Figures gathered by the Business Day indicate that three major universities— the University of Ghana, Legon, University of Cape Coast (UCC) and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) all bagged over GHS 25,825,000 as proceeds from the sale of admission forms in the 2015/2016 academic year.
The three universities announced the sale of admission forms late last year with Legon selling its form for 175 Ghana cedis, while UCC and KNUST sold theirs for 180 Ghana cedis each.
Even though the three institutions picked just about one-third of the applicants, they received this whopping sum from students who applied to read various courses in the country’s major tertiary institutions.
The University of Ghana which received a little over 55,000 applicants made GHS 9,625,000 from the sale of forms alone; while the UCC and KNUST which received 43,000 and 47, 000 applicants made GHS7,740,000 and GHS8,460,000 respectively.
Currently, most tertiary institutions in Ghana do not make partial refund of application fees to students after been denied admission.
In the 2013/2014 academic year, applications alone was increased by over 70 percent, with the University of Ghana receiving a total of 52,202 undergraduate.
In the same university, sub degree applications was made up of 48,445 Ghanaians and 3,757 international students as compared to 36,537 applications received in the previous academic year.
Despite the constraint on facilities and staff, the University of Ghana managed to admit more students with 14,695 applicants made of 6,489 females and 8,207 males.
The university also increased the intake of graduate students by 15 percent with 3,630 out of 5,370 applicants offered admissions into various post graduate programmes.
Out of the over 3,000 international applications, 619 students were offered admission.
Over the years, some stakeholders in the education sector have called for expansion in the government tertiary institutions to enable them admit students into new fields of study.
