Actividades relativas a la memoria histórica

Privatisation constitutes a very important trend not just in higher education, but also in quality assurance. A discussion of QA issues in higher education in Ghana would undoubtedly be incomplete without reference to the unique and interesting role of the privates in QA in that sector. It is believed that the establishment of formal QA agencies in most Sub-Saharan African countries like Ghana was engendered by the advent of the private HEIs and the need to regulate their activities (Effah and Senadza, 2008: 213). This section examines the trend with a view to identifying any possible implications for QA and the quality of EAP.

First, what is private higher education? A review of the literature on private higher education indicates the absence of a universal definition of the term. This is because of the several interpretations that it is subject to. Jones (1992), for instance, identifies private higher education by the fees charged, business behaviour, philanthropy, or increase of private institutions (Jones, 1992 in Effah, 2006). Other determining factors cited include autonomy and funding sources.

Situations in other parts of the world make finding a universal definition even more difficult.

Like in India, private HEIs in Ghana are affiliated to public universities. Such affiliations are, according the National Accreditation Board, meant:

to ensure the attainment and maintenance of high standards for the promotion of academic quality. The relationship is for the mentoring institution to provide academic support and supervision to the mentored institution (NAB, 2010: 2).

This means that not until the attainment of autonomy, the culture of private universities like CUCG and IUCG would largely be influenced by the culture and quality regimes of their mentoring universities. In spite of this, one still expects to find certain distinctive values of the university, as culture in a typical academic context encompasses all those values that distinguish an educational institution from others. A cross-case study of these distinctions between the

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public and private HEIs in Ghana would be conducted later in Chapter 5 of this thesis to examine the extent to which their respective QA practices impact the quality of EAP.

In countries like Belgium and the Netherlands for instance, where welfare-state conditions exist, private universities receive full state funding. This is not the case in the Ghanaian educational landscape.

In Ghana, the issue of state funding for private tertiary educational institutions has become a huge debate in recent times with many demanding that the privates also benefit from Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) sponsored projects because of their vital complementary role of supplementing the efforts of the public ones in meeting the high demand for tertiary education. Under the Education Sector Development Project (EdSep), Private universities with a minimum of 3 years accreditation from the National Accreditation Board were eligible to annually access 2 percent of an amount of US$33.4 million from the World Bank/Government of Ghana’s Teaching and Learning Innovation Fund (TALIF). The fund which was disbursed through competitive proposal writing ended in October 2011. Also, students pursuing accredited programmes in private tertiary institutions qualify to take student loans formerly disbursed through the Social Security and National Insurance Trust and currently under the Students Loan Trust Fund. Altbach (2005) attests that private higher education has since the last quarter of the 20^th century suddenly become the fastest-growing sector of global higher education. He ascribes the difficulty of generalisation about the sector to the wide spectrum of institutions internationally. The lack of ownership or regulation by the state has also been cited as another variation (Effah, 2006). Citing Patillo, Effah suggests that rather than use the source of funding to distinguish private institutions from public ones, the structure and operation of governing boards of institutions should be used as the benchmark. Thus the term, ‘privately-controlled’ has gained currency in the expression of the private-public dichotomy (Patillo, 1990 in Effah, 2006).Contributing to the public-private debate, Geiger (1988) observes that the dichotomy between public and private institutions is usually employed for purposes of record keeping, general discourse, and sometimes scholarly analysis. He rightly notes that ironically,

this simple dichotomy obscures a profoundly important subject: while public sectors can be regarded, directly or indirectly, as creatures of the state, the state also to a considerable

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extent molds the conditions of existence for privately controlled institutions. The state is thus a powerful factor on both sides of the divide.

(Geiger, 1988: 700)

In spite of the apparent lack of consensus on what really constitutes a private higher education sector, their roles in QA and supplementing the efforts of public HEIs in providing education cannot be overemphasized as public-funded institutions alone can never meet the huge demand for higher education. A significant number of private and cross-border higher education institutions already operate in Africa. Even though private institutions were arguably among the first (in terms of date of establishment and quality) in Africa, today they seem to have been overshadowed by the public ones. This situation makes private higher education in Africa seem a new phenomenon, when really it is not. Mabizela (2007) considers what many may term “the private surge” as rather “a resurgence”, arguing that “antecedents of private higher education existed at the same time as the establishment of public sector institutions or even before in some instances” (Mabizela, 2007: 15). Mabizela posits, and rightly so, that “it will be appropriate to talk about the resurgence of PHEIs in some countries and a surge in others.” (p. 17).

In Ghana, there are over 60 private higher education institutions, with membership of the Association of Vice Chancellors of Private Universities currently standing at 25. There are yet more accredited private tertiary education institutions to be members of the association. At a recent interaction with journalists, Kwame Dattey, Executive Secretary of the National Accreditation Board stated that the law establishing the NAB did not limit the number of tertiary educational institutions to be given accreditation, hence their proliferation (Daily Graphic, 2011).

Majority of these institutions are affiliated to local public ones, with a few having affiliations abroad. Currently only one private university, the Valley View University, a faith-based HEI, has received presidential charter to award its own degrees and diplomas. Like in many African countries, the role of the church in the provision of higher education cannot be overemphasized.

Over 10 of the private higher educational institutions in Ghana now are faith-based.

Interestingly, besides the mainline churches like the Catholic, Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian, the Pentecostals and Charismatics have also joined the surge. Examples are the Pentecost University (owned by the Church of Pentecost), and the Central University College (by the International Central Gospel Church). There is only one Islamic University in the country

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now. It was established by the Republic of Iran, and is included in the case sites. As regards the public sector, there are only eight public universities and ten polytechnics. The existence of the eight public universities, the ten polytechnics, and the apparent proliferation of private institutions notwithstanding, demand for tertiary education is still high in Ghana and has outstripped available academic facilities. As a result, the University of Cape Coast for instance had to cut down its student intake for the 2011/2012 academic year by 12 percent. Private higher education providers should therefore be encouraged, as they can be beneficial in many ways, especially in helping solve the access problem. However, since many of them are profit-motivated and occasionally accused of offering poor quality education, they need to be regulated and their quality controlled (Mohamedbhai, 2011). In the next section, the relative standing of the privates is discussed with a view to identifying contextual features that may have implications for QA. This would be followed by a cross-case analysis of the differences between public and private HEIs and how their QA mechanisms affect the quality of EAP later in Chapter 5.

2.3.1 Relative standing of the privates in Ghana

In Ghana, public tertiary institutions enjoy more public repute than their private counterparts.

While public-funded institutions are usually considered the ultimate choice of most senior high school leavers, the private ones often tend to be ‘the last resort.’ The reasons are not farfetched:

Whereas the public ones are better positioned in terms of both human and other relevant academic resources and still enjoy their long-won academic glories; most of the privates are comparatively young and not well endowed and sometimes depend on the public ones for lecturers. Many privates have also been accused of using unqualified academic staff. This was confirmed recently by the Executive Secretary of the National Accreditation Board, Kwame Dattey when he disclosed that the NAB had found out that some private tertiary education institutions in Ghana were operating with unqualified lecturers and staff, while others admitted students without passes in the requisite core subjects (Daily Graphic, 2011). According to him, in one university college a NAB commissioned quality audit team discovered that 22 students who were about to graduate had not met the qualification requirements. As he did not name any particular private university, many members of the Ghanaian public suggested that in future such offending institutions should be named and shamed. While Vice Chancellors of public universities complain of dwindling state funding in the face of increased demand for tertiary

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education, and thus call on government to allow them to charge “realistic fees”; the private for-profit ones have the liberty to do so. Currently, government policy only allows public universities a 5 percent foreign student quota and additional 5 percent quota for Ghanaian-sponsored fee-paying students (Effah, 2006). For some time now, the NCTE-approved annual fee increment ceiling for publicly-funded tertiary institutions has been 10 percent. A recent 33 to 54 percent increase in academic facility user fees (AFUF) by authorities of the University of Ghana, Legon led to student demonstrations at the beginning of the 2011/2012 academic year (GNA, 2011). One thing though, that makes private tertiary institutions more attractive than their public counterparts is the flexibility of their course offering and timetabling (Effah, 2006).

For instance, a number of the privates offer ICT, Marketing, Banking, and Finance – courses which are currently considered more demand-driven. Also, the running of courses in the morning, afternoon, evening, and weekends by private institutions like the Data Link College and NIIT for instance affords workers who want to further their studies there the opportunity of choosing which sessions suit them best (Ibid.). The public universities still follow their conventional time-tables, but have become more aggressive in running sandwich and distance programmes.

In the next three subsections, an overview of the application of quality to language education is provided to help establish the relevant background for exploring the effectiveness of these QA mechanisms in enhancing the teaching and learning of EAP.