STUDENTS
at the Higher learning institutions in Tanzania are starving, suffering
and they are living in a desperate life at the hill while many and most
of them are force to attend classrooms from morning to evening without
having even a single meal due to inadequate loans provided by the Higher
Learning Students Loan Board (HELSB), Mirror Digest has revealed.
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| Tanzania Higher Learning Institutions Students Organization (TAHLISO) |
Since the HELSB laid down procedures of getting loan to higher learning students in the country, most of the students who are not in the science subjects are staying almost eight hours without food but funny enough it is for the students who are coming from upcountry especially in the villages in some parts of the country.
Loan
board which is responsible for funding students for Higher learning
institutions has been faulted for what has been mentioned as its
tendency of providing a hundred percent loans to students from wealth
families and undermining most of the poor families’ like Zakaria
Kilomole a second year student pursuing B.A with Education at the
University.
Speaking
in an exclusive interview at the University compound in Dar es Salaam
on Tuesday this week, Kilomole said that the situation at the university
for the arts students is completely worse because majority of arts
students have been undermined by the loan criteria’s which fueled many
students into economic hardship.
“last
time they told us that they will evaluate every applicant from the
education background and family status but surprisingly many students
comes from the poor families were skipped to hundreds percent loan while
their family status are poor,” he said.
He
said that students who got a hundred percent sponsorship although are
pursuing science subjects but many of them are from wealth families whom
they can afford tuition fees and accommodation for four years at the
university.
Kilomole
said that he obtained 60 percent loan from the board which covers only a
tuition fees and he is suppose to meet his accommodation daily during
his three years at the university while he is coming from the poor
family because his father is poor farmer and his mother is a wife house
at Kibondo, Kigoma western part of Tanzania.
“it
is because we are not taking science subjects the life at the
university is hullabaloo some of the female students have decided to get
into commercial sex around the city to win their daily bread,” he
stress
Edwin
Fred is a third student at the faculty of law at the university said
that the procedures introduced by the board is inappropriate and create
unnecessary confusions to the students at the college and at the
secondary level which also will led them to abandon their educational
ambitious.
“We
cannot force all students to study science subjects what about other
professionals such as teachers, journalists, lawyers and social
scientists are they not useful for the country’s social and economic
development? He asked while astonishing.
He
said that the evaluation done by the loan board during loan seeking
procedures was wrong by identifying properties as one of the criteria’s.
He said that some families built their house in the most credible way which cannot justify their wealth whatsoever.
“They are looking on the structural and kind of the house that the applicant family owns and any other property,” he said.
Fred
advised the government to review the whole loans’ board system in order
to find the best way which will avoid all grievances and ongoing
demonstrations in Universities for the best education.
“The
loans board has been the main source of different demonstrations.
Students do not get their loans on time. Students from most of high
class families like government officials are the ones who get loans
while poor Tanzanians remain with zero means testing.” He said.
Josephat
Charles who is taking B.A in Literature said that for quite sometimes
HELSB has been under the public criticism that the board is skipping
students from the poor families in which majority of them are from
upcountry most from the villages who started their primary and secondary
level in intricate situations.
He
said loans board has been the source of most of demonstrations taking
place in Universities because students do not get their loans on time.
Also not all students from poor families get loans resulting into
demonstrations for loans.
Charles
added that new process which was introduced by the loan board to send
fund from the university account is create delays to all the faculties
at the university and disturbances to students which they cannot get the
funds in time again.
He
said that the country’s social and economic development cannot be
foster by scientists alone thus the nation needs other professional
disciplines to companied together for mutual understanding of the
concept of development in the country.
On
his part the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) Public Relations
Officer Jackson Isdory said that the move took by the board seek to
inspire other students in Tanzania joined science subjects in order to
foster economic development in the country.
“There
is a tendency nowadays that majority of students at the higher learning
institutions prefer to undertake professionals with quickly money and
abandon these professionals that why in the country we have few experts
in science,” he said
However,
he said that improvements in higher education are harder to achieve in
these African countries such as Tanzania because of inadequate funds to
boost the sector development.
He
said that the move will increase science students in the near future
which will more advantage to the country are rather than majority of
students tend to ignore these subjects due to quickly money persuasion.
Professor
Amandina Lihamba from Mkwawa University denied to go into details about
this scenario but she said that more scientific study or research
needed to be done to come with the proper solutions of the country’s
education system and the current procedures of obtaining loans at the
board to ensure win to win situation.
‘Let
us have time first to study the concept so that we can come up with the
good answers to all these grievances and uncertainties erupted at the
universities in the country,’ she said
The
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD)
Education at a Glance 2012 report calculated the proportion of residents
with a college or college equivalent degree in the group’s 34 member
nations and other major economies.
The
majority of countries that spend the most on education have the most
educated populations. As in previous years, the best educated countries
tend to spend the most on tertiary education as a percentage of gross
domestic products. The United States and Canada, among the most educated
countries, spend the first and third most respectively.
In
an interview OECD’s Chief Media Officer Matthias Rumpf explained that
educational funding appears to have a strong relationship to how many
residents pursue higher education.
He
said private spending on educational institutions relative to public
expenditure is much larger in the countries with the highest rates of
college-equivalent education. Among the countries with the highest
proportion of residents with a tertiary education, a disproportionate
amount of spending comes from private sources, including tuition and
donations.
The
OECD average proportion of private spending is 16 percent, In the U.S.,
28 percent of funding comes from private sources. In South Korea,
another country in the top 10, it is more than 40 percent.
Having
more education helped people all over the world stay employed during
the recession, according to the OECD. Between 2008 and 2010,
unemployment rates among developed nations jumped from 8.8 percent to
12.5 percent for people with less than a high school education, and from
4.9 percent to 7.6 percent for people with only a high school
education. For those with the equivalent of a college degree or more,
the jobless rate went from 3.3 percent to just 4.7 percent.
Ends.
By Damas Makangale
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