Educational Analyst, Peter Anti says stakeholders within the educational space must work together to provide a long-lasting solution to the perennial accommodation challenges in the various universities.

His comments come on the back of the worsening accommodation situation which has left scores of freshers stranded due to their inability to secure bed spaces on the university campuses.

The first batch of beneficiaries of the free SHS is entering the universities this academic year and the number of students admitted exceeds the capacity the schools can contain

Accommodation has always been an issue for universities and this academic year is no different. However, the effects of Covid-19 may compound the worries of these tertiary institutions.

In the university of Ghana, some students who managed to complete the online residential application were disappointed when after paying their fees were told that the beds they registered for were not supposed to be available for selection.

Speaking on the AM Show, Peter Anti who is the Executive Director of The Institute for Education Studies said:

"We know every year a lot of students who apply are not able to access tertiary education because of the accommodation issue. The capacity of our tertiary institutions, basically the public institutions are not able to admit the number of students that apply every year and even those that they are able to admit we are witnessing their challenges".

He noted that if the government and school authorities were to deliberately embark on an infrastructural policy, it would help in dealing with the age-old accommodation problems the nation’s tertiary institutions face.

"We should try to set satellite campuses across the length and breadth of the country. That practice whereby every person would want to move from wherever they are to the centre of campus is also creating this particular problem," he suggested.

He went on to cite the example of the University of Cape Coast that is currently using Ndoum's University as a satellite campus which accommodates about 1000 students.

With the outbreak of Covid-19, most tertiary institutions migrated their teaching and learning modules online and suggested that the universities should continue utilizing online teaching and learning.

"It is time that universities make good use of these platforms so that you also roll out some of these programs online. They will not have to come back to campus. We want to extend tertiary education to a larger number of people and we have to be innovative about it.

"We cannot stick to the traditional conventional way of always admitting 2000/3000 students on campus and leaving a chunk of the students out there and asking them to find their way wherever they want to go in terms of their tertiary education," he concluded.