Students told not to pay fees until State completes funding model

Students who will join university this year have been asked not to pay fees until the categorisation process is completed.

Higher Education Principal Secretary, Dr Beatrice Inyangala, said the students will only pay fees after the process to establish their exact level of need, in line with the higher education funding model is established.

Dr Inyangala explained that the amount universities communicated was the full cost of the programme and not the school fees they will be required to pay.

She said once students have completed the application, the government will establish the level of need.

“I am confirming that they should not pay fees until we have categorised the students according to their level of need in the different bands and then inform them on the level of need that the government will provide,” she said in a televised interview.

The PS noted that the most vulnerable students under band one will receive 95 per cent of government support.

“So for the students in band 2, the government will provide 90 per cent support, 80 per cent support for band three, 70 per cent support in band 4 and 60 per cent government support in band five. And that means for all the parents, depending on the level of income, they will only pay a maximum of 40 per cent of the cost of that programme,” she said.

Inyangala regretted the disinformation and misinformation on the programme cost and university funding model.

She said that the government will continue explaining the accurate dynamics of funding.

The PS noted that the programme cost for courses like Medicine is Sh612,000 while Bachelor of Arts is about Sh122,400.

However, she said parents will pay a small portion of the total programme cost.

The PS assured that students from very vulnerable backgrounds will not pay more than Sh30,600 a year to study Medicine.

While those studying Bachelor of Arts will pay Sh6,120 a year, which means that in a semester they will pay Sh3,060, a situation that has made education affordable.

“That is why, for a student in band 1 undertaking a Bachelor of Arts course, they will not pay more than 6,000 a year. With the support provided by the Government through loans and scholarship, university education has never been more affordable,” she said.

On Monday, Inyangala announced extension for government funding application for 2023 Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) students joining universities in the 2024/25 academic year.

She noted that as at August 4, 79,038 university students out of 153,275 placed by Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS) had applied for loans and scholarships.

This means that at least 74,237 students are yet to apply for funding.

“We are pleased to announce that the application process has been extended by 10 days, closing on August 10. Under the new funding model, Government funding will be allocated based on individual student need. Starting August 19, parents and guardians will be informed of the university fees/household contribution towards the cost of the university programmes,” Inyangala said, in a statement.

Higher Education Loans Board (HELB) Chief Executive Officer, Charles Ringera said the mantra of the funding model is to ensure that no student is left out of university education.

Ringera said this has also been achieved by ensuring that the students, whether they have the national identity card or not, are allowed to apply by validating index numbers.

“Out of the over 78,000 applications, we have about 30,000 index numbers for students without identity cards without. As a funding agency, we open for a long period of time, timing university opening dates. The first university is opening mid this month, in fact from historical perspective we are doing better than last year. The mantra of the new funding model is not leaving behind whether with the ID or not since use of index number is valid,” Ringera explained.

He assured that Helb is meticulous in terms of data collection to ensure accurate level of need for a student is achieved then validators connected to various government agencies point to the accurate information.

Helb uses the Means Testing Instrument (MTI) to assess the level of need for each learner.

“We do not rely on the self-declared income. Information on Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) or National Health Insurance Fund will point to us how vulnerable you are. For instance, if you are on Government cash transfers, we can be able to see,” he said.

Ringera also said that Helb also provides an annual amount of Sh60,000 to vulnerable students in band 1 for upkeep.

The extremely needy students are expected to get an upkeep loan amount of Sh55,000, Sh50,000 while the less needy are expected to receive Sh45,000 as loan upkeep.

“What we have done this year in terms of MTI, even after we do categorisation, we want to sample all the students who have applied and do ground verification on the status that was declared across the 47 counties. This will also tell us the efficacy of MTI,” explained Ringera.