Godfrey Bagonza
4 December 2008
opinion
Kampala — I find Mohammad Mayanja's article in The New Vision November 18 titled 'The Solution for University Woes Lies with Makerere' not only thought provoking but also intellectually stimulating.
Mayanja's argument is based on the idea that further segmentation of the higher education market is the way to end woes in Ugandan universities.
In this article, I discuss the idea of market segmentation and government intervention in relation to efficiency and equity objectives of higher education in Uganda.
The concept of market rotates around the interaction of consumers and producers in exchange of goods and services. Economic decisions on what, how and for whom to produce in the market situation are determined by the forces of demand and supply in relation to price with no intervention from an allocative authority like the Government.
Higher education is a quasi-public good with higher private than social benefits. Therefore, it is logical to have both market forces and government intervention work side by side in the provision of higher education in Uganda.
Mayanja argues that the Government has refused to give the education market appropriate instruments to organise higher education efficiently. I find this interesting because I thought markets have inbuilt mechanisms which naturally lead to both productive efficiency and allocative efficiency within any given system. It is not really the Government that gives instruments of efficiency to markets to organise higher education.
I usually find it interesting that critics of higher education in Uganda present unbalanced arguments based on the input side without looking at the outputs and outcomes as well. For example, in reference to Makerere, Mayanja says 'the Government has refused to provide funds to Makerere University and has blocked all effort by the university to increase students' fees.
It is not true to say the Government does not provide funds to Makerere University but it is true it does not provide sufficient funds. This is because the biggest segment of expenditure of every institution is usually on salaries and wages and it's unfortunate if the Government has stopped paying salaries for its public servants at Makerere University.
In my opinion, the inefficiency in Makerere is internal because the institution has failed to put to optimal use the limited resources availed to it. If one is to push this argument further, 'Is the faculty of computing and information technology in Makerere University receiving more funds from government than other units in the university'? Other universities like IUIU have projects which cover up some of their costs and you never hear them lamenting like Makerere.
I entirely agree with the idea of segmentation of the higher education market in Uganda. This is because as Mayanja correctly puts it, the services of higher education are on high demand both locally and regionally.
However, further segmentation of the market by introducing the 'private students scheme' emerging from what he calls 'the subsidised students scheme' may not be practical. This is because in the first place, most of the students who qualify for government sponsorship are not necessarily from the low income group.
A quick survey in Ugandan private and public universities will show that many private students are from the low income groups.
Secondly, which criteria is one going to use to identify and classify students as from high income groups and from low income groups?
In Uganda, when there is an opportunity for the low income earners, it is the rich who benefir first because they access information first.
For the international students, an extra charge is justifiable for control purposes and also rising extra revenue for the university. However, this should not be over and above the marginal cost because this would cause dissatisfaction to the students like it was the case for the Kenyan students in Makerere last month.
Student riots in universities are mainly because the services they receive are not commensurate to what they pay. This is an issue of internal efficiency where the universities fail to achieve their internal objectives with the available resources. There is a lot to explain strikes in the case of Makerere University.
Mayanja fails to note that the higher education market is already segmented in terms of courses that students choose to do. Students doing different courses in most Ugandan universities have different structures of tuition they pay.
Therefore, the idea of market segmentation is already well grounded in higher education in Uganda, only that the institutions have failed to exploit the advantages of market mechanisms to ensure efficiency.
Much as the Government has several weaknesses when it comes to dealing with problems of higher education universities are also weak in terms of managerial capacity. Cases of compromise and a trade off between personal interests over public interest have undermined quality higher education in Uganda.
Therefore, the current problems of higher education may not be solved only by further segmentation of the higher education market and more liberalisation of the sector. This will make higher education more secular and increase the cost burden on parents without necessarily improving the quality of education.
Moreover, many studies done both in developed and developing countries have shown that more resource inputs to educational institutions do not necessarily convert to improved productivity of these institutions.
The managers of universities have to exploit the market advantages that come with the liberalisation of the higher education sector and reorganise their internal structures to ensure efficiency.
On the other hand, the Government has to continue playing the roles of policy formulation and regulation to ensure equity in distribution and also to ensure that resources are efficiently allocated.
The writer is a graduate student at the University of London, and a staff of Kyambogo University
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