Cavendish University Students drop out as Tuition Hikes

Cavendish University Uganda raised functional fees to 30% for some causes and 45% for the last students.

This affected all the undergraduate students of this institute, this made students mostly from the law school to raise against fees increment, they refused to pay tuition in 2018. In some programs (plus functional fees), in journalism and mass communication, tuition was raised from 1.4m to 1.7m, ICT from 1.6m to 1.9m, the law they where paying 2.2m which was raised to 2.2m in 2017 and in 2018 they raised up to 2.9m.

Due to this several meetings were held and they came up with an agreement that fees will be raised by 10% per semester which only for that semester since it as rapidly raised in the following semester up to 45% in 2018.

According to Ecam Joshua a law student at cavendish the tuition increment affected many students, some dropped out of school and others joined other universities, he added on and said that in 2017 they had a class of 32 students but in 2018 they were left around 23 students and now in 2018 they have class of only 18 students.

Some of the students who dropped out and some who joined other universities explained that they joined cavendish because recently it was known as low-income students university but in the middle they started charging raising up the fees, this forced them to the VC’s office to complain who promised to help them, they waited until the situation drove them out of the institution

Ashiraf Ssengendo also law students who said he works hard to the tuition and he has to attend classes at the same time called out the university to immediately work on their issues since they are paying a lot of money and finds hard to pay tuition in time.

However this did not only affect the law students but also students from other different faculties

Kabemba Deborah an international student doing journalism and mass communication cautions that she is not content with the amount of money students pay especially foreigners because they cater for themselves since they are in a foreign country, for example, foreigners pay rent for hostels, buys food and other basic needs like medication, she also spoke about sports which he believes is not active yet she pays for it.

Boyata Freddy a journalism student at cavendish adds that he pays tuition for himself, he struggles a lot to get money and some times he misses classes which affect his performance in classes and he has been seeing students whom he started with leaving school due to the 30% they increased, if students are dropping out how is cavendish achieving their dreams.

An accounting student Ian Matsiko, his issue is that the university raised tuition without even informing them, he reached to the extent of topping up the tuition using his pocked money because he always makes a budget before starting a new semester

Frank Mugisha a 4th year student and a president of the students law club demanded for the accountability of the students activities like the guild fee (20,000)and the sports fee (20,000) which is paid annually by all the cavendish students, yet to get this money in case of any event one has to go over 15 offices which he believes it is not fair, because that is the reasons why they pay functional fees.

The guilds office cautions that they were not informed about the tuition increment but so many students have been coming to their offices complaining about this issue. and The enrollment office that “we are not the policymakers they don’t know they increased fees and advised me to visit the executive directors office and this is what I got from him via email

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0?ui=2&ik=0051248f2d&attid=0.1&permmsgid=msg-f:1650989461707382520&th=16e97e2b08fb5ef8&view=att&disp=inline&realattid=f_k3bg9jh50

Nanvule Phionah journalism and mass communication student cavendish university Uganda