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Govt suspends student loans scheme over poor funding
Higher Education Students Financing Board executive director Michael Wanyama appears before Cosase at Parliament on May 3, 2023. PHOTO/DAVID LUBOWA
What you need to know:
- Data by the HESFB indicates that only 625 people benefitted from the fund in 2022 as compared to 1,273 in 2014, signaling that the board had entered a phase of grappling with low government funding.
Government has suspended its student loans scheme effective the Academic Year 2023/24, the Higher Education Students’ Financing Board (HESFB) has announced.
According to the HESFB, the move to halt the nearly 10-year-old program has been influenced budgetary shortfalls.
“The HESFB informs the public that the board will not receive applications for study loans to the Academic Year 2023/2024,” HESFB executive director Michael Wanyama said in a brief July 6 statement.
Wanyama says the HESFB is facing difficulties with resources to facilitate the new cohorts for the scheme.
However, the board will focus on the students who are already registered for the scheme in the meantime.
“The board will continue to facilitate in-study loan scheme beneficiaries while engaging all stakeholders in resource mobilization to resume supporting new cohorts of student loans in Financial Year 2024/2025,” Wanyama noted.
Without showing details of how long the suspension might last, HESFB July 6 said "we are sorry for the inconveniences this may cause."
The board that started implementing the student loans scheme in 2014 has so far supported about 13,400 beneficiaries with at least 11,393 acquiring undergraduate degrees and 2,012 obtaining undergraduate diploma programmes mainly in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) except for learners with special needs who can access study loans and top to pursue all programmes of their choice, according to HESFB.
But data by the HESFB indicates that only 625 people benefitted from the fund in 2022 as compared to 1,273 in 2014, signaling that the board had entered a phase of grappling with low government funding.
The HESFB was established by The Higher Education Students’ Financing Act, No. 2 of 2014 with a mandate to provide loans and scholarships to highly qualified Ugandan students who may not afford higher education.
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