The University of Ghana, Legon will reduce its student admission for the 2003/2004 academic year by 40 per cent as compared to the 2002/2003 academic year. The reduction is due to inadequate facilities. The Vice Chancellor of the University, Professor Kwadwo Asenso-Okyere disclosed this when he inaugurated an international students hostel for the Ghana Medical School in Accra.

He said the university would continue to train high-level human resource through quality education and pursue diligent research and effective dissemination of the results to reduce poverty, increase prosperity and improve human livelihood.

To achieve the university?s goals, there was the need to expand its infrastructure to reach out to many of the qualified applicants who want to study there. ?It is important to empower the university to do more to accelerate Ghana?s development?, Prof Asenso-Okyere said.

He therefore appealed to the government and entrepreneurs to invest in student residential accommodation to ease pressure on accommodation facilities in the country?s universities.

The Vice Chancellor said the University of Ghana has, over the years, experienced a phenomenal increase in student population and that it is very unfortunate that the increase has not been commensurate with expansion in facilities.

The over ?2 billion hostel facility, which can house close to 200 international students, was funded from the Medical School?s own internally generated resources, with support from the Income Generating Consultancy Centre (IGCC) , a body that co-ordinates income-generating activities of the departments of the school.

It has a 38-room facility for 76 students, with four of the rooms being self-contained with fully-fitted kitchens, a large furnished lounge, a reading room and a fully-equipped launderette at the ground floor which is friendly to the physically challenged.

International students who will live in the hostel will be expected to pay $35 a week from the next academic year.

The vice-chancellor said that the hostel at Korle-Bu is the second one in the University of Ghana and that the first one, which is on the main campus at Legon, has considerably eased pressure on international students with a spill over to Ghanaian students.

The Dean of the UGMS, Prof C.N. B Tagoe, said the medical school has given approval for an increase up student intake from the present 85 to 120 per annum and it is envisaged that 20- 25 per cent of the intake will be foreign students.

He said the school and the College of Health Sciences Administration have decided to channel most of the assistance from the GETFund into the provision of modern residential accommodation for students.