4th October 2013
Editorial Cartoon
The national Higher Education Students’ Loans Board
(HESLB) has declared that it has exhausted its budget for academic year
2013/2014. This means that at least 10,000 people aspiring for
university education but yet to secure loans will have to approach
alternative sources of funding or reschedule their studies.
This is not the first time the board has left such an enormous number of eligible students without loans, as usual saying its hands were tied as per budget and there was nothing they could do to meet demand.
That may be understandable, although not entirely so as there are persistent complaints on how HESLB handles the issuance of the loans.
It is commonly rumoured that some of the people who do not secure funding are the very ones who need it the most, while a number of those who do are believed to come from wealthy families that would comfortably do without such assistance.
HESLB says students pursuing education, medicine, engineering and other science courses get the first priority in the issuance of loans. It also considers pass marks and the status of schools the students had attended, meaning that those who studied at ward-level schools and other public schools have a better chance of securing loans than those who went to posh private ones.
There are however still reports of a good number of students meeting all those criteria but who haven’t secured loans, and hence the persistent concern from the public over whether HESLB really operates in line with the criteria commonly cited.
Looking at the bigger picture, the manner in which the loans board operates in the first place is odd, to say the least. Extend loans to students with impressive pass marks? Fine, but saying that those pursuing particular courses such as education or medicine would be guaranteed loans is not far from saying all loan applicants should preferably pursue those very courses.
If that were indeed to be the case, any reason to wonder why some of our teachers, etc., are associated with lack of commitment to the profession?
Financial year 2013/2014 has seen the government come up with the Big Results Now (BRN) initiative, whose implementation covers selected sectors (including education) seen as best meant to bolster the economy.
If implemented as planned, the initiative could prove invaluable in sprucing up the education sector. But in implementing the initiative, the government and education stakeholders should remember to address issues like shortage of funds for higher learning students – a problem that has left thousands of students with no funds to finance their tertiary education.
If indeed improving the standard of education and training is one of the priorities of BRN, it would be a contradiction if we fail to extend loans to big numbers of those eligible.
It is therefore high time the government came up with a back-up plan through which to inject more funds in the education sector to support the construction of more ward schools and come to the rescue of people genuinely in need of financial assistance so as to pursue higher education.
Unless this is done, our education sector will always lag behind and we will have only ourselves to blame.
This is not the first time the board has left such an enormous number of eligible students without loans, as usual saying its hands were tied as per budget and there was nothing they could do to meet demand.
That may be understandable, although not entirely so as there are persistent complaints on how HESLB handles the issuance of the loans.
It is commonly rumoured that some of the people who do not secure funding are the very ones who need it the most, while a number of those who do are believed to come from wealthy families that would comfortably do without such assistance.
HESLB says students pursuing education, medicine, engineering and other science courses get the first priority in the issuance of loans. It also considers pass marks and the status of schools the students had attended, meaning that those who studied at ward-level schools and other public schools have a better chance of securing loans than those who went to posh private ones.
There are however still reports of a good number of students meeting all those criteria but who haven’t secured loans, and hence the persistent concern from the public over whether HESLB really operates in line with the criteria commonly cited.
Looking at the bigger picture, the manner in which the loans board operates in the first place is odd, to say the least. Extend loans to students with impressive pass marks? Fine, but saying that those pursuing particular courses such as education or medicine would be guaranteed loans is not far from saying all loan applicants should preferably pursue those very courses.
If that were indeed to be the case, any reason to wonder why some of our teachers, etc., are associated with lack of commitment to the profession?
Financial year 2013/2014 has seen the government come up with the Big Results Now (BRN) initiative, whose implementation covers selected sectors (including education) seen as best meant to bolster the economy.
If implemented as planned, the initiative could prove invaluable in sprucing up the education sector. But in implementing the initiative, the government and education stakeholders should remember to address issues like shortage of funds for higher learning students – a problem that has left thousands of students with no funds to finance their tertiary education.
If indeed improving the standard of education and training is one of the priorities of BRN, it would be a contradiction if we fail to extend loans to big numbers of those eligible.
It is therefore high time the government came up with a back-up plan through which to inject more funds in the education sector to support the construction of more ward schools and come to the rescue of people genuinely in need of financial assistance so as to pursue higher education.
Unless this is done, our education sector will always lag behind and we will have only ourselves to blame.
SOURCE:
THE GUARDIAN
