By Julius Mugaga Tukacungurwa/Umoja Standard.
Kampala, Uganda: Speaking at the sidelines of the Public lecture under the theme, ‘financing of and investment in higher education in Uganda’., Mary Okwakol, the Executive Director of National Council for Higher Education (NCHE) made a call on the financing model that can sustain the quality of education and ensuring that no one is left behind.
“This entails mechanisms that will ensure mechanism that will ensure that there is sufficient funding for instance funding infrastructure and facilities as they are key for various institutions, to have quality staff. Its about money being available for these key things.” Said Okwakol.
She added that education sector is not receiving the threshold investment required and Its against this background that NCHE warns against underfunding that demeans the quality of higher education and related delivery in the country.
The Executive Director gave these remarks following the a public lecture on financing and investing in education as one of the way of engaging higher education experts and stakeholders to examine the importance of finance and investment as the fundamental enablers of the sub-sectors in Uganda and also provide a platform for reviewing, developing and implementing appropriate higher education financing.
As a keynote speaker at the public lecture, Dr Joseph Muvawala, the Executive Director of the National Planning Authority (NPA) expressed dissatisfaction with Higher Education Students’ Financing Board (HESFB) being under Ministry of education, a thing he thinks is wrong and is deterring efficiency in financing students.
He said tuition is not the only financial way of sustaining higher education. “We propose that we start thinking of other ways like endowments. In the paper, in America, endowments equate to the GDP of this country alone. We also think there’s something not going well with alumni of these universities. How many have ever contributed to Makerere University,” He said.
He recommended that if financing for higher Education Students is to pay off, there should be financing for equity arguing that all qualifying applicants should have equal access to education financing but majority of people accessing this are from well to do families. He added, there should be financing for efficiency and diversity to balance all regions there by leaving no one behind.
For Prof. Mouhammad Mpezamihigo, the Vice Chancellor of Kampala International University took home that as education experts in order to improve higher education, they should have a deliberate focus on specific areas that can help them skill their graduates.
The public lecture was held as part of the celebrations to mark 20 years of NCHE existence. It was held under the theme ‘financing of and investment in higher education in Uganda.’