Getting Must right from the onset

Pleas from students in Malawi’s public universities for more money in their monthly allowances have come at a time when the country is alarmed about the extent of subsidies and freebies.   

To be sure, government-sponsored students in Malawi’s public universities do not only attain a free university education, they are “lucratively employed” to pursue a university education, as somebody put it on my Facebook wall some weeks ago.  As Minister of Education Hon Eunice Kazembe explained on MBCTV recently, students are paid up to K400 000 per year in allowances. It is one thing to go to university for free, it is a totally different thing to be paid to go university. 

All this has come to light as a result of the pressure the students have been exerting on government to raise their allowances. Given the distaste the country has developed for “free” things, it remains to be seen how much longer university allowances will be sustained for. 

The opening of Must gives the country a chance to recreate the blueprint for how to provide university education. If Must will be run in the same business as usual terms as the other universities, then it too risks going through the same disruptions that have come to characterise the already-existing universities. Three things stand out as in need of a rethink as MUST opens later this year: the much-debated quota system, student allowances, and loans. 

The reason why the quota system is the most controversial idea in Malawian higher education debates is because of the capacity problems in our universities. In 2011 a survey of 150 countries revealed that only 0.3 percent of young Malawians in the 17-22 year age range are actually in university, placing Malawi last on the list. It is not difficult to understand where the low percentage is coming from. The most recent intake into the University of Malawi, for the 2012/2013 academic year, was 908. The university administered the university entrance exam to 8 507 candidates out of which 6 373 candidates passed. The Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (Luanar) based its 2012/2013 selection on the same University of Malawi entrance exam, and admitted 456 students. The intake for Mzuzu University was 366 students. The total comes to 1 730 students entering into the three existing public universities. 

The number of students who registered to sit for the 2012 Malawi School Certificate Examination was 111 781. The number of those who passed the exam was 57 906. Although the number of students invited to sit the next entrance exam will come down to about 8 500, the fact remains that 57 906 passed the exam. Ideally, the results mean that many of these students are capable of pursuing higher education and succeeding. We still have a long way before we can even begin to accommodate half the number of those who qualify for university education.  

If Must is going to avoid the quota quagmire, admission will have to be based on what Limbani Nsapato calls a “win-win university quota selection system.” By this Nsapato means a system that is based on both merit and socio-economic factors that include gender, disability and poverty. This would give students from rural districts of Malawi and from marginalized backgrounds an equal chance of being selected. Currently, these groups stand little chance.

The second thing, the university at Ndata must get right is the student allowances. The solution is to admit as many students as the university has space for. Students will be asked to pay the full tuition fees. Those unable to do so will apply for the available scholarships, providing incontrovertible evidence of their inability to afford the fees. Scholarships can include the much-debated allowances for the students who demonstrate the need, but everyone else will be admitted on the full knowledge and expectation that they will bear the cost.

The third thing will be loans, which will allow those in between to also pursue their education. But a crucial part of getting the loan system right will be loan repayment by alumni. It remains a mystery why we as a nation have failed to put in place a loan system that would have by now helped our universities expand and admit many more students than is the case now. Must offers us a new opportunity for a fresh start. n 

The author is an educationist and social commentator