Universities fees are not exorbitant as people claim- Gandawa

Deputy Minister of Higher,Tertiary Science and Technology Godfrey Gandawa has said the universities fees are not as exorbitant as some sections of the society claim.

"While I appreciate that the income of our populace is not as much as we would want it to be, it is incorrect to say that the fees that are charged in our universities are exorbitant.  People should appreciate that we are the lowest in terms of fees.  Our fees at the university are US$350 tuition fees for general programmes and $450 for the sciences excluding accommodation," he told house of assembly members in parliament.

"The Ministry of Finance and Economic Development or Treasury has not been allocating funds to all our institutions of higher learning and the fees are the ones that are sustaining the institutions of higher learning in terms of the learning and teaching material.  Everything that you see happening in our institutions of higher learning, be it polytechnics, teacher's colleges as well as universities is managed from the tuition fees that the students are paying to our institutions."

He said so, they are actually commending their institutions for fully utilising the fees that they are getting from the students.

"All the developments, even infrastructural developments that you see - for instance, if you visit the Great Zimbabwe University, you will see that there is serious development happening there.  If you visit the Bindura University and all our universities, you will see they are working extra hard to use the little fees that they collect from our students to do infrastructural developments since we are not getting any PSIP from Treasury," he said.

"So, I think our institutions are utilising the tuition fees and the fees that they are getting from the students to improve our institutions of higher learning."