This is utterly unacceptable! How does the state run other institutions? What do our taxes do? Has Makerere become a private business enterprise? Doesn’t this vindicate Professor Mamdani’s book “Scholars in the Market Place?” Could it be a deliberate scheme to block the sons and daughters of the peasants from attaining university education?
I strongly believe universities should be adequately funded; lecturers should be well remunerated to dissuade them from doing consultancy research and moonlighting which are inimical to academic advancement. None the less, that doesn’t call for hiking fees because it is counterproductive. Instead, the government should disburse academic research funds to the institutions. Rather, the public universities must demand adequate funding from Government.
Uganda has ratified a number of international human rights instruments. Accordingly, education in the elementary stages should be free while higher education should be accessible on the basis of merit, the state has a duty to ensure the availability, accessibility and affordability of the right to education and other positive rights. The question then is, is merit determined by money or intellectual and mental faculties? How many sons and daughters of policemen, prison warders, primary school teachers and peasants will access university education when fees are hiked?
Makerere University, as I know it, is a public institution, as such it is mandatory for government to fund it like it funds other institutions? While campaigning, Dr. Museveni, a Makerere University alumnus promised not only to introduce student loans but also to cut university fees. Ironically, what we are seeing now is the quest to double the already unaffordable fees!
The country is now on the brink of paralysis because of increasing costs of living brought about by increased fuel and other commodity prices. Sadly, public universities want to add injury to insult. By how much will Ugandan workers’ wages be increased if the cost of educating one student at Makerere becomes six million? Remember this excludes meals, transport, accommodation, stationery, printing and photocopying services which can cost a student no less than 3 million a semester.
Virtually all the students who make it on government sponsorship are children of the rich because they study from topnotch schools. Accordingly, virtually all peasants’ children go for private sponsorship. These peasants sell whatever they own – land, livestock and food reserves to get an education for their children. The persistent increase in fees is aimed at blocking the peasants’ children from accessing education.
Startlingly, the ruling party has always used prosperity for all as a slogan to win votes. How can we talk of prosperity for all when peasants’ children cannot access education while the police are allocated 50billion shillings for breaking up lawful activities by opposition politicians and civil society activists?
We have seen government asking for supplementary budgets for statehouse, the police and the military but little has been allocated to the Ministry of Education. When did education cease being a priority? I know today all the prestigious courses are a preserve of the rich because of the costs involved.
The poor in Uganda have surely got a raw deal in this government. Very few of them can attain higher education because of the high cost associated with it. But to make matters worse, very few of them obtain jobs on meritocracy basis because jobs are largely given on know-who and come from where basis. Is this the fundamental change we were promised in 1986 or it is another rap that we were promised in 2010/2011?
On his visit to Makerere University in November 2009, Benjamin Mkapa said, “Governments cannot totally abdicate responsibility to fund higher education”. Finally, we need to take note of Dr Martin Luther King Jr who said, “Our lives begin to end the day we keep silent about things that matter”.
VINCENT NUWAGABA
is a political scientist cum human rights defender
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