The Uganda students‘ higher education financing policy perspective on equitable access to higher education in Uganda

Abstract

Given the enormous benefits that higher education (HE) accrues to individuals and nations as well as the pivotal role it plays in creating and achieving sustainable socio-economic transformation of nations, equity in access to HE has assumed a central position in HE policies of many countries. Notably, equitable access to HE has been at the center of discussion in the Bologna Declaration of 1999, the aspiration of Africa Agenda 2030, Africa Agenda 2063, the East African Community (EAC) Vision 2050, as well as the Uganda Vision 2040. Moreover, equitable access to HE is configured as one of the cornerstones of ensuring the right to education. Against this backdrop, I explored equitable access to HE via the Uganda Students‘ Higher Education Financing Policy by exploring how it is broadening access to HE, ensuring retention and completion of the policy beneficiaries, and how it is deepening access to HE. To carry out this study, I adopted a qualitative, descriptive case study design that was rooted in transformative justice as well as Michel Foucault‘s discourse analysis philosophies and guided by an interpretivist paradigm. I used data from semi-structured interviews with nine participants that I selected through snowball sampling as well as purposive sampling. I then triangulated data sources with documentary analysis and review. I used the inductive thematic analysis method to analyze data on objectives one and two, and Foucauldian discourse analysis on objective three. Findings showed that equity in the implementation of the policy is amiss. Issues of corruption, influence-peddling, limited publicity of the loan policy, and hierarchical policy venue are all signs of systemic elitism imbued in the implementation of the policy. Moreover, the findings also showed that the policy does not explicitly address retention and completion of the beneficiaries. Also, using discourse analysis, the study revealed that the term ‗regional balance‘ as used in the policy is a cynical policy rhetoric and a discourse that is used to establish and perpetuate the hegemony of the Western part of Uganda through unequal power relations, rather than a pure act of equity. Thus, regional balance is used as an assemblage of governmentality thus showing that policies are more than just institutional mechanisms for producing agreement but are also stages on which theatrical and symbolic modes of exemplary politics are performed. Thus I recommend that there is need: for the Higher Education Students‘ Financing Board (HESFB) to expand its capital base beyond the funds appropriated by Parliament, the HESFB should adopt a two-tier model of awarding loans to students, increase public awareness and popularity of the policy, and use regional quotas when selecting loan beneficiaries.