Let us provide bursaries

MAKERERE UNIVERSITY will admit government sponsored students on district quota basis starting next academic year. The university will also raise the number of state sponsored students from 2000 to 4000 following a proposal by president Yoweri Museveni during his re-election campaign. Makerere now admits 14,000 students. Only 2000 of these are on state scholarship, most of them on professional courses. They are the best performers in A-levels and normally go for professional courses. Still this is a tiny fraction of the qualifying students, and normally from the traditionally best schools located in a few districts. The quota system may help if properly implemented. One suggestion is to give half of the 4000 places directly to best students irrespective of their origins and the other half distributed among districts on quota basis taking into account the population. This will ensure areas with good schools are not unfairly treated and those with largely low quality schools are given a chance. The other would be for government to maintain the direct sponsorship for best students but also give scholarship grants to districts conditional on counterpart funding from districts. The point is to access higher education to as many deserving students as possible. A professional course at Makerere would cost about 1.5m/= a year. Most districts can raise 50m/= to pay for fees for 30 students. Government should force districts include bursaries in their budgets. We must build a culture of providing scholarships. After all most Ugandans in senior positions have benefited from some scholarship. We can take leaf from the Kabaka Foundation which pays fees for over 2000 students at various levels from modest local and foreign contributions. ends