Late start for BIUST, again
Baboki Kayawe | Tuesday August 4, 2015 15:30
By last Friday, hundreds of first year students were in limbo as they were told they would not resume classes this month as earlier communicated. Moreover, there was uncertainty as to whether government was footing their tuition and related costs. The students anxiously awaited sponsorship offers from the Department of Tertiary Education Financing (DTEF).
The Palapye bound learners said they learnt with shock about two weeks ago that their classes commence end of year. These learners were billed to commence studies in August 2, however due to non-communicated reasons they will start on December 6. “We were very surprised to be told registration will be on September 26 while classes resume in December. However, they have not said why this sudden change of schedule,” said a Manufacturing Engineering prospective learner.
Last year’s BIUST intake, was also supposed to begin classes in August.
However, an unexplained delay transpired that led to the school opening in February 2014. One affected learner said though he has passed his modules, the pressure to digest too much material was suffocating.
Another student, a 19-year-old female admitted for Geology at BIUST said, “I think we are going to start late and too much material will be distributed in a limited time, and that presents high chances of failure more so that as first years we have made the transition from basic education to tertiary- and it is a very challenging change.”
A source from BIUST said it only made sense for first years to come in at that time as both lecturers and students were still battling to complete the year, that way, last year’s delayed intake would have finished their first year content as the other group starts.
The students have revealed that DTEF has said that sponsorships were still being processed and attributed delays to late submissions of admission lists by their institutions.
Though the DTEF director Eugene Moyo could not reveal much, he said delays usually emanated from late issuance of admissions by institutions.
“It depends on how timely or not admissions are. If they issue them late obviously our processes here will be affected as well,” he said.
“But I can’t talk specifically about BIUST because the matter is being dealt with at ministerial level following a questionnaire your publication sent.
I do not want a situation whereby you will be reporting that the DTEF and the ministry are contradicting each other,” Moyo said.
Further asked about his department’s perennial delays in sponsorship issuance, Moyo said this time they have worked round the clock to ensure timeliness in the process, save for the two institutions.
“We did have a challenge with the system, which was down but we got it sorted on time,” said Moyo. The problem of sponsorship of first year students has also hit the University of Botswana (UB).
There seems to be more confusion at UB where most first year students were yesterday still waiting for offer letters from DTEF. By yesterday, only those who by the weekend had been sent cell phone messages to collect and process their sponsorships had resumed classes, while the majority were informed to stay at home until they are called. Mmegi is reliably informed that students are being processed in batches.
DTEF is expecting around 9,800 first year students on government funding this academic year. Last year about 44,000 learners were enrolled in both private, public higher learning institutions locally and abroad.
The department’s monthly expenditure on subsistence allowances alone stood at P62 million.
This year, he revealed that they had started using a quota system based on the national human resource needs as drawn by the Human Resource Development Council’s labour advisory sectoral committees to arrest skilling in areas that were over subscribed for.
“We then gave these quotas to institutions in order to guide their admission,” he said.
Meanwhile, Moyo said repayment of tertiary sponsorship loans was “relatively well, but the arrangement left room for inconsistencies in payment.”
Except for beneficiaries employed in government, the arrangement does not enable DTEF to deduct payment from source, which he called a problem in their collections exercise.
However, he was optimistic on the recent approval of collaboration with Botswana Unified Revenue Services (BURS) to augment collections.
“But there is need to align legislation so as to accommodate this task because BURS is legally mandated with tax collections not debts. Systems must also be looked at so that they communicate,” explained Moyo.
The education ministry had not responded to this publication’s inquiry on sponsorship and academic commencement delays by press time.