Pay attention to our public varsities lest they collapse

Public universities are going through a rough patch, forced to endure acute financial crunch. Due to failure by the government to remit the money for the 2017/2021 Collective Bargaining Agreement, one has reduced salaries for its staff. Another is toying with down-sizing its staff.

Yes, there are other factors that have occasioned the sorry state: Corruption and mismanagement, over-establishment, poor leadership and lack of innovation on income-generating ventures other than student fees and Exchequer funding.

Since the inception of the free primary education in 2003, higher education has, to say the least, escaped the attention of the government, which has been loudly beating its chest on the large numbers churned out every year by the conveyor belts that universities have become. Scant attention, if any, is directed to quality. We are drunk with quantity. We marvel at producing educated illiterates under the tutelage of demotivated and poorly paid personnel, many of them through examination cheating.

How will such institutions take learners through the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC), especially in its two pathways that are practical-oriented?

Financial neglect by successive governments have denied the institutions infrastructural and other physical development. Many have dilapidated physical structures. The lecture halls, hostels and offices are in a deplorable state. The students and academic and non-academic personnel are demotivated.

One would expect the university leadership to do better. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Leading these institutions today is a nightmare. You hardly meet a top university leader who is not grumbling. Salaries is a big challenge while the day-to-day operations have become a pain in the neck.Many are grappling with a shambolic CBA whose implementation is a mockery of labour practices. Many are haunted with failure to remit statutory deductions and other charges removed from staff emoluments.

One would ask where the government is in all this. The truth is that, unless something radical is done to resolve the cash woes of public universities, soon they will all close down.

The State Department for University Education seems to receive scant attention from the Education ministry as regards funding. The woes of public universities mainly begins with poor funding and ends with the same. The department appears clueless and powerless on how to address the problems of these institutions.

The cry of public universities is that they be funded adequately like other government institutions. Only that and that alone will remove them from their current financial morass. This is not too much to ask, or is it? And it can be done if the government appreciated the contribution of universities to the country’s development.