LET MAKERERE INCREASE FEES

Once again, government has blocked Makerere University from implementing fees increments, proposed following expert advice. Earlier, the Minister for Higher Education cited CHOGM, explaining that government is unlikely to support fees increments before the event. Then, in his letter directing the university not to increase fees, he queries the manner in which the decision to increase fees was reached (The New vision, 9th June, 2007).

Ulterior Fears

The Minister betrays an ulterior fear of the proposed increments or, at the least, a condoning of Makerere’s under funding. To start off, one wonders how CHOGM can be cited against increasing fees for privately sponsored students. Secondly, in querying the finance committee’s capacity to increase fees, the Minister ignores article 42 (2) of the Universities and Other Tertiary Institutions Act, which provides for this capacity. Thirdly, while article 40 (b) of the act states that the council shall…fix scales of fees, the Minister is at pains to distinguish between the fixing of scales of fees and the raising of fees, forgetting that raising is also fixing. Fourthly, the minister forgets that the university is not under obligation to delay its decisions until the president has studied visitation reports.

Understanding the refusal of fees rises

The truth is that government fears for the affordability of the increased fees, and likely student action. Nonetheless, we should accept that quality comes with costs and that, as long as we aspire to it, the question of whether to increase fees is irrelevant and decisions to increase fees must be implemented without delay. Rather, attention should be on whether, and how, students can afford increased fees, to which I now turn.

Irony of Makerere Fees

As to whether students can afford increasing fees has already been answered. In a 2004 study, for instance, I found that 80% of the schools that qualified over 70% of the students admitted to Makerere in the 2003/2004 academic year were charging higher fees than those levied in the university’s most populated school and faculties—Education, Arts, Science and Social Sciences—which is corroborated by the McGregor committee. Yet, ironically, there are fears that increasing Makerere’s fees will prohibit access.

Affording the increased fees

No doubt, increased fees could be beyond the means of some students and attract student resistance. Nonetheless, this resistance would be consequent upon inability to pay, and perceived unsuitability, of the increments. Hence, government should focus, not on resisting the proposed increments per se, but on ensuring that they are reasonable and that ways through which they can be met are devised, which could be done through:

Streamlining Resources Utilisation

Crucial to the perceived suitability of fees increments, is the efficiency with which resources are utilised. So far, the McGregor committee has reported resources mismanagement. On top of bringing the motivation for increasing fees to question, this could create an illusion that big increments are necessitated when, in fact, they are not. If the proposed increments are necessitated to procure teaching resources rather than feed the university’s 66 indefensible allowances, and which government can determine, therefore, they should be implemented.

Revision of Government Sponsorship

After increasing fees in line with costs, a means of ensuring their affordability is the extension of governmental funding to their subsidisation, rather than restricting it to a select few. With the cost incurred by each student reduced thus, many would afford a realistically priced university education. These are the policy issues on which Makerere cannot decide, and which government should direct; not the raising of fees as the Minister suggests.

Deferred payment

Underlying the fear that increased fees are likely to be unaffordable is the appropriation of the cost of students’ education to a few payers (government and parents). A way out, therefore, is the shifting of the cost to the students, thorough the institution of loan schemes, which could ensure that each payer incurs but a small fraction of the big cost. The dynamics of operating these schemes may best be worked out by financial institutions that are cognisant of pertinent variables. In many settings where these schemes are operational, however, their institution is capitalised by government, social security funds and similar organisations, meaning that, even here, government has a role to play.

Ban on Student Caning? What a Joke

The Ministry of Education finally came out to illegalise the canning of students, apparently consequent upon the beatings in Katikamu and Arua that went sour as was reported in the press. It interesting to note, however, that this is just another of many such directives from the same ministry and that like all the previous, the latest will not work as I will illustrate shortly. Firstly, however, I will critique the incident that alarmed the Ministry of Education to re-illegalise student canning.

Students are Cunning

I did not take the story in which five students were reportedly beaten by three teachers into comma seriously until the Ministry of Education based itself on it to re-state its directive against caning. I took it for granted that everyone readily discerned that it was a tale of a comedy. I have since learnt better, which is why I will draw an analogy between that and a similar story albeit the later ended differently.

For two years, a classmate of mine convinced our teachers that even half the stroke of a cane on him was enough to throw him into comma and teachers who were weak at learning (or remembering) his vulnerability were often sent into panic because he readily collapsed into comma as soon as a rod was tried on him. On one such occasion, he was so badly in comma that as soon as he was admitted at a nearby hospital, Sister Headmistress contacted the father who, on arrival, called the boy — who was on drip — to life. And when they returned to school, the father demonstrated — at an impromptu school assembly — that the boy can be clobbered beyond limits the school had ever considered reaching. This marked the end of the commas even though he succumbed to thorough caning thereafter. What a shame that a whole Ministry of Education believed that three teachers, probably consulting among themselves, flogged students into comma one by one until the fifth!

Caning Popular; Teachers at Crossroads

The Ministry of Education specifies the don’ts without specifying the dos so teachers are at crossroads. For starters, we in the classrooms are mostly dealing with kids and adolescents. They demand more freedom than is reasonably acceptable; would like to disobey authority; and can be incredibly irrational. So what do you do? When you reprimand them, they laugh it off. For many students, suspension from class — to go home or dig up anthills in the school farm — is a God sent break from dreaded lessons. Besides, suspensions mean missed lessons so you are sure to register failures. Ironically, the Ministry turns its eyes away from this reality and bans caning without specifying equally effective alternatives.

Interestingly, many head teachers and parents, including legislators and officers of the Ministry of Education, appreciate Proverbs 13:24. Subsequently, at many staff and parents’ meetings, teachers receive orders to “beat them” from the horse’s mouth. So what do you do when you are at obligation to produce results so as to keep your job? Of course consider that caning ensures compliance whilst saving lesson time and effecting a positive ripple effect — until some students convince journalists that it has thrown them into commas albeit cunningly.

Ill Considered Bandwagon

It is quite apparent that anti-caning advocacy is subsequent upon a wave of child rights activism that is seemingly followed with little consideration for our own context. What it is to be punished, for example, is largely a sociological construct that children acquire as they socialise with seniors starting with their parents. And because many of the parents trust the rod, when children are handed over to teachers, they don’t feel punished until the cane has been administered. That is precisely why I am yet to believe that our students can attain the grades their parents, school authorities and they themselves want to see when we withdraw the threat of the rod. I, however, know graduates who are now glad that their teachers caned them.

Educational Planning: Principles, Tools and Applications in the Developing World

AUTHOR: J. C. S. Musaazi
ISBN: 9970-05-022-2
PUBLISHER: Makerere University Press
AVAILABLE AT: East African Institute of Higher Education Studies and Development

Makerere University

Review by Jude Ssempebwa

Hailing from the hands of the renowned author of ‘The theory and practice of educational administration’, ‘Educational Planning: Principles, Tools and Applications in the Developing World’ is a masterpiece that brings together the breadth and depth of planning in a uniquely simple and captivating style. Treating planning from the viewpoint of developing world education, it explores a wide range of issues, stretching from education through politics to development, which it analyses, whilst drawing lessons for the developing from the developed world, within a standardised paradigm. Pertinent theoretical aspects of planning as well as micro and macro planning models are discussed and a laudable attempt is made on defining a generic model. Above all, it is prescriptive, so readers will not only learn planning and why it is often erratic; they will learn how to plan, in educational and other settings, at all levels. Lastly, its futuristic orientation ensures that the reader is brought to the leading edge of planning and challenged and capacitated to ask and respond to questions pertaining to the future of planning.