Addressing private and public interests for sustaining Africa’s emerging private, graduate higher education sector: The case of Ghana

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Tuesday IV)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Higher education

Proposal

Sustaining and improving the quality of the rapidly expanding private university systems in Ghana and elsewhere is challenging due to a plethora of supply- and demand-side factors. In this paper, we propose an integrated framework, adapted from Marginson (2016) to distinguish between private and public interests on the supply and demand sides to guide policymakers in addressing the quality issue, with a focus on private graduate schools in Ghana. On the supply side, we argue that private universities face a challenge due to assumption about the private interests they serve, whereas there is consensus that public universities contribute to the public interest. Private universities, often run solely on school fees, struggle to attract qualified faculty, due to high teaching loads, low salaries, brain drain and competition from lecturers in the older, bigger, better recognized and better-resourced public universities. The relative ease of entry into the tertiary education sector results in fierce competition among private higher education institutions, as new universities spring up while others close.
On the demand side, adverse selection problems are compounded due to the pool of graduate students that the private universities depend on for their financial survival. This includes: (i) unmotivated students, such as time-constrained working professionals, who are under pressure to get more advanced degrees due to qualification inflation; and (ii) religious leaders and politicians not intending to use the graduate degree to conduct research for the public good, but rather to shore up their social standing. From an enforcement perspective, the public National Accreditation Boards (NAB) is also resource-challenged and struggles to keep up with the numerous private universities springing up. Using the framework that we develop, we specify how to address the tensions between public and private interests to improve the quality of the private graduate schools in Ghana.

Authors

• Stephen Armah, Ashesi University

• Nii Addy, McGill University