Thousands of students were gripped by fear this week when the Students Loan Trust announced a proposal to cut funds to students pursuing courses deemed irrelevant to the country’s development.

Quite a huge number of students in the tertiary institutions rely heavily on the state loans to finance their education.

But at the 2015 annual general meeting of the trust in Elmina, President of the Association of Africa Higher Education Financing Agencies, Charles Ringers stressed that the time has come to finance “faculties that are resonating with problems of society”.

The controversial proposal however attracted avalanche of criticisms and strong opposing largely from students.

But on Joy FM’s Ghana Connect Friday, CEO of the Student Loan Trust, Mrs. Sheila Naah-Boamah clarified the misconceptions, explaining that the trust has no intention of implementing the proposal now.

She was joined in the studio discussion by a final year archaeology student from the University of Ghana Isaac Nebjoh; Courage, a graduate students studying leadership at the University of Professional Studies and Mohammed Hardi, a 3^rd year accounting student from the Accra Polytechnic who is also the SRC President. The show hosted by Evans Mensah also had in the studio Sheila a Ghanaian student studying in Morocco, and Charles Ringers.

For such a policy to be implemented, it has to receive the endorsement of Ghanaians, Naah-Boamah said, adding that the law which establishes the Trust does not support the proposal in its current form.

She further issued a disclaimer that at the annual meeting attended by stakeholders of various trust funds across the continent, Deputy Education Minister Okudzeto Ablakwa made it clear that government would not buy into the proposal.

Nonetheless, Naah-Boamah maintained that stakeholders within the educational sector need to acknowledge that resources for financing education are scarce.

In the wake of the scarce resources, she said the country ought to take stock, going forward, adopting the best practices and dropping the worst practices.

She is convinced the proposal would help make the growing young population relevant in future.

There is therefore the need to consider “skewing resources to courses the nation will describe as relevant be it classical or agriculture”, she emphasized.

Nonetheless, her position was not shared by the student panelists.

For Hardy, every course being offered at the tertiary level is relevant and would be unfortunate to declare some unimportant.

Adding to Hardi’s submission, Courage encouraged the Trust to perhaps increase its fund base to cover more students as well as improve the amount given to beneficiaries to properly meet their needs.

For Sheila, education is the only way to eliminate poverty. And with the benefit of the Moroccan experience where students are even given ‘non-refundable’ stipends, she would not support a cut in the number of courses to be sponsored by the Trust.

Isaac decided to up the debate, questioning how the present generation could make a decision as to which course would be relevant in the future and take such a decision for the unborn generation.

He argued that every school is now offering business related courses, and predicted that very soon the system would be saturated with persons with business background. What then would be the relevance of the Trust if many in the coming generation resort to pursuing archaeology as the way out in developing the country, he queried.

But Charles Ringers strongly contested that position. To say that the future is unknown therefore we should not plan is a “mistake”, he stated.

Africans should be able to “imagine and determine” what the continent requires and mark out development plans and work towards achieving them, he said.

Capping her argument, Naah-Baah did not waive her position on the need for the Students Loan Trust to prioritize course it sponsors so that it can use the little resources to make the best out of the potentials the nation has.