21 Mar 2013

Ugandan Minister of State for Higher Education Dr John Muyingo said the private tertiary education financing system that Botswana has embarked on is a great model of investing in its people.

Touring Botho College during his four- day benchmarking visit to Botswana, Dr Muyingo said his delegation came to learn the good practice that has enabled Botswana’s success in students financing especially in private tertiary institution.

 Dr Muyingo said, they selected Botswana after looking out for countries that have succeeded in financing higher education.

He said they were satisfied especially with the great job and quality of education that the private educators were offering the country adding that they would put into practice what they have learnt from Botswana.

“I am going to take it up with Uganda government as a very good thing that has come out of Botswana”, he said

He said he was mostly impressed by the strong cooperation between private providers of education and government institutions, a thing he said was not  common in many countries.

“I have realised that for a country to succeed, the private sector must actively participate in whatever is being done”, he said.

Most of the time, Dr Muyingo said the private sector was out to make profits but with the passion that the Botho College management has taken up, it was a sign that profit was not at the expense of quality.

He highlighted that Uganda was facing a challenge of an extremely high demand for higher education yet with limited and scarce resources.

Dr Muyingo said with well over 8.2 million young boys and girls who will be proceeding to secondary education, government was determined to ensure that all these people get to higher education.

He said he has learnt a lot from the Botswana model and would ensure that the Ugandan government adopts it.

For her part Botho College managing director Ms Shiela Raja Ram said Botho College only enrolled privately sponsored students before the implementation of private tertiary education financing, noting that they have since gotten into partnership with government .

“Ever since then, the enrolment ration per tertiary institution has been healthy”, she said.

She said there has been a huge benefit of quality education ever since the implementation of the policy.

She said she was pleased with the regulatory system that the government was imploring on the private tertiary education institutions as there were frequent audits.

Ever since private education financing came on board, Ms Raja Ram said more investors have since invested in education and become so efficient. ENDS