Abstract:

Two decades after the liberalisation of higher education in Uganda, a disturbing dilemma facing educationists is that of declining levels of quality assurance despite widespread propositions associating liberalisation with quality assurance. An enormous body of literature implicates institutional and systemic under funding for this paradox. Nonetheless, a recent study involving 11 universities, the National Council for Higher Education and the Ministry of Education and Sports finds that, in fact, this has been consequent upon the management of the liberalisation of higher education. It notes that while liberalisation of higher education resulted into the expansion of student enrollment and contraction of government funding, regulation, in principle politicking, has kept public universities from charging competitive levels of fees. This is because under funding has been accepted as an alternative, after which piteous concerns, like access for the poor, have been invoked to justify uncompetitive charging as expedient.

Grounded on a systemic analysis of the higher education operating environment and known opportunities for reform worldwide, this paper calls for an outright refusal of uncompetitive pricing in higher education and, subsequently, placing of overriding attention on the meeting of the rising cost of supplying quality higher education—through the subsidisation of fees and higher education institutions; institution of student loan schemes; efficient resources utilisation; and philanthropy, the dynamics of whose practicability in Uganda’s peculiar context are explored.

Full text available as: Pdf

Ssempebwa, Jude (2007). Funding higher education in Uganda: a case for the liberalisation of fees , Kampala.