Degree choice could force students to dig deeper into their pockets, says report

Fees in public universities could go up by as much as 600 per cent if proposals currently under scrutiny in the 31 institutions are implemented.

The universities, under the umbrella of the Association of Public Universities in Kenya, have proposed that the government approves a new formula of charging fees depending on the cost of the degree programmes.

According to the formula, students pursuing more practical courses such as medicine and engineering that require more facilities for training will pay higher fees than those pursuing arts.

The proposals are contained in a draft report of a sub-committee of the Committee of Vice Chancellors of the Public Universities to establish unit costs for academic programmes.  The report of the sub-committee chaired by Technical University of Kenya Vice Chancellor Francis Aduol has been sent to all the 31 vice chancellors and principals of public universities for final input.

If adopted, fees for a degree in medicine (clinical) will rise to Sh708,000 for regular students per academic year. That of law, education (arts), economics and applied social sciences would go up to Sh192,000 per academic year.

Currently, fees are charged at a flat figure of Sh120,000 for any undergraduate programme.

Under the arrangement, the government was to pay Sh70,000 directly to the universities while the rest was to be catered for by students. The students pay Sh16,000 per year as direct tuition while Sh34,000 goes to books, food and accommodation.

Needy students apply for bursaries and loans from the Higher Education Loans Board (Helb).

The good news in the new unit cost proposals is that the vice chancellors are suggesting measures to cushion students by ensuring that the government commits to paying about three quarters of the new fees, leaving students to foot a smaller bill from state loans and bursaries.

However, the report acknowledges that most students would not be able to afford the tuition fees.

The committee, therefore, recommends that Helb steps up funding levels to students in all categories, including those in regular, parallel and post-graduate programmes.

Furthermore, says the report, the loan facility should be extended to all students who apply without necessarily investigating their financial background.

The committee also proposes that Helb should support needy students through bursaries. The bursaries should, however, be tied to academic performance of individual students in their semester examinations and should go into meeting their tuition costs.

The report recommends that the government should henceforth fund public universities strictly through grants in line with the number of students that it wishes to sponsor.

It is expected that the government will determine the number of students it wishes to sponsor to study a particular discipline and then disburse funds to them in accordance to the specified student unit costs.

Mode of sponsorship

“If the government will have taken its vacancies within a programme, whatever positions still left should now be declared vacant to any persons who would wish to take them up and pay at a specified unit cost,” says the report.

What this means is that where a university declares 240 places for a programme in medicine but the government wishes to sponsor only 200 students, then the institution will place the remaining 40 places in the open market to whoever is willing to take them up at specified unit cost.

“An important consequence of this would be that there would be no need for Module 1 (regular) and Module II (parallel) as effectively there would only be one programme, the difference would be in the mode of sponsorship,” the report says.

The team  states that it will give more powers to university councils in the running of the public institutions, including revising staff pay without looking up to the government.

According to the report, the student unit costs were calculated based on the cost of hiring a professor, the number of students per professor in a given programme and the ratio between the costs for staff and facilities.

“Our ultimate objective in this task was to keep the cost to the student as low as possible,” the report says.

It adds: “To this end, we would need to keep the cost of a professor as low as possible, while on the other hand keeping the number of students per professor as high as possible.”

The team says that the new unit costs have been set such that the arising fees would not be too high as to be prohibitive for students to afford.

The report also seeks to have lecturers teach more students than they do currently.

Efficient methodologies

“Staff will be expected to carry relatively higher loads while adopting more efficient methodologies of doing things,” the report states.

The team said the proposed unit cost of charging fees would accurately predict the expected amount of funds required to run a university in one year.

“The funding of universities through differentiated unit cost,” the report says, “would introduce a more rationalised manner for the funding of universities, which would be dependent on the costs of the various programmes, and the number of students that would be registered for such courses.”

The report terms the current funding structure as ineffective as it is based on an average figure for all courses in all public universities.

It notes that the current formula of allocating funds without considering the courses students pursue has led to uneven disbursements, which had disadvantaged some universities.

“Public universities with relatively expensive academic programmes tend to be underfunded while those with relatively costly courses are likely to be better funded,” the report says.

The committee recommends that universities that are receiving more money than they deserve under the current arrangement should admit additional students to benefit from the extra allocations.

But “the universities that are currently underfunded should have their funding increased to be commensurate with their student numbers”.

According to the report, the proposed unit costs will only be the upper limits that universities may charge, meaning the institutions can decide to charge less.

Once the government has set up the maximum chargeable fees, various university councils should be left to set the fees for their respective programmes subject to the maximum specified.

– INB Africa