Uniform tuition fees for EAC students good for integration

Apr 28, 2016

South Africa is joined by Angola, Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe as members of SADC.

In 2014, more than 100 members of the Inter-University Council for East Africa (IUCEA) resolved to levy the same tuition fees for all students from the East African Community (EAC) bloc joining their respective universities.

Traditionally, on average, universities charged international students between 10% and 30% more tuition fees than the local ones.

In the same year, President Yoweri Museveni directed the Ministry of Education to harmonise tuition fees for all university students from East African states, saying it is a shame for higher institutions of learning in Uganda to charge higher tuition fees for students from other states at a time of regional integration.

While addressing the press at Makerere University in August 2014, education minister Jessica Alupo explained why the government had taken that position.  

"Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Burundi were already charging same fees for all students from the region. Uganda has done the same in the spirit of comradeship. East Africans are the same people and there is no reason why they should pay different fees," she said.

Public universities in Uganda such as Makerere University and Kyambogo University have heeded the directive and are now charging uniform fees for East African and South Sudanese students.

The same can be said of Rwanda, where at the largest public university; the University of Rwanda, East African students pay lower tuition fees than other international students. Students from the EAC member states pay Rwf200,000 (about sh900,000), while other international students pay Rwf500,000 (about sh2.2m) for sciences and medicine programmes and Rwf400,000 (about sh1.8m) for humanities.

Kenyan public universities such as Kenyatta and Moi universities also have adhered to the directive. However, first- year Kenyan students pursuing bachelor of science in civil, electrical, mechanical, geospatial and environmental and bio-systems engineering programmes at University of Nairobi's College of architecture and engineering pay Ksh184,700.00 (about sh6.2m) Foreign students, according to the university's website, including those from East Africa, pay 20% more.

 

Move good for integration

Silas Onyango, a professor of financial engineering and the Dean of the School of Business and Public Management at KCA University in Kenya, says the harmonisation of tuition fees for East African students bodes well with regional integration efforts.

Onyango said beyond the fees, curricula across the region should be harmonised as well.

"If you are doing engineering in Makerere University or Mbarara (University of Science and Technology), you should be able to transfer to University of Nairobi on credit. For instance, I was in Britain for four years as a PhD student, I went to universities outside the UK, I went to Greece, Italy. They did not bother where I came from. I was supported."

Onyango is also a visiting professor of mathematics at the International University of East Africa (IUEA) for the next two years, says such interventions will help efforts towards a federation.

"Once people know that they are brothers and sisters, there should be no discrimination in terms of fees. This will be one of the key pillars of integration and oneness of the East African Community bloc," he said.

Fred Mukasa Mbidde, a member of East African Legislative Assembly (EALA), says the move to harmonise tuition fees is in tandem with the East African Community Common Market.

"The integration of the East African region has four pillars; the customs union, common market protocol, monetary union and ultimately the political federation," he says.

The East African Community Common Market, established under the EAC treaty, provides for "Four Freedoms", namely the free movement of goods; labour; services; and capital. Mbidde says education qualifies as a service.

"The customs union and the common market protocol are already in implementation—and the common market is about the free movement of persons in the region, which includes students."

Mbidde agrees with Onyango that the EAC regional bloc should harmonise more than just fees, but the qualifications as well.

"We cannot have East Africans moving goods across the borders of the five partner states without attracting extra levies under the common market protocol, why can't we do the same for education?"

"The future of East Africa is one. We should start moving towards that direction. When you harmonise, there should be no discrimination against the citizens of another regional bloc," he says.

The move was, however, unpopular among many private universities, with many saying it was unrealistic given that they fund their own operations.

In the aftermath of the directive, Prof. John Kasenene, the vice-chancellor of Mountains of the Moon University explained why he did not approve of the directive.

"It can't happen because universities are not at the same level," he stated.

Prof. Kweku Bentil, the vice-provost of Agha Khan University and Prof Ezra Mishambi Twesigomwe from Kabale University shared similar sentiments.

Indeed, several universities in the region still charge students from other East African nations more.

A senior official at one of the leading private universities in Uganda, who preferred anonymity, said the governments and organs of the EAC have no business regulating the tuition fees levied by universities.

"We operate in a free market, so it is not fair that people begin telling us how much we should charge or not," he reasoned.

Mbidde, however, disagrees with people who are against the move of all universities levying same fees for the East African students they admit.

"The educationists should be serious. We have chosen the path of integration, which is not going to be an easy thing," says Mbidde.

 

What happens in other regional blocs?

So what happens in other regional blocs on the continent? In several South African universities, students from the Southern African Development Community bloc pay uniform fees as South African nationals, except that they still pay international levies.

South Africa is joined by Angola, Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe as members of SADC.

At the University of Pretoria, where students who are citizens of SADC countries pay the same tuition fee as charged for South African citizens, will part with international levy of R2,700 (about sh600,000) this year.

SADC students at the University of KwaZulu-Natal who pay uniform tuition fees as South Africans, have to part with R800 (about sh178,000) per semester as an international levy. The University of Cape Town too has a similar arrangement.

The international levy is supposed to cater for the special requirements that students from other countries require.

"International students required administrative support (e.g. with accommodation, with compulsory health insurance required by Home Affairs and with study permits). The university provided the support through the International Academic Programmes Office," explained officials of the University of Cape Town in a report to the South African parliament's Portfolio Committee on Higher Education and Training on its oversight visit to the university in 2013.

"The services provided to international came at a cost, which in 2012 was R3,000 per student. In regard to tuition and accommodation fees, the university adhered to SADC protocol as well as the provision in Higher Education Act, No. 101 of 1997 subsection 40(g). The levy payable by SADC students was commensurate to the services the students received at the university that the local students did not have access to," the report explained further.

 

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