MOE, 2018) Tertiary education occupied slightly over 17% of
government’s recurrent budget in 1991 (Berk, 1992). The portion of the allocation to tertiary
education out of government budget for education increased to 19.1% in 2013 (Newman and
Duwiejua, 2015) but slumped to 18% the following year (World Bank, 2022). In 2017, it had
increased to 22.5% (ESRP, 2018). The government expenditure per student at the tertiary level as a
percentage of GDP was 298.8% in 2005 and 55.5% in 2014 (UNESCO Institute of Statistics [UIS],
2022). Rising tertiary education costs and dwindling public expenditure evidenced in the gamut of
funding gaps from 2011 to 2015 was between 39.7% and 41% (Newman and Duwiejua, 2015).
Higher education in Ghana has been fully footed by government from independence until the
1990s. In the 1980s, public funding of the sector was in dire straits due to expansion of student
enrolments in the universities, putting a toll on facilities which had not been expanded to meet the
growing student populations, fiscal and economic mismanagement and political instabilities due to
military putsches (Bondzie, 2020; Budu and Quashigah, 2013; Manuh et al., 2007).
The government therefore pursued the Structural Adjustment Programme/Economic Recovery
Programme which was aimed at inducing financial efficiency in the government funding. The
tertiary education reforms of 1991 were spurred by the appointment of the University Ration-
alisation Committee to make recommendations as rostrums for the reforms. With respect to fi-
nancing, the University Rationalisation Committee recommended free tuition given to all local
students, student maintenance must be commensurate with national resources and priorities,
payment of a uniform maintenance fee for student recreational facilities, food, accommodation and
eligibility of access to loans to cover maintenance charges to be defrayed after graduation, with the
granting of full scholarships to exceptional students (University Rationalisation Committee, 1988).
Despite the somewhat Keynesian bent of the University Rationalisation Committee’s funding
recommendations, the Structural Adjustment Programme/Economic Recovery Programme and the
sector reforms, which were not mutually exclusive, was believed to have been the precursors to
private funding in tertiary education (Bondzie, 2020). Poku et al. (2013) in a nuanced way asserted
that the Structural Adjustment Programme/Economic Recovery Programme resulted in plummeting
state investments in higher education putting pressure on academic facilities that needed to be
expanded to facilitate access thereby making non-governmental funding in the sector imperative.
Such neoliberal reforms are meant to reduce government funding (Munene, 2008; Varghese, 2006)
and replace the shortfall with private sector funding to induce efficiency (Girdwood, 1999).
Privatisation in funding tertiary education in Ghana did not only entail the liberalisation of the sector
characterised by the establishment of private tertiary education institutions but the partnership of the
state in funding the sector with stakeholders. In 1997, the government under the Akosombo Accord
introduced the cost-sharing policy where it was to finance 70% of the sector, with parents/students, the
tertiary education institutions and philanthropies catering for 10% each (Manuh et al., 2007).
Cost sharing is a financial arrangement in which consumers (parents, students, etc.) share in the
cost of services in the form of deductibles, coinsurance and co-payments (Johnstone, 2003, 2006).
It was introduced in hitherto fee-free countries characterised by dwindling public investments in
8 Policy Futures in Education 0(0)
higher/tertiary education and increase in tuition and other fees in hitherto fee-free countries
(Acquah, 2021; Marcucci et al., 2008). The cost-sharing policy in Ghana’s tertiary education,
composed of privatising university accommodation and meals and surcharging academic user-
fees representing student’s co-responsibility in financing higher education. These were introduced
in 1998 in response to the introduction of the policy by government in the preceding year
(Bondzie, 2020).
The tertiary education institutions were to have an instrumental role in the determination of their
fees and charges. This reached a consummation in 2009 when the Fees and Charges Act 2009 (Act
793) was passed. The Act mandates public tertiary institutional heads to submit for consideration
and approval to Parliament their proposed fees and charges. The public universities were allowed to
charge full fees for students who ideally meet the 6–24 grade bracket but did not meet the cut-off
point of the university for admissions. The National Council for Tertiary Education gave a limit of
5% of the admission numbers. However, universities in Ghana often exceed the limit of 5% of their
admissions of fee-paying students given them by the National Council for Tertiary Education. The
University of Ghana, for example, exceeded the limit four-fold in 2008 (Anyan, 2009).
Regarding public tertiary education institutions, the government discretionary allocation, the
Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund)4 (set up by government by an Act of Parliament) and
internally generated revenues (IGRs) accounted for 15%, 34% and 51%, respectively, in 2017
(Ministry of Education [MOE], 2018a; 2018b). In the University of Ghana, for example, academic
fees (or tuition) and other student charges accounted for 17.4% of its revenue, while government
subvention and grants, research grants and contracts and revenue from other exchange transactions
were 46.8%, 22.8% and 11.5%, respectively, (University of Ghana Annual Report, 2021). Tuition
fees relative to subsidised tuition paying students and full fee-paying students in the public tertiary
education institutions especially the big ones from 2013 to 2018 largely flattened. Tables 1 and 2
provide data for the University of Ghana (UG) and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and
Technology (KNUST), the largest universities in Ghana. As seen from the tables, the percentage of
full fee-paying students from 2013 to 2016 increased but nose-dived in the subsequent 2 years in the
University of Ghana. For Kwame University of Science and Technology, the percentage increased
from 2013 to 2015 but slumped from 2016 to 2018.
Tuition is a major source of funding for private tertiary education institutions in Ghana: it
accounts for 95% of their revenue and the remaining 5% is obtained from other external sources
(Twene, 2014). Students in such institutions pay their fees upfront while most of the fee-paying
undergraduate students in the publicly funded universities pay their fees under the umbrella of the
dual track tuition fee policy which was introduced to enhance the financial sustenance of Ghana’s
tertiary education system (Anyan, 2009). Dual track tuition policies are characterised by a highly
restricted, ‘merit-based entry to free or very low-cost higher education, with other applicants not so
admitted permitted entry on a fee-paying basis’ (Marcucci et al., 2008, p.2).
Another component of the cost-sharing policy is the students loan scheme. The very first time a
students’ loan policy was introduced in Ghana was in 1971, albeit ephemerally. University students
had to pay boarding and lodging fees with the automatic withdrawal of scholarships (Williams,
1974). In 1988, another loan scheme was initiated to be administered by the Social Security and
National Insurance Trust. In 2015, the Student Loan Trust Fund was created out of an Act of
Parliament (the Students Loan Trust Fund Act 2011, Act 820). It replaced the Social Security and
National Insurance Trust Loans scheme due to inefficiencies in loan recovery, frustrations in the
procedures for accessing the loans with the resultant low access to the loans and high subsidies
(Obeng, 2019). With respect to Student Loan Trust Fund, coverage increased from 11,111 bene-
ficiaries in 2006/2007 to 31,301 beneficiaries in 2016/17 (ESRP Report, 2018). The Student Loan
Boateng et al. 9
Table 1. Admission statistics of regular non-tuition-fee-paying and full fee-paying students in Ghana:
University of Ghana (UG), Legon, Accra.
Full fee-paying
Regular students category (local and
(tuition-free) international)
Academic year Overall total students admitted Number % Number %
2013/14 21,323 18,536 86.9 2787 13.1
2014/15 20,220 17,139 84.8 3081 15.2
2015/16 20,243 17,088 84.4 3155 15.6
2016/17 25,863 23,121 89.4 2742 11.9
2017/18 27,901 24,953 89.4 2948 10.6
Total Average 23,110 20,167.4 87.0 2942.6 13.3
Source: Bondzie’s (2020) analysis based on Statistics data obtained from Institutional Research and Planning Office (IRPO)
Unit, University of Ghana, Legon, Accra.
Table 2. Admission statistics of regular non-tuition-fee-paying and full fee-paying students in Ghana: KNUST,
Kumasi.
Full fee-paying
Regular students category (local and
(tuition-free) international)
Academic Year Overall total students admitted Number % Number %
2013/14 23,572 17,069 72.4 6503 27.6
2014/15 18,080 12,046 66.6 6034 33.4
2015/16 — — — — —
2016/17 21,534 16,601 77.1 4933 22.9
2017/18 36,231 30,417 84.0 5814 16.0
Total Average 24,854.3 19,033.3 75.0 5821.0 25.0
Source: Bondzie’s (2020) analysis based on Statistics data obtained from Basic Statistics, Quality Assurance and Planning Unit,
Kwame Nkrumah University of Science & Technology (KNUST), Kumasi.
Trust Fund, notwithstanding, is beset with arduous challenges especially with respect to the delay in
the disbursement of loan funds which stifles the lives of students on campuses (Citinewsroom,
2022).
The resultant effect of the shift to the right in terms of the tertiary education policy, besides
opening the floodgates of privatisation, can be viewed from the state’s fiscal allocation to the
publicly funded institutions. The public expenditure on public tertiary education as a percentage of
total expenditure in education plummeted from 89.6% in 2004 to 77.3% in 2014 (UIS, 2022). This
corresponds to the increasing proportion of Internally Generated Resources in relation to total
revenue on the institutions in the sector from 27% in 2003 to 35% in 2007 and 43.5% in 2009
(Bailey et al., 2011). It rose to 51% in 2017 (ESRP, 2018). This evinces the institutions becoming
entrepreneurial and thus, drifting towards creating and maximising non-traditional income streams
while grappling with dwindling public investments (Clark, 1998). It is noteworthy that, tertiary
education institutions in Ghana are situated in a quasi-market fostered by a policy of marketisation,
10 Policy Futures in Education 0(0)
operating under a competitive market which is somewhat doubtful, within inevitable governmental
regulations (Bertolin, 2011; Willis and Taylor (2014)).
Norm-based budgeting
At the onset of the reforms, prior to the creation of the National Accreditation Board and National
Council for Tertiary Education, the Ministry of Education and Culture was in charge for policy
coordination and quality assurance of the higher education sector. In perspective the National
Council for Higher Education (NCHE) set up in 1969 was abolished under the Provisional National
Defence Council Law 42 of 1983 to the chagrin of the universities. They loathed the direct control
over by the government (Girdwood, 1999) and were reminiscent of the collision course between
governments and universities in Ghana in the 1960s to the 1970s (Sawyerr, 1994).
Before the reforms, the budget allocation was not based on or linked to the volume of operations
of the tertiary education institutions. The government then decided to link funding to programmes
and develop norms that would ‘delineate costs based on the student as the unit of production to
foster efficiency’ (Newman et al., 2013, p. 275). The norms were based on the University Ra-
tionalisation Committee’s general proposal of administrative, financial and staffing norms which
were introduced in 1991. Girdwood (1999) explains that after the initial piloting they had not been
reviewed by 1999. Furthermore, institutional calculations for traditional student-staff ratios that
were utilised were rigid and inconsequential in external conditions.
In allocating money from the Ministry of Education, the National Council for Tertiary Education
resorted to three mechanisms: historical incremental budgeting hinged on student enrolment
numbers (annual allocations based on preceding year’s allocation with slight variations; bidding and
bargaining (based on annual budgetary demands, a justification for funding is made); and discretion
(the total allocation of money received from the Ministry of Finance to the education sector
represents the final decision on the amount of money allocated to the tertiary education sector)
(Newman and Duwiejua, 2015). The funding mechanisms are devoid of performance indicators or
pre-determined outcomes. Although norm-based budgeting has been in place for years, Newman
et al. (2013) argues that it has been abandoned. The apriori funding systems are strongly extant in
Ghana’s tertiary education system as they are only linked to student numbers as inputs. Regardless
of the existence of norms, financing is not linked to outputs or performance, and as such, it is a
disincentive for public policy implementation, reform or innovation (Girdwood, 1999).
Newman and Duwiejua (2015) recommend a couple of mechanisms to induce aposteriori or
output funding in the sector. First, a diversified financing approach in Ghana’s tertiary education
system made up of four funding approaches complementing the funding formula is used in al-
locating base grants to higher education institutions in Ghana: institutional factor grants, earmarked
grants, performance funding and research grants. They also call for increased private funding for
undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, increase in fees of fee-paying students and enrolment
quota of foreign students as well as full fees for foreign students, fees charged to inflationary rate and
so forth. While this is a clear shift to full scale privatisation of funding championed by neoliberalism,
it must be noted that the consequences to the access and capacity of domestic students would be dire
in a milieu where the gross enrolment ratio in tertiary education for 2019 was 17.2% with strident
socio-cultural and economic disparities (Aryeetey and Kanbur, 2017; Atuahene and Owusu-Ansah,
2013; Sawyerr, 1994). The richest fifth of the population are disproportionately beneficiaries of
tertiary education (Atuahene and Owusu-Ansah, 2013).
Boateng et al. 11
Segments of privatisation and marketisation
The University Rationalisation Committee recommended the expansion of the sector to surmount
some of the challenges the sector faced (University Rationalisation Committee, 1988). The reforms
birthed private higher education in Ghana which today dominates the tertiary education landscape.
The Ghana Tertiary Education Commission as at 2021 reported that Ghana’s tertiary education
system is made up of a motley of tertiary education institutions:15 public universities, 10 public
technical universities, 7 public degree awarding and professional institutions, 46 public colleges of
education, 57 public nursing training colleges, seven chartered tertiary education institutions,
109 private tertiary education institutions offering Higher National Diploma (HND)/degree pro-
grams, one private polytechnic, 4 private colleges of education, 23 private nursing training colleges,
2 distance learning institutions, 4 colleges of agriculture, 1 regionally owned tertiary education
institution, 5 registered foreign institutions and 6 tutorial colleges. In terms of enrolment, while
private enrolment occupies 54% in terms of institutional makeup, it accounts for 16% of total
enrolment [Education Strategic Plan (ESP), 2020]. However, the public tertiary education insti-
tutions dominate when it comes to enrolment. What is challenging now is the capacity of the
resource-challenged Ghana Tertiary Education Commission to manage the expansion of the private
sector in tertiary education (Armah, 2022), making it difficult for the sector to market its potential
(Anyam, 2017).
Nonetheless, the existential position of private tertiary education institutions has been cemented.
The 1992 Constitution consummates the privatisation and marketisation of (tertiary) education in
Ghana. The 2nd section of the 25th Article of the 1992 Constitution of the Republic of Ghana
stipulates:
Every person shall have the right, at this own expense, to establish and maintain a private school or
schools at all levels and such categories and in accordance with such conditions as may be prescribed
by law.
The law (aforementioned in the quote) refers to Education Act, 2008, Act 778. Article 23(1)
which stipulates that:
A person or an institution may establish, manage and operate a private educational institution in an
accordance with the guidelines issued, and the Regulations made in that behalf, by the Minister, in
consultation with the Education Service Council or 
the National Accreditation Board.
Higher education institutions have adapted in response to the changes in the external envi-
ronment manifested in World Bank-engineered public sector reforms geared towards making public
organisations efficient and effective (Brett, 1994; Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2004 cited in Bisaso, 2010).
This development was also consonant to the NPM that was in vogue from the 1980s (Intsiful and
Maassen, 2017). The implication of the neoliberal, laissez-faire drift of Ghana’s tertiary education
reforms triggered by the Structural Adjustment Programme/Economic Recovery Programme was
that all the institutions especially the publicly funded ones, accustomed to full benefaction by the
state, were compelled to be entrepreneurial and innovative. This was congruent to the state’s ebbing
investments by instrumentalising the institutions to be entrepreneurial and innovative in generating
their own incomes (Clark, 1998). The implication of such a development was that the institutions
were to augment their internally generated revenue capacities and adopt cultures of the private
sector. In this end, tertiary education institutions including the state funded ones are profit-making
12 Policy Futures in Education 0(0)
business ventures (Obeng, 2019). One major area they resorted to is the dependence on tuition
(already discussed in the previous section), which is described in detail in the section of funding.
Private tertiary education institutions depend wholly or preponderantly on tuition revenue, which
hinges on enrolments. They have been vigorously undertaking enrolment drives aimed at attracting
students, characteristic of private universities globally (Kaneko, 1992). The public and private
universities have strangleholds in enrolments. Nonetheless, the demand and pressure for them to be
innovative in response to access and fiscal challenges have spurred them to embrace and prioritise
distance learning and sandwich programmes for non-traditional students. Majority of such students
are in the working class.
Concerning distance learning, enrolments have generally expanded in the sectors as the in-
stitutions have set up learning centres in the regions to provide tertiary education as they augment
their access and revenue capacities. As seen in the Tables 3 and 4, the University of Ghana, distance
learning enrolments consistently increased from 2012 to 2017 while with respect to the Kwame
Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, enrolment decreased from 2014 to 2017 but
increased in 2018.
Research as a Cardinal Revenue Generating Valve
Research has become the cardinal function of tertiary education institutions because of its utility in
transforming society as well as generating funds, which are needed in an era of plummeting public
investments in tertiary education. Research has become so important such that research output
(publications, winning grants and valorisation of research) is a major indicator in the methodologies
of university rankings (Odorika and Lloyd, 2014).
Universities strive to augment their research capacities, collaborations, partnerships and ac-
tivities so that they feature well in university rankings. The Shanghai Jiao Tong University Ac-
ademic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), the Quacquarelli Symonds’ QS World University
rankings, and the Times Higher Education World University rankings have become standards many
universities look up to in terms of measuring and assessing their performance. In the global
university rankings, African universities do not fare well in the rankings (Cardoso, 2019). Ghanaian
universities hardly feature in the top 10 rankings of African universities except in 2016 when the
University of Ghana occupied the 7th position in the Times Higher Education Africa Rankings.
Table 3. Annual enrolment indicators of innovative mode of educational delivery by regular, distance learning
and sandwich in public universities in Ghana.
Regular students
(including tuition-fee- % Distance % Sandwich
Academic year Total paying) Regular learning (DL) DL (S) % S
2012/13 199,455 128,118 64.2 59,539 29.9 11,798 5.9
2013/14 221,948 138,419 62.4 66,653 30.0 16,879 7.6
2014/15 231,006 147,180 63.7 66,401 28.7 17,425 7.5
2015/16 219,596 155,402 70.8 49,261 22.4 14,933 6.8
2016/17 258,669 167,736 64.8 80,119 31.0 10,814 4.2
Percentage Annual 65.2 28.4 6.3
Average
Source: Bondzie’s (2020) based on NCTE Annual Enrolment Data for Higher Education.
Boateng et al. 13
Table 4. Information on applications and admissions into the institute of distance learning (IDL), KNUST,
Kumasi (2012/13–2017/18 academic years).
Applications and admissions
Academic year Applied Admitted % Admitted % Admitted into DL based on total admissions
2012/13 5101 5101 100 24.4
2013/14 5626 4340 77.1 18.4
2014/15 4118 2971 72.2 16.4
2016/17 3827 2950 77.1 13.7
2017/18 6437 5380 83.6 14.8
Total Average 5021.8 4148.4 82 17.5
Source: Bondzie’s (2020) analysis based on Basic Statistics Documents (2013–2018) obtained from Quality Assurance and
Planning Unit, KNUST, Accra.
Academics have been undertaking research in various disciplines, winning grants from international
development agencies, multinational agencies (MNCs), international research funders, opulent and
influential research-intensive universities and domestic and international governments. Although
some universities and academics have gained substantial income and advancement in their careers
through promotions from such research activities, the largest funders have been foreign-based with
their priorities not always in consonance with national exigencies. Researchers, by virtue of research
funders, are steered to satiate international research priorities of centre countries and their agencies
(Sarpong et al., 2020).
University-Industry Collaborations
The most common form of university-industry collaboration in Ghana is in the area of provision of
internship and attachment opportunities. Another type of such collaborations is the compulsory
National Service Scheme administered by the National Service Secretariat providing students with
on-the-job training and special collaborations between some universities and development partners
such as the World Bank, United Nations (UN), United Nations Agency for International Devel-
opment (USAID) and so forth on research projects (Mamudu and Hymore, 2016). There have been
scanty long term strategic collaborations with industry geared towards research, knowledge
transfers and innovative start-up businesses.
In the area of technology transfer, breakthroughs, innovations and inventions, albeit very few
have fetched universities and income. In the area of technology transfer, the Technology Con-
sultancy Centre (TCC) set up in 1972 but absorbed by the College of Engineering in KNUST in
2012 is noteworthy. The UNESCO Science Report News (2021, para. 3–5), reports:
students have been able to access equipment at KNUST for practical training, such as machine shops for
prototyping and fabrication, laboratories, ceramic kilns and ovens, cooking stoves and water filters. As a
national centre, it has also developed training manuals and programmes for advanced manufacturing
technologies, including 3D printing and plasma technologies. The center has also undertaken policy
advocacy. It has recommended establishing an automotive manufacturing industry, for instance, and
intensifying collaboration between academia, industry and the government sector through the estab-
lishment of a technology park that was supported by Ghana’s National Development Planning
Commission.
14 Policy Futures in Education 0(0)
For the private universities, such partnerships have not delved in technology transfer, break-
throughs, innovations and inventions. Ashesi University’s strategic partnerships with international
universities and organisations such as General Electric (GE), focussing on curriculum development,
exchange programmes, seminars and training programmes, is worthy of note. The Triple Helix
model which conjoins government, academia and industry in producing innovation to society and
economy is very weak in Ghana.
Responses among Ghanaian public universities to globalisation
and neoliberalism
The last 3 decades within the Ghanaian higher education landscape have showcased interesting
happenings. Amongst them are the seemingly changing relationship with respect to the state and
public universities (Gyamera and Burke, 2018). This stems from the fact that the government
through, for example, the UGAct, 2010 has granted the University of Ghana institutional autonomy.
This means that the University of Ghana (and public universities) have the right to decide on their
own and design their own strategic policies and plans with limited interference from the gov-
ernment. The only aspect for which the government is taking responsibility is emoluments of staff of
these public universities (Manuh et al., 2007). Besides, the state caters for academic staff research
and book allowances which are often characterised with delays (Anyan, 2009). As a result of this
relative institutional autonomy granted to most public universities in Ghana, some New Public
Management measures have been introduced with the aim of enhancing efficiency, effectiveness
and judicious use of resources (Intsiful and Maassen, 2017). Similar to the argument made by
Desjardins (2013), it has been argued that initially the government was very ‘generous’ in giving out
everything for the public universities (Anyan, 2009).
Again, universities started engaging in diversifying their income streams and activities. Within
the current dispensation, most positions and officeholders are based on performance management.
The position of the Vice-Chancellor (VC) is quite synonymous to a ‘Chief Executive Officer’ of a
business-like organisation. A brief process or outline of the recruitment of a VC is such that a Search
Committee is established together with the University Council. Suitable applicants who apply must
demonstrate a feasible and clear strategy and indicate how to generate funds to carry out those
mandates. The term is for 4 years and is renewable for another term based on satisfactory per-
formance. The same process pertains to Pro-Vice-Chancellors, Provosts, Deans and Directors of
Institutes (Effah andMensa-Bonsu, 2001). Furthermore, most public universities have become quite
enterprising and entrepreneurial in their academic core activities (Gyamera and Burke, 2018).
Conclusion
From the epoch of 1980s when the globe tilted towards the arena of neoliberalism and the market,
structural adjustment reforms geared towards efficiency, accountability and relevance in the public
sector. Reforms were adopted impinging on tertiary education systems in developing countries such
as Ghana (Manuh et al., 2007; Osei-Tutu, 2021; Sawyerr, 2004). The reforms triggered reforms in
tertiary education, with the government ostensibly steering the sector through buffer agencies in an
arms-length manner. The shades of privatisation in institutional participation and financing etched
constitutionally were to satiate public demands for excellence and quality in the sector (Bondzie,
2020). The manifold institutions were compelled to tread on the path of entrepreneurialism and
innovation through research, fee policies and collaborations with other vital stakeholders. Ghana’s
Boateng et al. 15
system of tertiary education while embracing the market, the level of marketisation and deregulation
is appreciably low. Thus, tertiary education institutions are still dominantly moulded by the state.
The paper has a far-reaching implication for the state of tertiary education in Ghana within the
context of the ubiquitous phenomenon of globalisation. Some tertiary education structures were
reorganised, others were newly created. New governance and funding modalities introduced by the
state with the aim of pushing the sector to the market have made the institutions attempt to be
financially innovative in research. They have also redefined their relationships with external
stakeholders, especially industry.
One must note that marketisation, deregulation and privatisation must be deepened to offset the
unreliably ebbing public investment in the sector. The reality of disparities in access and social
justice must however not be ignored. The state thus becomes an important lever in ensuring that the
two sets of seemingly antithetical forces are ever present and influential in steering tertiary education
in Ghana to meet its varied stakeholder expectations. The state ought to coagulate its empowerment
of the buffer agencies in their oversight functions through resource generation and capacity
building. The agencies must rigorously undertake their evaluative functions and the institutions
must be responsive in their functions of transmitting, generating and applying knowledge to cater
for local, national and international demands.
Stakeholders in Ghana’s tertiary education sector must contribute to the adherence and com-
pliance of regulatory frameworks in the sector. The buffer agencies ought to periodically evaluate
the frameworks and push for amendments in consonance to global and national trends. More so,
there should be a common understanding and resolve to deal with the inadequacies and failures of
the market, that is, ensuring that the disparities in the sector are nipped in the bud.
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to the outstanding contributions of two research assistants of the Department of
Educational Studies and Leadership at the University of Ghana, Miss Dora Lomo andMr. Sterling Tong, to this
paper.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or
publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
ORCID iD
Fred Kofi Boateng  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5406-2416
Notes
1. Tertiary education and higher education are used interchangeably in the context of Ghana where the former
was officially used to refer to all postsecondary education institutions after the reforms while the latter
pertains solely to universities.
2. The University of Ghana, the University of Science and Technology now the Kwame Nkrumah University
of Science and Technology, and the University of Cape Coast.
16 Policy Futures in Education 0(0)
3. Amount quoted in Ghana Cedis was 7439 GHS. The conversion was done based on the average dollar to
cedi exchange rate for 2015, which was 3.81 GHS.
4. The GETFund was established to support educational institutions by providing financial resources, pro-
viding assistance to students who are genuinely needy and academically talented, generating funds to
support the student loan scheme and fiscally supporting research and development (Atuahene, 2015).
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Fred Kofi Boateng, PhD is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Educational Studies and
Leadership, University of Ghana. He researches in Higher Education, International Education,
Gender Studies in Education, and Qualitative Research.
Usman Abonyi, PhD is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Educational Studies and Leadership,
University of Ghana. He researches in Educational Leadership andManagement, Higher Education,
and Teacher Education.
Emmanuel Intsiful is a Research Fellow at the University of Tasmania. He researches in Higher
Education Policy, Higher EducationManagement and Governance, and Change Processes in Higher
Education.