Tanzania: Tertiary education tuition fee guidelines coming

The Tanzania Commission for Universities (TCU) is formulating guidelines on tuition fees for higher learning institutions after agreeing with the ministry and National Council for Technical Education (NACTE) on the need for a ‘student unit cost’ structure.

The proposal to have a ‘students unit cost’ structure was reached at by TCU following the rise in controversies between students, parents and guardians over variations of charges from between one institution of higher learning and another.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with The Guardian recently, TCU Executive Secretary Prof Sifuni Mchome revealed said to begin with the system would be applied in some university programmes (without mentioning them) in order to examine its effectiveness.

Prof Mchome said that the proposal of the plan was approved by the government, TCU board and the National Council for Technical Education (NACTE) in April this year.

When asked on the higher learning institutions’ readiness to formulate the student unit cost structure, he said, last year all institutions in the country were fully involved in discussing the scheme, and they all agreed on its formation as it could be used as guidance on how they could work out their charges.

However, Prof Mchome said that TCU officials were currently working on reviewing the higher learning institutions’ budget programmes and regulations so as to come up with fair cost to both students and the institutions.

In February this year TCU revealed to this paper that it formulate a student’s unit cost as it had realised the need to find out fees that were being charged by different universities in the country, in accordance with the courses offered.

During the revelation, Prof Mchome confessed that it was difficult for the Commission to control the fees because there was no basis for comparing those charged by the high learning institutions. 

He said that it had prepared and submitted the ‘student unit cost’ to the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training for scrutiny for approval.

In the previous interview, he reveled that fees proposed by any university shall be compared to the ‘student unit cost’ of the same course in other varsities and if there are differences, TCU would not allow the university to operate on such high fees.

The number of higher learning institutions in the country including the public and private ones has increased to at least 48 universities, comprising various constituent colleges. 

SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN: http://www.ippmedia.com/frontend/index.php?l=55726