HELB CEO says Ksh210B will be required to finance new student-centred 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.
According to our little simulation calculations, Ksh145 billion in loans alone will be needed to finance universities by 2028. We are talking about Ksh210 billion as the amount that will be needed,” Ringera said in a media session on university funding. “Scholarships will be looking at another roughly Ksh75 billion, so we are talking about Ksh210 billion.”
“The sustainability of this new funding model depends on the existence of large organisations that can raise funds for the plan from sources other than the Exchequer. I examined Form Four students’ candidature, their transition to higher education, and the growth of TVET in this simulation. The CEO added that these figures are crucial in helping national planners comprehend what the model would look like and how we can start thinking about sustainability.
He claimed they have been searching for partnership money 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 people repay the loans.
At least 800,000 students at TVET institutions and universities received funding from HELB last year, which had a Ksh11 billion allocation, Ksh4.8 billion in recovered funds, and a total Ksh14.9 billion in disbursements.
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Institutions of higher learning have access to Ksh27.6 billion from HELB, Ksh19.6 billion from the Universities Fund, and Ksh4.6 billion from TVET for the current fiscal year.
The loan portion includes payments for the students’ tuition, books and stationery, housing, and a maintenance stipend for their food.
Following COVID-19, there is a new problem: laptops. Because the majority of the admission letters you have seen state that students should bring a laptop, we are talking with the World Bank about testing a device loan programme. We are considering how to be able to cater for these as they go to universities because laptops are one of the important components in the majority of universities, he said.
He claimed that the outdated funding system, which was put in place in 1989 and is where the Sh16,000 fees mentioned by universities come from, is being phased out throughout the nation.
The Ksh16,000 portion is intended to come from the 20% of the Differentiated Unit Cost (DUC) that households or HELB were intended to contribute, while grants were intended to contribute 80%.
According to Ringera, the old financing formula’s major focus was equality—as long as everyone had something—and did not take students’ standing into account.
“The new funding mechanism aims to promote equality and fairness. This was required since the DUC and average loan have been falling, and with the increase in students, they reached a low of 48% last year. Had we kept going in the same direction, they would have reached a low of 35% this year, he said.
HELB CEO says Ksh210B will be required to finance new student-centred model
