What you should know About New Higher Education Fund ( HEF)
The New Higher Education Funding (NHEF) model, which includes loans and subsidies for students placed by KUCCPS, has been introduced by the government.
Following a directive given by President William Ruto on May 3, 2023, the NHEF concept was implemented.
The new strategy will go into effect when the 2022 KCSE candidates are admitted to colleges and institutions for the fiscal year 2023–2024.
The concept intends to reform the system for paying students in higher education by matching financial aid, government scholarships, and loans to the individual requirements of students and the expenses of their programmes.
This creative funding model’s main goal is to give students from low-income families equal access to both university education and technical and vocational education and training (TVET).
Four factors will be taken into consideration when calculating financing under the NHEF: the selected programme, the household income band, affirmative performance, and government priority regions.
A Means Testing Instrument (MTI), which includes eight variables including parental background, gender, course type, marginalisation, disability, family size, and composition, has been designed to statistically evaluate students’ needs.
The State can precisely determine the requirements of various households and provide funds in accordance by using these characteristics.
Scholarships outnumber loans for students from financially secure backgrounds, while loans outnumber scholarships for students from less financially secure homes.
According to their levels of need, the NHEF divides students into four categories: vulnerable, severely needy, needy, and less needy. The government will provide all financial support for students who fall into the vulnerable and highly needy groups through loans and scholarships.
The government will cover 93% of the cost of tuition for individuals who fall into the needy and less-needy categories; the remaining 7% will be covered by the student.
University students in need will receive government loans of up to 40% and scholarships covering up to 53% of their tuition, leaving only 7% to be paid by their relatives.
What you should know About New Higher Education Fund ( HEF)
Similar to this, students who register in TVETs will receive government loans of up to 30 percent and scholarships of up to 50 percent, with household contributions of 20 percent.
Students who qualify for the funding must submit a formal application through the Higher Education Financing portal (www.hef.co.ke) after being notified by KUCCPS.
As they will still get financial aid based on the current government approach, continuing students won’t be impacted by this new financing model.
In the fiscal year 2023–2024, the government increased funds for higher education in order to make it easier to adopt this innovative structure.
The financing per student increased from Sh152,000 to Sh208,000. This was accomplished by increasing the provision for higher education from Sh84.6 billion to Sh54 billion.
Additionally, the budgetary funding for TVETs was increased from Sh5.2 billion to Sh10 billion in the same fiscal year, or Sh67,000 per student annually.
