University tuition burden should not be the parent’s

As someone who has enjoyed the benefits of a stress-free university education, courtesy of the good people at the Ministry of Education and the former SFAR (the student financing agency), I totally feel for the thousands of students that are today unable to enjoy the facility. As a student at the National University of Rwanda, I not only had my tuition fully paid, but every month I received a 25,000 franc stipend that would go to my meals, accommodation and extracurricular activities, if you can get what I mean.All I had to stress about what passing my exams and nothing else. Today, things have changed. Just because you score extremely highly in the secondary leaving exams doesn’t guarantee you a free ride. Now, to qualify for free tuition you have to prove that neither you nor your parents are able to afford the school fees. And even when you do get a subsidized education, living costs are on your shoulders. A few years back, when the government instituted this policy, I heard news reports about students fainting in class because they hadn’t eaten a meal all day. Whether the stories were true or simply exaggeration is besides the point; what can be agreed was that the policy was a huge source of stress. Around May this year, I took a bus back to the now Huye Campus of the University of Rwanda to collect my academic transcripts, a process that I found so challenging that it calls for its own column. While getting dinner in a restaurant in campus owned by a local businessman, I was both shocked and pleasantly surprised to discover that waiters, the cooks and cleaners were all full-time students at the university. Why I say shocked is because I never thought I’d see the day when Rwandan students would find it okay to work in such ‘menial’ jobs. While I was still a student, I remember a conversation I once had with a classmate, who thought it strange that I chose to make some extra money on the side writing for this very publication. He couldn’t fathom why I needed to struggle when I got ‘free’ money every month! And that was the attitude that a lot of students had at the time. They would have been rather dead than be seen waiting tables in restaurants. So, what I witnessed, in my humble opinion, was a sea-change in mentality brought about by lack of choice. As Plato said all those years ago, necessity is the mother of invention.On Monday, I read an article in this paper that discussed the challenges facing prospective students who’d not been able to qualify for a government student loan. Among the different solutions that were bandied about was an idea that parents needed to start saving as early as possible for their children’s university tuition. While I could totally understand why some thought that this was a good idea, I would have to disagree with them. According to the article, the Ministry of Education was in discussion with the Rwanda Development Bank, to put together a scheme that will, and I quote, “help parents grow a savings culture, so that if their children get admission to a public university, they can acquire a loan from their own savings”. This leads me to ask, why should a parent, after struggling to raise you till adulthood, still have to bear the costs of their adult children’s tertiary education? When does parental responsibility end and personal responsibility begin?Instead of putting more burden on the parents, I think that we should be looking at ways to help students finance their own education. In many more developed nations, students acquire loans from commercial banks which they then pay back years after they graduate. I know people who graduated three or four years ago, who will finish paying off the loan in 2020! Yes, I understand just how burdensome such a commitment is for a student, but at the end of the day, a university education is a resource that will benefit you until the day you die. So, it’s a no brainer for me. Perhaps, what we should be discussing is how to involve the various banks and saving schemes around the country in a student-financing plan. I think its a win-win. The students get the finances needed to study, while the banks make a killing off the high interest rates. All we need is a guarantor of the system, which I believe should be the Ministry of Education. I know that many parents will sneer at my suggestions, saying that its their responsibility as parents to cater for their children’s needs. I think that having such a financial burden will make their children more fiscally responsible and more appreciative of their hard-earned education. The writer is a journalist with The New Times and is currently pursuing a post-graduate degree.

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University tuition burden should not be the parent’s