Government caps fees after universities moot own fee hike

Zimbabwe's government has capped university student fees for tuition and accommodation at Z$5,000 (approximately US$200), with tuition fees in particular not exceeding Z$1,200 per semester and has announced it will make available Z$90 million for student loans.

The intervention comes after government last week ordered universities to revert to the 2018 tuition fee schedules, after universities themselves proposed fee hikes of up to 1,000% in an attempt to survive world-record inflation levels.

The government, which said it would review the fees and peg them at “sensible levels”, stopped releasing inflation figures in June last year. In September last year, the International Monetary Fund said the country’s inflation had reached 300% in August 2019 – the highest in the world.

Local experts say the rate is now above 500% and it is taking a toll on all sectors, education included. Universities last raised fees in 2018 and were barred from doing so last year. At the start of this year, students who were paying Z$700 (approximately US$30) per semester found themselves facing the possibility of massive fee increases, some amounting to more than 1,000%.

News of the increases proposed by higher education institutions went viral on social media networks, prompting the government to step in to announce it would come up with its own fee increases after consultations.

Polytechnics and colleges

In an announcement on 15 January, Higher and Tertiary Education, Innovation, Science and Technology Development Minister Professor Amon Murwira said that in addition to the cap on university fees, polytechnics and teachers’ colleges would be required to charge fees below Z$1,300 a semester for certificate and diploma programmes.

He said institutions of higher learning must not pay lecturers allowances from student fees as their salaries come from the government. Institutions of higher learning have resorted to paying additional allowances to lecturers as salaries from government are inadequate in the face of inflation.

College Lecturers Association of Zimbabwe President David Dzatsunga told University World News that, although it was not policy for institutions of higher learning to pay lecturers allowances to augment salaries, it was no longer tenable to depend only on wages from the state.

‘Untenable’ situation

“We do not want the payment of allowances to be the norm but as it stands salaries are way below the poverty datum line. The situation is untenable and unsustainable,” he said.

“Lecturers are getting the equivalent of US$28 to US$30 per month. The only way to address that would be to index the salaries on the interbank foreign currency rate to restore the value of salaries.”

The government has repeatedly said it does not have the capacity to pay salaries benchmarked on the United States dollar as demanded by its workers who argue that is the only way to ensure that their salaries are not eroded by runaway inflation.

The minister also announced that fees for ‘block release students’ (those who are employed and are pursuing qualification upgrades) would be the same as fees for other programmes.

Institutions have been charging block release students twice or thrice as much as others.

The state-run Herald newspaper quoted Great Zimbabwe University Director of Information Anderson Chipatiso as saying fees for block release and cohort programmes were not governed by the government, hence the university had the power to review them without approval.

He said his university had increased tuition fees for block release students from Z$1,300 to between Z$9,600 and Z$15,000, depending on the degree level, and way above the Z$1,300 cap announced by the minister.

Chipatiso said the fees facilitated the payment of allowances to lecturers and provided for essential services.

Soaring costs for students

In an interview before the government announced its new fee structure, Zimbabwe National Students Union (ZINASU) President Takudzwa Ngadziore said even before the 1,000% fee hikes were proposed by universities, the cost of attending higher education institutions had soared.

“The cost of higher education has been going up, even without the fees being increased,” he said. “The cost of education was hiked from day one when transport was hiked from Z$5 to Z$10 and even Z$15 per trip, when accommodation for most of the students was hiked, when the price of bread went up from 90 cents to Z$18.”

Ngadziore said students were obviously opposed to the proposed university fee hikes. Salaries for most government workers had not been increased and with high levels of unemployment, most parents and guardians were already struggling to send students to university.

Ngadziore said the government must come up with solutions to the economic crisis because in terms of the Constitution, the state has an obligation to ensure that education is affordable and accessible.

ZINASU has previously criticised the loans schemes for catering only for those whose parents or guardians are formally employed, in a country with at least a 90% unemployment rate. It said the model failed to address the high dropout and deferment rates and was oriented towards profit-making.