Cabinet has approved a policy that will see state-sponsored students in universities pay for their own accommodation and welfare. This was long overdue and Makerere University should go ahead to implement the policy immediately.
A big proportion of government grants was being spent on the welfare of few students at the expense of research and academic programmes. For example, most of Makerere’s 30,000 students are on evening programmes but the university cannot afford a thermo power generator. Consequently, as power rationing intensified last semester most lecturers were unable to complete the syllabi. Makerere, the largest and oldest university in the region, has not featured in the search for HIV vaccine. Therefore, it was wrong for students’ accommodation and academic issues to compete for the same resources.
Hopefully tuition fees from privately-sponsored students were not being spent on feeding state-sponsored students. If so, could this partly explain the university’s many attempts to increase the fees? At least the new policy should make it less necessary to raise the fees and help to improve academic standards.
However this will be possible only if government maintains the current level of funding to public universities. If the aim is to allow government send less money, the benefits of the policy will be equally less. The universities will remain cash-strapped and continue to do only what they are able to do today. For example in the 1960-80s all Makerere students used to get allowances for transport, books and living in addition to free tuition, accommodation and good meals comprising chicken, eggs, milk, bread and butter. In the 1990s government revised the menu and scrapped all student allowances. But this was followed with reduced funding.
If the money saved under a new policy is withdrawn completely, instead of being re-allocated to boosting research and academic programmes, then that policy is as good as non-existent and the country will just be moving in circles.
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