Times Of Swaziland: TERTIARY INSTITUTIONS CRUMBLING

TERTIARY INSTITUTIONS CRUMBLING
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Editor on 01/06/2022 08:06:00


Sir,
It is evident that graduands are gradually finding it harder to grind their way
through local tertiary institutions as inadequate funding of the institutions
continues to compromise the quality of the programmes on offer. The Minister of
Education and Training should be a very worried woman when key institutions
under her watch seem to be crumbling brick- by-brick, day-by-day. These are
institutions responsible for ensuring we have a better educated citizenry
tomorrow.
Sustainable
The number of universities in the country has increased and at one stage some
colleges were in the process of transforming into universities. However, this
increase is hardly being matched by the desired scholarships needed to make it
sustainable for them. For instance, we now have a medical university that is an
essential institution for a country that has to produce medical practitioners in
ways that could drastically reduce the high cost of overseas scholarships for
such programmes and ensure we have enough doctors and specialists. Government
had great appetite for this project initially having calculated the benefits.
Agreements were signed and this made the project viable. However, there suddenly
appears to be a total lack of commitment by government to take full advantage of
this initiative as financial support for this institution has dwindled sharply.
One could expect that the minister would wish to see this dream become a reality
under her tenure.
Funding
Government stands accused of not sufficiently funding the transformation of
colleges. Limkokwing students continue to have running battles with their
administration over the funding issues that have seen experienced lecturers
depart and programmes not sufficiently funded. The Southern Africa Nazarene
University has also endured financial troubles in recent times, all related to
underfunding. All this flied in the face of government’s talk of meeting First
World targets of building more universities and increasing access for students.
But by the look of things, it would appear government is driving all these
institutions to privatise.
Subventions
This wouldn’t be such a bad idea as government has too many parastatals to
subvent anyway and has to find ways to cut this number down because it can
hardly keep up with payments.
What will most likely follow with our tertiary institutions is the
commercialisation of the scholarship fund. In fact, this has been suggested in
the past. Maybe it’s time that universities in the country adopted a business
model and stopped relying on government subventions.