Re-engineering Public University Financing Policy In Zambia

Higher education especially public universities in Zambia have been experiencing a multitude and plethora of challenges such as:financial austerity, accessibility, faculty recruitment and retention, massification, lack of true institutional autonomy and the lack of improvement of physical facilities. Cognizant of these quagmires, and the challenge of financial stringency which has remained at the peril of public universities development, the government through the1996education reforms, crafted higher education financing policy based on decentralization, democratic principles of efficiency, equity, accountability and cost effectiveness. This was a way of responding and moving away from an exclusively tax funded to develop non-state sources of funding. For public universities, the policy emphasized cost sharing, revenue diversification and student loans as an avenue for achieving the much desired sustainability. This study therefore uses Johnstone’s (1986)’Diversified Funding Model’(DFM) in the conceptual framework to appraise the policy for financing public universities that has been in existence for almost two decades in terms of cost sharing, revenue diversification and student loans. The study theoretically and empirically uses the parallel convergent mixed design in which quantitative and qualitative approaches are juxtaposed. The actor’s attitudes and perceptions are used to propose ways of re-engineering the current financing policy to make public universities effective and sustainable. Data were collected using the questionnaires (Students-N=729, Lecturers-N=200), semi-structured interviews (12officials-University and Government) and supplemented by document analysis for five months in2012. Data analysis was mostly through descriptive statistics, factor analysis, interpretive theory and embedding the two strands of findings.In light of the aggregate actors’perception towards the policy of financing public universities, findings of the current study suggest that the current policy was perceived to have had a modest achievement and therefore needed re-engineering to make it viable, effective and sustainable. Financing public universities in Zambia is at crossroads: government’s real GDP allocations to universities are declining, debts are growing at astronomical rates and the true cost sharing model and student loan policy has never been fully implemented for16years now. The study further revealed that students, parents, donors, entrepreneurship and government are still key component of university financing possibilities, even though the universities were still heavily reliant on tax funding. The study makes recommendations which among others point to government’s implementation of a truly cost sharing funding model and student loan scheme, liquidating of current huge debts and avoidance of meddling in important financing policy decisions for political expediency.Finally, based on findings and international experience, the study proposes three things:i) A Mixed Amplified Cost Sharing Model (MACSM); ii) An introduction of’Funding Formula’ and iii) the creation of Special Fund called ’Zambia Education Trust Fund’(ZETF).