More than 40,000 Ghanaian students have received financial support under the government’s flagship ‘No Fees Stress’ policy, according to the Chief Executive Officer of the Students Loan Trust Fund (SLTF), Dr. Saajida Shiraz.
In a social media update on Thursday, July 10, 2025, Dr. Shiraz announced that a total of 40,233 students have been reimbursed so far, while many more are undergoing validation and pre-audit processes to enable further disbursements.
“It’s a good time to be a tertiary student in Ghana,” she stated, reflecting the policy’s success in easing the financial burden on students.
The ‘No Fees Stress’ initiative, a key campaign promise by President John Dramani Mahama in 2024, is aimed at waiving academic user fees for all first-year students enrolled in public tertiary institutions.
The policy covers students at public universities, technical universities, colleges of education, and health training institutions. It seeks to remove financial barriers and increase access to tertiary education across the country.
During the official launch of the policy in Koforidua on July 4, Dr. Shiraz shared that over 148,000 students had accessed the No Fees Stress portal, with 124,338 successfully completing their applications.
Tertiary institutions had submitted enrollment data for 135,255 students, and as of the launch, 49,956 students had been validated for reimbursement.
She described the student response as “overwhelming” and emphasized the collaborative efforts between the SLTF, the Ministry of Education, tertiary institutions, and civil society to ensure the program’s success.
At the launch of the initiative, President Mahama stated that the new policy goes beyond a budget line item, calling it a moral, constitutional, and developmental imperative.
