Commission seeks to reduce higher education tuition fees

The Fiji Higher Education Commission has expressed its desire to reduce tuition fees at local tertiary institutions, writes Apenisa Waqairadovu for FBC News. Chair Steve Chand revealed this during a bilateral meeting with United Arab Emirates Envoy to the Pacific, Omar Shehadeh.

Chand says the government is already awarding students scholarships for local institutions, but tuition fees remain high. Chand states the current situation benefits tertiary institutions immensely due to government-funded scholarships. “That’s really the idea of the current government; we want to bring the costs down at universities. For me personally, I always look at it as a triple-deepening segment: they get our funding, the students are still getting scholarships, and then the fees are still high.”

Meanwhile, Chand says that Fiji is bracing for a surge in regional students coming to Fiji in the coming years, as New Zealand has indicated it is going to follow in Australia’s footsteps by capping its student intake.
Full report on the FBC News site