2ND CARTA VICE CHANCELLOR'S MEETING CARTA 2ND VICE CHANCELLORS MEETING REPORT | Page 48

© Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa (CARTA) & University of Nairobi (UoN)
research outputs from the universities must be of quality to convince the government to support
research activities.
How do we create a conversation around tuition and better management of tuition fees?
In most African universities, governments do not contribute to tuition fee for postgraduate students.
Public universities should be allowed to charge tuition fee for undergraduate training and this calls for
a conversation on this area to ensure quality training is achieved. Governments do not contribute to
tuition fee for postgraduate training mainly due to lack of political goodwill. Yet, the societal returns
from postgraduate training are much higher than individual returns.
Universities in the African continent have had contests over the years over tuition fee. It is difficult to
sell the idea of introducing tuition fee in tertiary education. Universities therefore have to think this
through and seek for alternative sources of funding for research activities. The question therefore still
remains on how African universities can maximize on the potential for income generation internally.
One possible suggestion was to merge the student resources with the private companies. This would
mean creating private companies parallel to institutions, for example Price Water House Coopers.
Another suggestion was to involve the alumni in generating income for the institutions. The starting
point for a conversation on tuition fees with the governments would be by African universities’ Vice
Chancellors setting targets on the number of students to enroll each year.
Alternative sources of funding
The option of loans for students could also be explored if it could bridge the gap of low funding for
African universities. The loans could be used to circumvent this low funding problem. There are two
models being implemented in South Africa, the public loans systems which have created access to
education to the very poor. The second is a bank system focusing on funding university education for
the middle class. However, the students in South Africa rejected the loans system with the fear of
creating a debt.
With a view to enhancing African Universities’ research capacity and competitiveness, endowment
funds could be another area of focus to provide a steady flow of research funding for the institutions.
Internally generated resources such as overheads from externally funded grants, university services,
consultancies, development projects such as students’ hostels etc. should also be an area of focus for
universities to generate research funding. It is however important to note that internally generated
resources can only contribute in part and not fully for research funds. This will assist in subsidizing the
research funds. There however has to be a private arm of the university handling the income
generation business for the government. Universities can explore the creation of partnerships and
collaborations with development partners that can develop and run business for them.
What is the constraint in creating a parrarel system to manage business for the university within the
current university systems? The private entity has to run like a completely separate institution but
universities have been reluctant to embrace this. There is need for a mindset change among university
staff to encourage the setting up of private enterprises to internally generate resources for universities.
The Alumni of any university cannot be underestimated; universities must create systems to reach out
to their alumni to give back to their Alma matter. To achieve all these, there has to be transparency
and proper accountability systems in the African universities
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CARTA’s 2 nd Vice Chancellor’s Meeting –Report of meeting proceedings – July 10-11, 2017