Massification in Ghanaian Higher Education: Implications for Pedagogical Quality, Equity Control and Assessment

Abstract

This paper examined the quality of higher education in Ghana within the context of significant educational expansion in institutions of higher learning. It identifies bottlenecks in Ghanaian Public Higher Education impairing Government’s policy on Higher Education to expand access without compromising quality monitoring. Social justice and economic sufficiency discourses in Higher Education as a right have precipitated massive student intake. Large student enrolment however has not correlated with requisite funding leading to staff attrition rate, deterioration of physical infrastructure etc. This mismatch between massive student intake and dwindling number of academic staff and poor infrastructure contributes to undermining pedagogical quality, equity and effective student assessment. Findings from this survey suggest even though quality assurance issues are on course in Ghanaian universities, nevertheless, unless there is a new paradigm to funding public universities, teaching quality, equity and student assessments can become undermined.