Helb CEO Charles Ringera. Treasury has increased allocation to Helb by Sh1.8 billion for the year starting July. PHOTO | FILE
What you need to know:
More than 67,000 new students are set to join university this year up from about 57,000 last year, expanding the demand for loans.
The Treasury has increased allocation to the Higher Education Loans Board (Helb) by Sh1.8 billion for the year starting July.
This comes as the university education funding agency continues to struggle to meet financing needs for the rising number of students.
Budget estimates released last week show that the government has set aside Sh7.5 billion for the fiscal year 2015/16 to sponsor students in universities, up from Sh5.7 billion in the current period.
Helb recently said it needed more than Sh10 billion to meet the students’ funding needs — a signal that the allocation would be inadequate.
More than 67,000 new students are set to join university this year up from about 57,000 last year, expanding the demand for loans.
The allocated Sh7.5 billion includes cash recovered from past student loanees, meaning that the actual allocation from the Treasury is much lower. The loans agency said the Sh5.7 billion allocated last year was only enough to sponsor the students already in universities, excluding freshers.
“The students in second to fourth year of their education are consuming about Sh5.5 billion per year, meaning that we will need more money for new students,” Helb chief executive Charles Ringera said earlier.
The State’s underfunding has in the past brewed a storm at Helb occasioned by delays in transmitting cash to the accounts of students in public institutions, most of whom are from poor households.
The loans agency in January slashed the highest allocation per student to Sh50,000 from Sh60,000 per academic year for freshmen who joined university last year but had experienced a four-month delay in getting their loans. There has been a sharp rise in enrolment of students in public universities, straining resources at Helb whose capitation has been growing at a slow pace.
Official data shows that both public and private universities had 443,783 students last year, up from 361,379 a year earlier and 218,628 in 2012. The number of university students stood at 62,000 in 2002.
Helb has widened its lending to students in private universities and Kenyan students in institutions based in Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda.
The agency has in the past sought extra funding from the government to plug the deficit.
