For CRUTECH to survive there is need to pay school fees, Educationist advises Students

By Prince Charles Ekanem.

The recent wave of protests at Cross River University of Technology (CRUTECH) Calabar Campus has been driven by students’ unrealistic expectations about “free” higher education. The crisis has been deepened by a web of unsustainable solutions posited by the state and tertiary institutions. Students would do well to look around their own continent to see how unequal “free” education really is.

Often times there have been this believe that higher education should be free in Nigeria. This mentality do make some students and parents shy away from from taking financial responsibility of their wards in School.

This has affected Cross River University of Technology (CRUTECH) since from inception till date as students feel reluctant to pay fees .

Free higher education to me is a myth. There is no such thing anywhere in the world, even in wealthy states like Germany, Finland, Norway and Sweden, which insist that their tertiary education systems are “free”.

In fact, higher education in those countries is predominantly paid for by taxpayers. They can afford it. They are rich, socially and economically equitable societies.

Higher education is a resource intensive enterprise. It cannot effectively function without a massive injection of resources in a sustained and escalated way.

Higher education cost tends to rise at rates considerably in excess of the corresponding rates of increase of available revenues especially those revenues that are dependent on taxation.

Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world. It offers “free” higher education in the form of a fully funded government scholarship with absurdly nominal fees. Most students come from upper and upper middle class families. Around 90% of those at the university could easily afford to pay their own way, but instead are receiving government funding.

That funding is drawn from public funds so the country’s struggling poor and middle class effectively end up bank rolling the education of those who don’t need the support.

Apart from Malawi it’s a trend in our society that majority of university students come from well-off families. In many countries, their presence is funded by taxpayers’ money. The poor and middle class are paying for the rich to study. How is that free indeed?

Interestingly, many African countries that have previously claimed to provide “free” higher education have changed their policies in recent years. Enrolments are rising across the continent. Countries have realised that student growth is outstripping what the economic base can generate in tax revenue because of  too many students and  few taxpayers.

It is imperative that CRUTECH resource bases are both diversified and consolidated. Resources from the government need to be augmented with contributions from businesses, development partners, trusts and foundations, parents and students. They must be supplemented through effective use of resources and cutting back on wasteful spending for Cross River University of Technology to grow.

But without a stable funding base, neither access nor excellence can be achieved. One thing is clear: the common African pattern of full state funding to a small number of universities no longer works if in fact it ever did, so free university education is simply unsustainable.

For CRUTECH to survive there is need for students to pay their fees since the school has been magnanimous enough to have allowed them owe till date.