There are on-going agitations by students of the University for Development Studies (UDS) on various Facebook groups over what they call ‘outrageous increase of fees’ by the school authorities.
In an interview with myJCR News, some of the students who want to remain anonymous lamented over the high increment in fees for the 2013/2014 Academic Year. “Level 400 students who paid GH¢480 last year are now being asked to pay GH¢614 which is too much for us”, a student told one of our reporters.
The students leadership has issued a notice to all students instructing them to halt payment of fees with immediate effect till further notice.
“What we fear most has happened to us but that will not deter us”, a student leader (name withheld) told myJCR News. “We want to put on record that the fees for incoming Freshmen and those going to Level 200 as well as all Diploma Students were not negotiated for due to the schools new policy on fees”, he continued.
According to the student leaders, the Level 300 and 400 fees were negotiated and several attempts to have it reduced resulted in the delay in the release of the schedule of fees for the Academic Year.
They continued that the previous SRC executives signed an agreement with UK based John Smith International to provide students with books for an amount now published as GH¢100.
However, all the current SRC executives agreed that the book support be scrapped off as they battle the 20% increment in fees. They proposed that rather than billing every student with the said amount, John Smith should set up book stands on our campuses so that students will purchase the books from them. “But what we see is a complete disregard of our demands”, an SRC executive lamented.
Moving forward, the local NUGS and SRC executives of UDS are entreating all students to halt payment of the fees for now for the various SRC executives to go and discuss one more time with school authorities.
