Disastrous education decline as chefs send kids abroad

places are busy looting the national coffers by sending their offspring to pricey institutions of higher education overseas. The following are some of their choices:
School Tuition
Harvard University(US) US$39,880
District of Columbia University (US) US$6,510
Wolverhampton University(UK) £3,000
Midlands College (US) US$8,910
Durham University(UK) £3,000
George Washington University(US) US$34,110
Birmingham University(UK) £12,000
It should be noted that domestic workers in the country earn a minimum wage of Z$8,000 per month. Industrial workers earn between Z$15,000 and Z$60,000 per month. These groups constitute the majority of families with children of school and college going age. It does not require a genius to figure out that this earning capacity will not sustain an elementary school fee of Z$2,500 per semester and Z$5,000 per term for secondary school.
Tuition fees for a four-month term at a university jumped from around Z$3million (US$30) to between Z$30million (US$302) and Z$90million (US$907), while the cost of studying at a polytechnic surged to Z$30 million up from Z$2million a term. Residential students have to pay an extra Z$24 million (US$241) for accommodation.
Earlier in the year, the Vice Chancellor of the University of Zimbabwe announced a basic fee increase from Z$90 million to a whopping Z$150 million. This development prompted Washington Katema, coordinator of Students Union to blast the government. He complained, “What the government has just done is to add salt to injury. We are sons and daughters of poor farmers and civil servants who are struggling to get us to school with the little money they get from their salaries.”
In June, the Zimbabwe Parliament Portfolio Committee on Education, Sports and Culture noted that the economic climate exacerbated by fee increase at universities, had forced some females to seek refuge in brothels. The Committee further noted that more than 30 students had abandoned their chosen fields of study at the Midlands State University due to inability to afford to pay their mandated fees. In addition, it lamented the fact that there was a serious shortage of teaching staff reported by most of the universities and colleges since the best trained lecturers had decided to look elsewhere for better opportunities.
The consequences of these drastic and punitive increases were to be expected. Parents, students and instructors had told the government in civil terms that the new fee structure was pricing education out of the reach of the majority of the citizenry and was condemning the poor to perpetual educational wilderness.
When the administration strategically ignored their pleas, students and instructors engaged in actions that were aimed at establishing dialogue among the groups. Discussions, workshops and negotiations were planned. The response from the government was non constructive. The last resort of demonstrations and class boycotts by students and teachers is a legitimate way of expressing frustration and calling for effective corrective action on the part of the powers that be.
Dozens of university students in Zimbabwe have been arrested and a number of them tortured, following a spate of protests on campuses across the country over tuition increases of as much as 1,000 percent introduced earlier this year, according to student groups and human right lawyers.
Zimbabwean police have been hunting for student leaders and keeping close watch over universities across the nation. In May, scores of students from the Bulawayo-based National University of Science and Technology (NUST) staged a peaceful march through the streets calling for a reduction of their fees. The event attracted a host of baton-wielding police who detained several protestors and accused them of violating unspecified security laws.
The harassment of students by law enforcement terriers has continued relentlessly.
An On-line publication reported that about 50 students from a number of institutions of higher education were arrested on Wednesday, October 26, 2006 simply for asking the administration to initiate improvement on standards of education. What triggered the arrest was the group’s petition which read in part, “The students of Zimbabwe demand that the recent introduced fees be immediately abolished and be replaced with the traditional grants. The immediate resignation or dissolution of the whole ZIMSEC Board since it has failed to run efficiently the Examination Board thereby lowering the education standards.”
The education sector has been so decimated that the system’s experienced personnel who have been its life-blood are disappearing into other countries in the region and far a field in search of greener pastures.