The Executive Director of Africa Education Watch (Eduwatch), Kofi Asare, has challenged the government to review the implementation of its No-Fees-Stress policy to ensure that the poorest students are not excluded from tertiary education because they cannot afford admission fees upfront.
Mr Asare said although the policy had benefited more than 320,000 students at a cost of about GH¢900 million over two academic years, its current implementation had left a critical gap: students who could not raise the initial money required to secure their admission could be left out altogether.
He described the current arrangement as “No Fee Stress Lite” and called for a transition to what he termed “No Fee Stress Proper”, under which eligible students would have their tertiary admission and academic fees waived upfront rather than being required to pay first and subsequently receive refunds.
Government figures indicate that GH¢900.353 million had been provided to support 317,841 students under the No-Fees-Stress policy as of July 2026.
The policy, launched by President John Dramani Mahama in July 2025, provides for the payment of academic-related fees for first-year students in public universities, technical universities, colleges of education and nursing training institutions.
However, Mr Asare argues that the success of the intervention should not be measured primarily by the number of students who receive refunds, but by how many young people who would otherwise have been denied tertiary education are actually able to enrol.
According to him, the refund-based approach risks benefiting students who are able to mobilise the initial fees, while students from the poorest households who cannot raise the money in the first place may remain at home despite securing admission.
“On judgement day, the true measure of No Fee Stress should not be how many students receive refunds, but how many students who would otherwise be excluded are given the opportunity to enter tertiary education in the first place,” he said in a Facebook post on Sunday.
Mr Asare said Eduwatch had repeatedly urged the government to target the intervention at students who genuinely needed financial assistance, but the government had chosen a broader approach.
He nevertheless said that if government had the financial resources to sustain the policy at its current scale, the poorest students should not be left behind simply because they lacked the money to pay their admission fees upfront.
The concern goes to the heart of the original rationale for the policy. The NDC’s 2024 manifesto promised a “No-Academic-Fee” policy for all first-year students in public tertiary institutions under the No-Fees-Stress initiative.
President Mahama subsequently launched the policy as an intervention intended to remove financial barriers to entry into public tertiary institutions, arguing that some qualified young people were being denied the opportunity to pursue higher education because their families could not afford the upfront fees.
Mr Asare believes that objective will only be fully achieved if government addresses the financial barrier at the point of admission.
He is therefore calling for government to absorb the fees of prospective students who have gained admission but are unable to pay the required upfront costs, particularly those from severely disadvantaged backgrounds.
For him, the test of the policy is ultimately not how much money government spends or how many refunds it processes, but whether a qualified student who would otherwise stay home because of poverty is able to cross the admission barrier and enter tertiary education.
“Let the policy speak. Let opportunity reach those who need it most,” he said.
Source: www.kumasimail.com
