New report proposes doubling of university fees

By Conan Businge

Lino Ochen’s dream was to become an enterprising civil engineer. He held onto his dream even after the death of his father in 2007. He wants to complete his studies and support his four siblings.

His mother is a Police Constable attached to Nsambya Police barracks, and cannot afford Onen’s tuition fees at Makerere University.

He won a scholarship, but it is about to be terminated because he cannot fulfill his end of the bargain which is paying 25% of fees.

He is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Industrial and Civil engineering in a joint study programme between Makerere University and Belgorod State Technology University in Russia.

He has to study the first year at Makerere and then travel to Russia. However, Ochen is now at crossroads because he can neither afford to pay the 25% of tuition fees nor an air ticket to Russia.

Ochen is just one of the thousands of students at Makerere who are yet to be hit by another wave of tuition fees increment in public universities, should the recommendations of the new Government report dubbed Omaswa report be implemented. The report recommends that tuition fees for private students at Makerere be doubled for the university to run effectively.

The new report commissioned by the Government, recommends that private students pay an additional sh2.29m on top of their usual average unit cost of sh2.69m annually.

This would bring each student annual unit cost to sh4.98m. It should be noted that once tuition fees are increased at Makerere, all other public universities are likely to follow suit.

This means, should the recommendation be taken on by the Government, it will affect all private students in public universities; Kyambogo Mbarara, Busitema and Gulu universities.

The report is an outcome of the task force constituted by the Government in 2011. One of the assignments of the task force was to develop and recommend strategies of improving current financing sources of the university.

The decision to establish the task force was taken in an agreement between the Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi and the university council and management, during the September 2011 strike by lecturers over pay.

It was tasked to review the current macro and micro organisational structures of the university, conduct a job analysis followed by a job evaluation of all the jobs in the institution, and to recommend the optimal establishment for each unit and advice on the required competencies for each unit.

The task force, which visited all public universities in the country and other universities abroad, was headed by Prof. Francis Omaswa.

Basis for tuition hike

The Task Force in their report notes that they found the cash-in flow situation at Makerere University precarious.

“Private student fees which contribute nearly 60% of the budget were being paid irregularly and in some cases not paid at all,” reads the report.

On top of this, the report adds that, “the fees set for private students were not linked to the cost of tuition and accommodation.”

Earlier on, the Auditor General had undertaken a comparative study of the unit costs in public universities in 2010, following a request made by the Government.

The report notes that the Government through the Office of the Auditor General Commissioned a study on the unit cost of public universities and established that the current fees paid by university fees paid by privately sponsored students are well below the estimated actual unit costs for Makerere university.

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Scenes of the 2011 Makerere University riot that followed reports that the university was planning to increase fees

“At the present time (2012) at Makerere, the average unit cost charged is sh2.69m per annum. The AG noted that the unit cost, based on National Council for Higher Education studies’ acceptable standard was sh4.523m in 2010,” read the report.

“Assuming an addition inflation rate of 10% over the two-year period, the minimum unit cost should be sh4.98m.”

The report notes that there are 35,000 privately-sponsored students at Makerere and if each of them paid this amount of money, this would realise sh80b additional revenue for the university.

“We recommend that privately-sponsored students be required to pay an additional sh2.29m each. The implementation of this should start with the intake of 2013/2014 and the Government will then provide the subsidy for continuing privately sponsored students,” read the report yet to be tabled before Cabinet.

As of today, comparable figures for Kyambogo range from about sh3.13m to sh5.19m, while for Gulu University it is about sh3.94m to sh4.38. In the case of Mbarara, the equivalent figures are sh5.132m and sh5.91m.

Busitema’s unit cost ranges between sh18.99m and sh20.42m and for Makerere Business School, it is sh2.38m and sh4.25m.

The Omaswa report notes that the fact that private students doing science and technical courses are paying between sh3m and sh4m per year and yet some courses require over sh9m has greatly affected the quality of education, since students can hardly do some of the practicals.

The report also notes that the fees charged in a number of selected primary and secondary schools in and around Kampala are either comparable or higher than that payable by privately sponsored students at Makerere.

According to the same report, Government sponsored students pay an average of sh7.8m per year while the privately sponsored students pay an average of sh2.6m.

In case the recommendation is considered by the Government, this will be the third time public universities are having a general tuition fees increment.

The last time public universities increased tuition fees was in 2009, several years after the previous increment in 1991. That time public universities increased their fees by 40%.

Public universities’ councils are allowed to set new fees only after getting approval from the Government.

Scrap full tuition on Government sponsorship

Apart from private students tuition fee increment; the new report recommends that the Government should drop the current policy of sponsoring some students and instead contribute part of the tuition for all students admitted in the university.

This report’s recommendation comes at a time when the Government is in its final stages to roll out the Students Loan Scheme.

It was supposed to be implemented in this academic year, only to be halted by Parliament, for the education ministry and the Government to set up a proper legislative system. This will be debated in Parliament, before it can be passed into law; for the Students Loan Scheme to roll out.

When contacted for a comment, the education minister Jessica Alupo declined to discuss the contents of the report, since it has not yet been presented to the Prime Minister.