Tuition shocker
Published:Thursday | July 29, 2010 | 12:00 AM
Edmond Campbell, Senior Staff Reporter
NEWS THAT tertiary-level students could face a staggering 100 per cent increase in tuition fees in the 2011-2012 academic year sent shock waves through a committee meeting in Parliament yesterday and threatens to reverberate across the society.
For the upcoming 2010-2011 academic year, tertiary-level students are being called upon to pay an average $240,000for tuition fees. However, executive director of the Students' Loan Bureau (SLB), Lenice Barnett, told members of the Public Administration and Appropriations Committee that the average tuition fee could double by 2011-2012.
This means tuition fees would soar close to $500,000 per annum in less than two years.
Currently, Government subsidises about 80 per cent of tertiary tuition fees with students paying the 20 per cent balance.
Barnett told the committee that the SLB's projection was that, by the 2011-2012 academic year, students at tertiary institutions could be required to pay up to 40 per cent of the tuition cost.
With no apparent ease in the rising cost of education, the SLB head stressed that tuition would continue surging due to the ever- increasing cost of operating the education sector.
"I think we should encourage parents from very early in the day to put aside something for their children's education because it is the only way we are going to get around it," Barnett asserted.
She said the SLB was also forecasting a significant increase in the number of students approaching the lending institution for loans.
But committee member Michael Stern argued that many Jamaicans, including persons in his constituency, were "giving up on higher education".
"We have people who want to educate themselves but are trapped because they do not have the resources," declared Stern, the Government's member of parliament for North West Clarendon. "Back in the days of slavery, it was access and whether or not you had a different colour. Now it is money, hard cash, and we have bright students out there but they will never reach their potential."
Stern said the Government would not be able to fund tertiary institutions up to a certain level, but suggested that the SLB should attempt to source funding from multilaterals at reduced rates of interest to finance students' loans.
For the upcoming academic year, the SLB will be granting loans to about 10,000 students, at a total cost of more than $2 billion.
Eleven-thousand seven hundred students applied for loans at the SLB this year.
Barnett indicated that the bureau would require at least $2.8 billion for the 2011-2012 academic year if government subvention to tertiary institutions was reduced by 40 per cent.
Currently, students attending the University of the West Indies and the University of Technology get the lion's share of the SLB's loans.
The SLB provides loans to students attending some 44 tertiary institutions.