Freshers first accommodation policy to start in 2020/2021 academic year

University of Ghana is set to roll out a freshers-first accommodation policy to guarantee residence for students in their first year.

This was disclosed by the Pro-Vice-Chancellor of Academic and Student Affairs at the University, Prof. Nana Aba Appiah Amfo in an interview with UniversNews.

She says that the move is intended to prioritize residence for newly admitted students and it follows a recommendation from a committee that was set up to find ways to solve the University’s accommodation challenges.

“When I came into office, there were discussions on the residence challenges concerning accommodation and there was a committee established to look at these issues on how it can be resolved in a short time. There was a recommendation from the committee which suggested that the management should consider prioritizing the fresher’s because they are most vulnerable in numerous cases,” she said.

What does this mean?

With this move, continuing students of the University would lose their residential status at the end of every academic year and join thousands of fresh students to struggle for accommodation on campus.

However, about 50% of the bed stock in both the traditional halls and the University of Ghana Enterprise Limited Halls (Limann, Kwapong, Sey and Nelson) would be reserved for freshers.

Currently, the University of Ghana has space for just about 13,000 students (post-graduates inclusive) on campus out of the over 40,000 students enrolled.

Is this new?

Though sudden, the freshers-first residential policy may not entirely be a new intervention in tertiary education in Ghana.

Before the last decade, the University of Ghana run the in-out-out-in system which provided accommodation to only freshmen and final year students.

That arrangement was however changed in line with the University of Ghana’s Strategic Policy on student accommodation.

A similar system is currently being run in the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology where only freshmen are given residence on campus with continuing students resorting to private hostels at the outskirts of the campus.

Students reaction

Some students who shared their thoughts with UniversNews concerning this decision by University authorities were not happy.

“I really struggled before securing accommodation on campus. The thought of going through it again every year for my remaining three years here is heartbreaking,” one Eric Yeboah told UniversNews

“The University should rather look at solving the situation and not giving us a quick fix. This decision will not yield any proper result and will not solve the accommodation issues on campus,” one Angela Nyarko said