European Journal of Education Studies ISSN: 2501 - 1111 ISSN-L: 2501 - 1111 Available on-line at: www.oapub.org/edu Copyright © The Author(s). All Rights Reserved. © 2015 – 2018 Open Access Publishing Group 231 doi: 10.5281/zenodo.1435016 Volume 5 │ Issue 2 │ 2018 INVESTIGATING THE EMERGING TREND OF ACCOMMODATION CHARGES OF PRIVATE HOSTELS IN GHANA: A SURVEY AT KWAME NKRUMAH UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (KNUST), UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION WINNEBA, KUMASI-CAMPUS (UEW-K) AND KUMASI TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY (KTU), GHANA Joseph Marfo, Ezekiel Mensah Martey i , Seth Adjei-Poku Christ Apostolic University College, School of Technology, Department of Information and Communication Technology, Kumasi, Ghana Abstract: The main purpose of this study was to investigate the emerging trend of private hostels’ accommodation charges, its effect on students pursuing tertiary education. Annual accommodation charges from academic year 2010-2018 per student with 4 students in a single room were collected from the management of private hostels sampled at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), University of Education, Winneba, Kumasi–Campus (UEW-K) and Kumasi Technical University (KTU). Again, questionnaires were administered to 400 students who have rented rooms at the private hostels. 381 out of 400 questionnaires were usable. The accommodation charges were analyzed using MATLAB software to find out relative increase (trend) of charges from 2010-2018. Trend models to forecast future values were built. SPSS was used to analyze the completed questionnaires. It was found out that the relative increase of accommodation charges of private hostels at KNUST have been more than 100% (108.8%) between 2010-2018 academic years with 2010 as base year followed by that at UEW-K (44.0%). That of KTU has been the slowest (26.6%) between 2010-2018. Again, it was found from the study that there has been a rapid increase of accommodation charges which has led to higher charges. The trend model for forecasting the annual relative percentage increase of accommodation charges of the three universities was found to be      The 6.6850% means that there has been an average increase of 6.6850% accommodation charge of the 3 universities every academic year