On Tuesday, 2nd May, 2023, the Students of Kyambogo University broke out in a strike to protest the fifty thousand Ugandan shillings surcharge imposed on those who fail to pay full tuition. According to the university policy, students are supposed to pay full tuition within the first six weeks.
In the past few years, similar strikes occurred at Uganda’s biggest public university, Makerere. The students say that if they have failed to pay tuition on time, a fine will not help but rather widen the burden. The fact that the fees structure of tertiary institutions in Uganda is high makes it difficult for the students to pay tuition on time. Most university students fail to even feed themselves while at school, a fifty thousand shillings fine for failure of paying tuition fees on time would be unfair on them.
The surcharges are indicated through the Academic Integrated Management System (AIMS)
which is an integrated educational management system that automates all business processes
like billing, payments and curriculum. Surcharge is common in public universities but it dropped
temporarily dropped it in early 2023.
In his letter to then guild president Lawrence Alionzi (Dangote) on 9th January 2023, Prof.
Barnabas Nawangwe the vice chancellor of Makerere University addressed the fears among
students when he stopped the paying of surcharge but urged students to fully pay tuition
before the end of the first semester. Nevertheless, he said that it would work only for that
semester as the administration was looking into the matter.
Students wish for university authorities to be considerate as most of their guardians and
sponsors cannot pay tuition on time due to COVID- 19 pandemic affecting their financial
statuses. The university policy as amended puts it straight that after the elapse of six weeks,
there shall be an extra charge of fifty thousand Ugandan shillings to those with tuition balances.
It favored the year ones that reported late for their academic year 2022/2023 and was pushed
to eight weeks to give parents space to enable them to raise the tuition fees.
Article by
Peninah Nalubega
