Universities and students need common ground on fees

A number of Students from the School of Finance and Banking (SFB) as well as the National University of Rwanda (NUR) have missed their registrations largely due to the tuition fees they have to clear ahead of this exercise. NUR has confirmed that almost 600 students had failed to beat the deadline for registration while by yesterday, a good number of students from SFB were set to miss out. The largest percentage of affected students fall within the private sponsored category. For SFB, these students had to clear their tuition of Rwf 200,000 early first week of January while NUR students were required to pay Rwf 265,000 by the same deadline. Most students within these institutions have expressed dismay over the deadlines, pointing out that it is too tight, given the fact that we are coming out of the festive season. This group of students also includes parents who are now caught in a tricky situation where they may have to choose between paying tuition for their children or themselves first. Given the fact that the largest percentage of evening students are individuals in salaried employment, many have called for extension of this deadline to the end of January after they have received their pay. Whereas the universities are justified in demanding the payment, given the need to plan ahead for their budgets, it is equally important that they take into account the dilemma of their students. This is a challenge that can, for instance, be overcome by arranging for the payments to be effected in installments. Otherwise the solution does not lie in denying the students an opportunity to study the semester or penalizing them for late payments. Ends

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Universities and students need common ground on fees