COPIED COUNCIL BURIES HEAD IN SAND ON FEES INCREMENT, LOCKS HORNS WITH UMSU By Silvester Ayuba James Council of University Malawi has planted its feet in the soil and is refusing to move an inch on tuition fees increment, a situation that has brought it into bitter argument with University of Malawi Students Union (UMSU) executive, with the latter strongly objecting to the move, Storm has sourced. According to our sources, the Council has settled on an equal tuition fee of k275 000 00 per academic year for both government sponsored and self-sponsored students, a proposal which UMSU has fiercely fought. In a consultation meeting held on Tuesday at the Central University Offices and chaired by Professor Mtenje, it is understood that the Council said government has for long been unable to fully financially feed the university, a situation that has left the university economically suffocated and financially malnourished, thereby compromised the quality of education in the university. We therefore have no choice but to raise tuition fees to that level, because, in the absence of government funding, our only other source is tuition fees or student financial contributions, also bearing in mind that the cost of tertiary education has hiked globally yet Malawi has probably the cheapest tertiary education in the world, Council was quoted as saying. They further revealed that government is currently drafting a bill for the establishment of an agency that will be providing universal loans to all university students in Malawi including those in private universities as well as self-sponsored students in public universities. The agency, once established by statute after passing of the bill in the August house, would also be tasked with the collection of the loans after the beneficiaries graduate, and making sure that the fund was revolving. Again, Council argued that it is strange that the same students who manage to pay over k600 000 00 per year in private secondary schools and high schools just miraculously turn needy overnight when they are selected into public universities and start crying for government loans, when the fee is several times lower than what they paid in secondary schools. They further drew the example of St Marys Secondary school in Zomba, a public secondary school where tuition fees is k50 000 00 per term, translating into k150 000 00 per academic year, argumentatively illustrating that it was illogical to have university education cheaper than secondary education. However, UMSU heavily protested the whole idea, describing it is as unrealistic and prohibitive. Speaking to Storm on Tuesday evening, Chanco UMSU Representative who is also UMSU General Secretary, Alexius Kamangira, said there were several anomalies that UMSU noted in the whole package and they raised them with Council. Firstly, we do not subscribe to the idea of determining our conditions based on global standards because out economic realities cannot even be imagined to compete in any way at global level, not even in SADC. That global trends argument is a complete fallacy. Secondly, we told them that it is unrealistic for us to believe in the proposed loan agency because government tertiary education loan mechanism has proved a failure. If government is failing to pay for the current few at a lower amount of k55 000 00, how and why can we believe they will manage that much for all university students in Malawi? The result is obviously foreseeable: poor parents and guardians will be forced to pay for their children, who will eventually withdraw or even fail to enroll, thereby making education only for the rich. UMSU challenged Council that if students were at all to believe the idea, government (the agency) had to prove itself first on the current amount for some years before purporting to handle the business at the higher level. We further told them that the right to education goes together with citizens financial affordability, thus, such an increment would be unaffordable to over 85% of Malawians in case of the agencys default, thereby effectively denying citizens their right. We refuse to make the right to education a privileged cake for the elite only, said Kamangira. The final reason is that we are still nursing the wounds of the recent hike and it is not proper nor just for us to be subjected to double-shock within the same short span of time, he said. Alexius also queried Councils barbaric way of handling the matter in which they called it a consultative meeting when in fact they came to inform and impose the matter on UMSU, a situation that UMSU protested and criticised. But an internal peep into the University Council boardroom by Storm reveals that there will be no point of return by Council and government. Our anonymous high-profile impeccable source from the Central University Offices has confided in us that the meeting was merely a formality, otherwise Council had no choice because government had drawn its curtains on the matter and strode away from the negotiation room. The biggest problem is that Council has little say, if any, on such matters due to the political grip that government has on council, so I can assure you that unless a miracle is summoned, which of course I doubt can be, the fees is being hiked to that level effective next academic year, revealed our source. Ordinarily, Council is supposed to be autonomously determining the running of the University and, where necessary, making recommendations to government for implementation of certain matters, but the Council has often been criticised for being a political glove every time government wants to throw rubbish at the University. Currently, government is financially puffing, struggling to pay for students who applied for loans in all public universities at the present amount of k55 000 00, and fear is already hovering in the minds of many Chanco students as a blanket of mist over the matter still stand hanging ahead of their academic way.
Posted on: Fri, 18 Jul 2014 06:37:15 +0000
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