The Harsh Reality of University Hostel Matters on the Less Privileged

By News Desk

Another season of frustration across university campuses is here. Students from less endowed families gnash their teeth in getting to terms with the exorbitant hostel fares of private businessmen simply because that is the system being nourished by the university administrators.

As George Washington Carver put it “Education is the key that unlocks the golden door to freedom”, the reverse is experienced as the universities authorities make it glaring status that their kind of education would not give freedom.

Why should a first year university student have to suffer so much to get accommodation to study? How would the university authorities feel, if those they are admitting to impart knowledge to be denied the opportunity to learn in dignity?

Common sense is not asking for too much. Traditional authorities were magnanimous enough to release large acreage of lands to these institutions. What prevent them from developing these lands for student hostels such that there would still be vacant rooms awaiting future increments in admissions. That is how pace setters like Dr Kwame Nkrumah did it. Paradoxically, most of the administrators today in these universities were product of Nkrumah’s 2 per room era, even free.

A voice whispers into my ears that say wickedness and demonic machinations are at play as the hostels that charge such exorbitant fees belong to the same managers of our universities on one hand and the politicians on the other. These behaviors make them reluctant to pursue any genuine national course, simply because they may lose or not get what they desired.

As a university, corporate bonds can be sought even from the international finance markets to put up these houses for students.

A student pays between 4000 and 5000 Ghana cedis for a four occupiers single rooms for a year. What at all would make any entity that is interested in providing 100 percent occupancy lose?

Until we eschew greed in this country, we can never move forward. The child who suffers in the hands of those in authority today lives to entrench the tradition. But they must remember their souls would never rest because the earth we live on today is a very balanced scale.