Higher Education Finance and Accessibility: Tuition Fees and Student Loans in Sub-Saharan Africa*

D. Bruce Johnstone

Abstract

* An earlier version of this paper was presented to a conference, “Improving Tertiary Education in Sub-Saharan Africa: Things that Work!” sponsored by the Association of African Universities and the World Bank, in Accra, Ghana, September 23–25, 2003.“Revenue supplementation” in higher education refers to shifting higher education costs away from relying mainly (sometimes virtually exclusively) on government, or the taxpayer, and toward parents, students, philanthropists, businesses, and other sources. “Cost-sharing” refers more specifically to requiring that parents and stu- dents pay all or most of tuition, lodging, and food costs, and other fees, as well as lessening the value of grants or raising the effective interest rate on student loans. This article identifies some of the historic resistance to cost sharing as well as its rationales—the most compelling of which is the sheer need for revenue, coupled with the increasing unlikelihood that African governments can raise enough rev- enue by taxation to meet currently underfunded social needs and simultaneously provide substantially more to meet the rising costs of higher education. The article identifies some limitations to the “dual-track” tuition policies in East Africa and some reasons for the many failures African countries have experienced with stu- dent loan programs. It cautions against the prevailing fascination with income- contingent loans and makes recommendations, drawn both from theory and from the few empirical examples of “things that work.”