More students stranded as university fails to re-open

Claudine Umutesi is in a dilemma after her university could not re-open due to financial constraints exacerbated by COVID-19.

The student from Gitwe University has been waiting for her courses to resume but the university has yet to inform her when this will happen.

Gitwe University closed in March 2020 when the government closed all higher learning institutions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, when other universities re-opened, Gitwe University remained closed.

“Our university has been closed for more than a year and [there is] no sign that it is re-opening soon,” said a distressed Umutesi.

The second-year student in general nursing said she is losing morale and wishes that officials from the ministry of education and the higher education council would intervene.

“Authorities should intervene and push for the university to re-open as soon as possible,” she said.

“I would have been a graduate today and could have been starting to look for jobs. But I have no hope to resume studies from the university and I am not allowed to join another university because I don’t have the academic documents [needed],” she added.

Umutesi is one of hundreds of students from the University of Gitwe who don’t know what their education futures look like.

Financial difficulties

Meanwhile, University World News has established that the University of Gitwe has financial difficulties as it owes money to both its academic and administrative staff. Subsequently, the Rwanda Higher Education Council has ordered it not to re-open until it clears those arrears.

The University of Gitwe is another addition to the list of several higher education institutions which have students who are stranded and are looking for other institutions where they can continue their studies.

Earlier in 2020, the Rwanda Ministry of Education permanently closed three other universities over financial irregularities and their failure to provide quality education.

These universities included the Christian University of Rwanda, the University of Kibungo, and the Indangaburezi College of Education.

Later, in November, the Kigali Institute of Management (KIM) University, a private institution in Rwanda’s capital, also announced its closure, citing financial problems.

The Rwanda Minister of Education, Dr Valentine Uwamariya, has urged the management of the affected higher learning institutions to meet all contractual obligations to staff and meet all the academic and financial obligations to students to “enable them to seek alternative admission in other higher learning institutions offering the same programmes”.

However, some students are still struggling to enrol in new universities as their former universities are yet to give them the required documents.

According to Dr Joseph Rwandema, the vice-chancellor of the University of Gitwe, the university had completed all the requirements to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and hoped to re-open along with other higher learning institutions, only to be asked to first clear all the debts it had with its employees.

“We are still looking for ways to solve the problem and pay the staff. However, we asked the higher education council to let us operate as we try to clear the debts, but they denied the request,” said Rwandema.

He added that it is hard to pay the debts when the university is not operating as they had been performing badly even before the COVID-19 pandemic, which merely exacerbated the situation.

Sources say that the University of Gitwe has not paid staff for about 10 months and would need millions of francs to do so.

Urged to mobilise funds

Students urged the university to re-open soon. They want their academic records to enable them to seek readmission elsewhere.

According to Dr Rose Mukankomeje, the director-general of the Rwanda Higher Education Council, the university cannot expect to offer quality education when both academic and administrative staff members are not paid on time.

She said the university should first solve its internal problems: “Clear all the debts … because the problem was not to implement COVID-19 guidelines,” she said.

Earlier last year, Mukankomeje had warned that universities and higher learning institutions should ensure that they conducted courses in a way that promoted higher education and respected all the guidelines including paying both academic and administrative staff.

“We will keep inspecting universities and, where we find irregularities, they will be advised to comply. Those that fail to meet the required expectations will be suspended,” she said.

In mid-May, the Southern Province Governor, Alice Kayitesi, visited Gitwe University as one of the private institutions which are not currently operating and held talks with the university management.

She heard that the university had failed to re-open owing to financial constraints and it needed support to operate again. Governor Kayitesi urged the university to look for other alternatives and mobilise funds to help it to re-open.

She also urged them to diversify sources of funding and use its staff to carry out research and other income-generating activities rather than relying on tuition fees from students.

In the meantime, the University of Rwanda (UR) Vice-Chancellor Professor Alexandre Lyambabaje has told University World News that the university is ready to receive students from the affected universities whenever they fulfil all the academic requirements.

“From the universities which, unfortunately, closed their doors, UR is admitting students because they [are temporally] closed and we are trying to admit students so [they are able] to continue with their studies,” said Lyambabaje.

The minister for education permanently closed two departments of the University of Gitwe in 2019 over lack of sufficient equipment as indicated by the higher education council’s external audit. The closed departments were the bio-medical laboratories for sciences and medicine.