UB unattractive to many students
Tsaone Basimanebotlhe | Tuesday November 8, 2016 17:47
“On the contrary, the university has not been able to attract sufficient students to meet the quota allocated to it.
The only time when the UB was able to exceed the quota of new students allocated to it was in 2015-2016. It exceeded its quota by an additional 89 students,” Madigele said.
The Minister was answering a question by MP for Gaborone Central, Phenyo Butale who wanted to know the long term sustainability of the UB as a public institution in the wake of recent cuts in students sponsored by government and its failure to pay tuition fees to the university for many years.
The Minister said the institution has been urged to reform and develop relevant programmes that will enable it to compete locally and beyond.
He said they subsequently increased its quota from 2,305 in 2015-2016 to 2,905 this 2016-2017 financial year, but the university has only managed to attract 2,230 marking a shortfall of 675 new students.
“Statistics clearly indicate that government continues to support the university and it has not reduced the number of students being sponsored at UB.
We have implored the management of the University to come up with a turnaround strategy that will enable them to attract more students into its academic programmes,” he said.
Madigele said the decision not to pay tuition for that financial year was taken after a review undertaken in 2012-2013, which showed that the university had large bank balances of over P2 billion.
The minister said these were mainly from funds that were allocated for capital projects and the funds accumulated interest that the University then used on further development without authority from government.
He said they still anticipate that the university will have a positive balance at the end of the financial year despite that the UB last year increased salaries by 30% without the Ministry’s approval.