More students to benefit from government loans

Tanzania’s government has earmarked about TSh326 billion (US$208 million) to finance higher education student loans in the 2012-13 academic year, Minister for Education and Vocational Training Dr Shukuru Kawambwa told parliament, with 98,772 students set to benefit.

The grants, to be provided through government agency the Higher Education Students’ Loans Board (HESLB), will assist an additional 5,596 students – over last year’s 93,176 – to attend the country’s various institutions of higher learning.

Presenting his ministry’s budget estimates to parliament in the country’s national capital Dodoma, the minister said the HESLB would also take steps to ensure beneficiaries of government loans who had graduated paid back what they owed.

“The board will make sure that TSh18 billion [US$10 million] is recovered, and legal action will be taken against all defaulters,” he said.

On diversifying the distribution of student loans, Kawambwa reported that in the past year, 256 beneficiaries of the loans had been university staff, who got sponsored to pursue masters and PhD studies at local or foreign universities.

With Tanzania aiming to reach a target of 300,000 students in its universities by 2015, this year alone a total of 65,000 students would be enrolled in local universities, the minister said.

But the number is well below those admitted to universities in other East African countries.

For instance, in Kenya the Economic Survey 2010 reported a total of 143,000 students in public universities in 2009 – up from 101,000 in 2008.

And in 2011, the country’s Joint Admission Board (JAB), which handles admissions of government-sponsored undergraduates to public universities, decided on a double intake of new undergraduate students, admitting 32,611 students who sat the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) in 2009 and 2010 out of 96,000 who qualified.

These statistics are for public universities only in Kenya – while the Tanzanian target includes both private and public all universities.

In Uganda, enrolment in public universities shot up when the National Resistance Movement took power more than 20 years ago, from about 5,000 students to more than 100,000 today. According to a 2008 Uganda Bureau of Statistics report, in that year the country’s 27 universities had 92,605 students.

In terms of rising demand for higher education, the situation in Tanzania and Uganda is similar, with the growth of enrolment partly attributable to free primary and secondary education.

More than seven million children are enrolled in primary school and more than 579,000 in secondary school in Uganda. This, plus the growing number of foreign students flocking to the country, is likely further to strain universities in Uganda.

The increase in higher education enrolment in Tanzania is thanks to projects like the Primary Education Development Programme and the Secondary Education Development Programme, which have helped increase the number of students enrolled in standard one and form one – with the results inevitably rippling into higher education.

In 2011, for instance, the number of students in Tanzania’s secondary schools was 1,789, 547 rising to 1,884,272 in 2012.

But questions have been raised over quality, with critics saying the increase in the number of students enrolled, at all levels of the system, presents a threat to the quality of education, given that schools lack classrooms, books, sufficient teachers, libraries and laboratories.