The impacts of cost sharing on students in public universities in Tanzania : a case study of The University of Dar es Salaam

Abstract

Expanding higher education requires increased investments and more efficient use of existing resources. However challenge of limited resources has caused many countries including developing countries like Tanzania to find alternatives of supporting the public university budgets, this includes introduction of cost sharing measures (Vossensteyn, 2004; Johnstone, 2004). This study having its focus at The University of Dar es Salaam as a case study, aims at exploring the impacts public university students face within the present system of cost sharing. The study explores the impacts with reference to the history of financing higher education system since independence of Tanzania and also through the policies came following the introduction of cost sharing. Therefore the study is guided by the ideas of Education for Self Reliance which came some years after independence; and the ideas from Human Capital Theory which is one of the stem of cost sharing. The data gathered in this research are from the mixture of the data collection methods of both the quantitative and the qualitative approaches. These methods are questionnaires, interviews and documents analysis. The policy documents data analyzed were then combined with analyzed data from interviews and questionnaires in exploring the impacts of cost sharing on students in public universities. The findings of this study reveal that most of the students are not fully able to contribute the needed costs (of government-sponsorship) or full costs (of private-sponsorship) required to be shared with the government. This has been explained to be caused by inabilities to manage the contributions due to poor financial status. As a result, some candidates are not able to enrol to public universities regardless of having qualifications and admittance to undertake university education. The findings further reveals that the government initiative of providing loans through The Loans Board to students has proved unsuccessful. Instead, The Loans Board has ended providing loans to students with very high academic performances only. In addition, the study’s findings reveal few available material and physical infrastructure lead to difficulties in learning and living of students. This is found to be caused by under funding, students inability to share the costs and the increase of enrolment. The study sees the need of improving the whole system of financing public university education, while taking into account the financial abilities of most Tanzanians. The improvement should go hand in hand with the improvement of essential infrastructure required for the active studies of the students.