Webster University closing its doors in Ghana after 10 years

By Zaahida Abdul-Wahid

East Legon, Accra – Thursday, December 14, 2023: Webster University’s Accra, Ghana campus is set to close at the end of December 2023, Christa E. Sanders, campus director of Webster said this at the event on “Environmental sustainability and community involvement” yesterday.

Webster’s Ghana campus which held its first official day of classes on Tuesday, March 18^th, 2014 is finally set to close down after ten years of being in Ghana. The campus has hosted both international and local students with five major programs and two minor programs offered – an MBA, an MA in In­ternational Relations and three undergraduate degrees in Inter­national Business, International Relations, and Media Communi­cations. Programs offered at the Ghana campus are aligned with Webster’s campus­es in the U.S. and abroad and are said to offer access to an American-style higher education.

Christa E. Sanders said the school had graduated its final year students early this month to allow the continuing students choose their preferred campus to study abroad after the close-down.

“We are closing our doors in Ghana. Our students will be going to US, Europe, … or online, and a lot of that has to do with the economy right now. The local economy has become very challenging to continue to provide this quality of education and experience of study in abroad,” she explained.

This comes two years after Webster’s Thailand campus closed, leaving students once again with the difficult decision of whether to continue their studies elsewhere.

In an article cited on the Webster official website, Webster’s Director of Public Relations Patrick Giblin said in a statement on March 10, 2023 about the closing that” Webster Ghana has faced the same challenges as many U.S.-based institutions, including the pandemic, declining enrollment and high inflation. As a result of these challenges, Webster University will begin to teach out”.

He also noted in the same article about the positives of the Ghana campus in its early existence and stated that “the campus has evolved into a vibrant social hub that hosts community discussions and special events on important regional and international topics, ranging from women’s rights to debates around diversity, equity and inclusion,”

Director Sanders said the school is helping students transferring to go to any of their abroad campus with their visa processes and those staying back can continue their classes online.

Until the onset of COVID-19, the tertiary education system in Ghana expanded tremendously over the past decades. By 2012, there were more than 126 public and private universities accredited by the National Accreditation Board (NAB) in Ghana (six public universities, 49 private universities—two of which were chartered and had been given presidential authority to award degrees, 38 Teacher Training Colleges (TTCs) that had been upgraded to university status, 18 Nursing Training Colleges, and 10 Polytechnics. In addition to these, there were several private universities that had not received accreditation, but running several postsecondary education programs. The total number of tertiary students increased from merely 16,161 in 1980 to 444,000 in 2017.

According to the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC), there are today 13 Public Universities, eight Technical Universities and 81 Private Tertiary Institutions offering degree programs in Ghana.