6 April 2008
Addis Abeba — The Addis Ababa University (AAU) has approved the controversial postgraduate (PG) tuition fee increment on government as well as self-sponsored students to be implemented beginning of next academic year, September 2008.( as of March 10, 2008) The fee increment is as high as 400 percent per credit hour from a 100 ETC per credit.
A circular dispatched from the university's Office of the Registrar, all departments and faculties, offering post graduate courses were to inform postgraduate students needed to pay 6,000 ETC per a term, including a sum of 6,000 and 15,000 ETC for MA theses and PHD dissertation respectively.
Public Relations Officer Mesfin Bogale told The Daily Monitor that the University has had to make the adjustment so as to counter higher cost on the program and to promote the teaching staff for new public universities.
Graduate students say the sudden fee rise put them in a limbo.
"Who will afford to pay that in the situation of higher living cost?" a student at the Norway-financed School of Journalism and Communication retorted.
" That would surely force many students like me out of the campus." The increment of PG tuition feehas also disappointed the undergraduate alluminies who intend to join the program.
"I was thinking about studying masters program, but now it could be hard to pursue even if I continue saving 50% of my salary," one working BA holder said.
Asked to comment on this, Mesfin said the amount of raise was not exaggerated given the high cost of running graduate programs and in light of presumed improvement in the quality and standard of the courses offered.
Addis Ababa University was established in 1942 E.C. by the name HaileselassieI University College. Currently, it administers more than ten campuses. Although it is supposed to be East Africas' universities hub scholastic development, the quality of its output show declining.
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