By NEVILLE OTUKI
In Summary
- More than 67,000 new students are set to join university this year up from about 57,000 last year, expanding the demand for loans.
The Treasury has increased allocation to the Higher Education Loans Board (Helb) by Sh1.8 billion for the year starting July.
This comes as the university education funding agency
continues to struggle to meet financing needs for the rising number of
students.
Budget estimates released last week show that the
government has set aside Sh7.5 billion for the fiscal year 2015/16 to
sponsor students in universities, up from Sh5.7 billion in the current
period.
Helb recently said it needed more than Sh10 billion
to meet the students’ funding needs — a signal that the allocation
would be inadequate.
More than 67,000 new students are set to join
university this year up from about 57,000 last year, expanding the
demand for loans.
The allocated Sh7.5 billion includes cash recovered
from past student loanees, meaning that the actual allocation from the
Treasury is much lower. The loans agency said the Sh5.7 billion
allocated last year was only enough to sponsor the students already in
universities, excluding freshers.
“The students in second to fourth year of their
education are consuming about Sh5.5 billion per year, meaning that we
will need more money for new students,” Helb chief executive Charles
Ringera said earlier.
The State’s underfunding has in the past brewed a
storm at Helb occasioned by delays in transmitting cash to the accounts
of students in public institutions, most of whom are from poor
households.
The loans agency in January slashed the highest
allocation per student to Sh50,000 from Sh60,000 per academic year for
freshmen who joined university last year but had experienced a
four-month delay in getting their loans. There has been a sharp rise in
enrolment of students in public universities, straining resources at
Helb whose capitation has been growing at a slow pace.
Official data shows that both public and private
universities had 443,783 students last year, up from 361,379 a year
earlier and 218,628 in 2012. The number of university students stood at
62,000 in 2002.
Helb has widened its lending to students in private
universities and Kenyan students in institutions based in Uganda,
Tanzania and Rwanda.
The agency has in the past sought extra funding from the government to plug the deficit.
notuki@ke.nationmedia.com
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