Question

In not more than thousand (100) words write an essay on the topic “ the impact of the covid19 pandemic on university in Ghana .

Answer 1

The pandemic Covid-19 have severely affected African countries like Ghana. According to UNESCO, 9.8 million African students are experiencing disruption in their studies due to the closure of higher education institutions. The danger of contamination has triggered institutions to move their courses online. However, going online is not that simple on a continent where only 24% of the population has access to the internet, and poor connectivity, exorbitant costs and frequent power interruptions are serious challenges.

Increasingly, universities are partnering with internet providers and governments to overcome this critical challenge by negotiating zero-rated access to specific educational and information websites.

At the institutional level, a number of universities, such as the public University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa and private universities such as Ashesi University in Ghana, are offering data bundles to their students and staff. Going digital effectively requires substantial coordination with, and swift support from, institutional and national service providers, regional entities, international partners, NGOs, the private sector and ICT providers to rally behind such tools and platforms at little or no cost.

It is imperative to seriously seek alternative means and approaches in order not to leave behind students with little or no access to electronic communication. The painful reality of the digital divide on the continent has to be strategically and systematically managed: reaching out to millions of ‘marginalised’ students must become a national priority in this time of crisis.

While this is taking shape, institutions need to develop a comprehensive plan and a rigorous follow-up scheme to ensure that academics and students make proper use of digital platforms. This task cannot be left solely to the discretion of individual actors.

Apprehensions and opportunities

The continent’s meagre institutional and national capacities, weak healthcare systems and gregarious way of life may prove catastrophic should the virus continue to spread at the same rate and intensity as in other critically affected countries. The impact of such a calamitous scenario is easy to imagine and frightening to predict.

The effects of the pandemic on Africa's nearly 2,000 higher education institutions cannot be overemphasised. If the crisis persists, it may seriously impact the commitment of governments toward higher education in the face of competing demands from the healthcare, business and other priority sectors serving vulnerable segments of society.

Many students and their families do not
have access to the internet; indeed, the Multiple
Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) 2017/18 indicates
that only 22% of households in the country have
access to the internet at home and only 15% have
access to a computer. In comparison, TV coverage
(60.4%) and radio coverage (57.2%) are much
higher across the country, with radio coverage more
widespread in those regions with higher levels of
economic deprivation. In this context, internet and
TV based learning serve to accentuate inequalities
in access to quality education between the rich and
poor and urban and rural students based on their
ability to access the internet and TV platforms.
Radio broadcasts become a much more equitable
tool for reaching learners in more deprived areas.
Other factors affecting equity in access may include
economic deprivations at household-level, lack
of electricity, high illiteracy rates, lack of local
language instruction, and lack of a supportive
learning environment in general. Even where
television does exist, children may not have access
to programmes during specified broadcast times.
Crowding children around a single set may also
contravene social distancing protocols. In multi-
occupant households, it may be difficult to identify
a specific and consistent space conducive to a child’s
learning.
Quality is another aspect of education service
delivery that becomes more difficult to measure in
the COVID response. A number of factors present
ongoing challenges including: lack of appropriate
teacher training for distance and remote teaching;
lack of assessment tools and mechanisms for
measuring student learning through remote
and distance modalities; insufficient parental
understanding and engagement in remote/distance
learning practices; and a mismatch of teacher skills
for classroom delivery and virtual/remote service
delivery.
Critical to achieving quality service delivery is the
teacher. But classroom teachers trained and hired
to interact daily face-to-face with students are not
necessarily sufficiently trained or skilled at teaching
remotely through on-line platforms that constrain
direct interaction and limit visible cues that normally
aid teachers in assessing learner understanding
and acquisition in the classroom. Remote learning
requires a different skills set and therefore different
training for a teacher. Appropriate teacher training
and effective coordination at national and local
levels is required in addition to tools for continuous
assessment of both teacher and learner performance
through remote and distance platforms. To bridge
the skills gap, a series of purposeful and targeted
capacity building programmes for teachers and
teacher trainers will be necessary particularly as
the 25,000 teachers that are currently not working
due to school closures re-engage with the learning
processes of students.

Further, global support to higher education, research collaborations and partnership schemes, most often directed at critical areas such as strengthening PhD programmes, could be massively scaled back.

African higher education institutions are expected to do more in the months ahead while concurrently battling across many fronts. This includes addressing the more immediate challenges of the threat of COVID-19, seeking improved mechanisms for online delivery and planning to address the long-term effects of the pandemic on institutional capacity.

In the aftermath of the pandemic, cost recovery through financial contribution from beneficiaries in the form of fees or loan repayments will not be easy, since economies will have seriously declined – if they indeed survive a total collapse.

The expansion of public universities will be abruptly frozen. Private providers, which are dependent on tuition and other fees, will also be hard hit, with many facing downsizing or even closure, as they receive little or no support from governments.

On a positive note, this threat – and the approaches to overcome it – may be catalytic for long-lasting changes in African higher education. Among others, diversified means of educational delivery, in particular a non-residential model, may become more mainstream, more acceptable and more respectable.

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