SOUITHERN PROVINCE

HUYE — Private sponsored students studying at the National University of Rwanda (NUR) will have to dig deeper into their pockets.

The university has announced revised tuition structures showing a sharp increase in tuition fees for different courses.

The new charges for undergraduate programmes that is set in six categories ranges from Rwf530,000 to Rwf1, 325, 000.

The students previously paid a uniform tuition fee of Rwf500, 000 per academic year.

According to Sam Muzinga, NUR’s publicist, the new tuition structure is in line with the recommendations of the National Council of Higher Education concerning the cost of higher education in Rwanda.

"This new structure is a recommendation of the National Council of Higher Education for all universities and other higher Institutions of learning. The decision to implement the new fee structure was reached by the varsity board of directors during a meeting that sat in February this year. The new structure takes into consideration the cost of running the different programmes,” explained Muzinga.

Under the new structure, private students pursuing the bachelor of Medicine degree are expected to pay Rwf1, 325,000, the highest in the structure.

Other students pursuing courses in Social Sciences, Humanities, Business Studies, and Management, Political Sciences and Secretarial studies will pay the lowest amount of Rwf530, 000.

Students pursuing courses in category two including courses like Economics, Journalism, Communication, Law and Applied Mathematics will be expected to pay Rfw600, 000.

The university has over 1,200 private students some of whom are international students from countries like Burundi, the DR Congo and Cameroon.

Under the new fee structure, international students will have to pay between Rwf1, 200,000 and 1,500,000 depending on the area of study.

According to Muzinga, the new tuition structure takes effect next academic year.

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