HELB needs Ksh210B to finance the new university student-centered model
3 min read
HELB CEO says will require at least Sh145 billion for loans and Ksh75 billion for scholarships to finance the new university student-centered model
HELB CEO says will require at least Sh145 billion for loans and Ksh75 billion for scholarships to finance the new university student-centered model.
Under the new student-centered paradigm, university financing will need to be at least Ksh210 billion by 2028.
According to Higher Education Loans Board (HELB) CEO Charles Ringera, the loan component will need at least Sh145 billion, while the scholarship component will need at least Ksh75 billion.
“Small simulation numbers that we have done show that by 2028 through this model, university financing will require Ksh145 billion from loans only. Scholarships will be looking at another around Ksh75 billion so we are talking about Ksh210 billion as the amount that will be required,” Ringera said in a media session on university funding.
“The sustainability of this new funding model is to have big entities that can be able to raise money outside of the Exchequer, which can be able to support the programme. In this simulation, I have looked at the candidature of Form Fours and how they are transiting to higher education and also the expansion of TVET. These are important numbers for planners of the country to understand what this model will be like so that we can start looking at sustainability,” the CEO explained.
He claimed they have been searching for partnership funds through donors, foundations, individual business funders, and counties among other stakeholders in order to attain sustainability.
Even as he noted that the future of the board in terms of expansion is to see how to eliminate reliance on the Exchequer and is able to raise a lot more cash to assist higher education, he claimed that the optimal balance for HELB is when beneficiaries repay the loans.
The loan component covers tuition, books and stationery for the students, accommodation, and subsistence upkeep allowance.
Resign if you can’t fire IG Koome, Mama Ida to Ruto
How Uhuru’s pension will be affected after Ruto declined pay rise
Raila accuses ICC prosecutor Karim Khan of impropriety
Banks cut entry-level salary to KSh50,000
“We are discussing with World Bank to test a device loan programme because the admission letters you have seen most of them are saying that the students should come with a laptop. In most universities, laptops are one of the key components and we are thinking of how to be able to cater for these as they get to universities,” he explained.
He said the country is coming out of the old funding model that was established in 1989 and is the source o of the Sh16,000 fees universities have been referring to.
The Ksh16,000 component is supposed to come from the 20 percent of the Differentiated Unit Cost (DUC) that the households or HELB were supposed to give while grants were supposed to give 80 percent.
Ringera explained that the purpose of the old funding formula was mainly on equality, as long as everybody had something and did not consider students’ status.
“The new funding formula tries to bring some equity and equality. This was necessary because the DUC and average loan has been decreasing and with the growth of students, it came down to 48 percent last year, and had we continued this way, we would have landed to 35 percent this year,” he said.
Also read,
AU condemns Moody’s over ‘premature’ rating of Kenya’s Eurobond buyback plans
NHIF on the spot over the Ksh7B insurance tender
Raila responds to Ruto over Bondo slur
US Senator behind handshake returns for Ruto-Raila talks
Follow us
