Rural Study Prospects Slim

I REALISE that the better place to get tertiary education in Namibia is Windhoek. We have two tertiary institutions based in Windhoek, which are the Polytechnic and the University of Namibia and these institutions are failing our nation by not decentralising to other regions of the country especially the northern and southern regions.

It seems that if a person is not in Windhoek then he/she cannot further their tertiary education because these institutions are not decentralising their programmes to the regions. It has happened recently that the University of Namibia opened a northern campus but only for nursing students and not everybody wants to do nursing. Early this year the University opened an engineering faculty in Ongwediva offering all engineering programmes, I thank Unam for trying to decentralise their departments to the regions. It is quite a positive step forward but very slow. The other problem is that at the new faculty of engineering the University is only offering full-time studies for students fresh from high school but leaving out the employed class. There are many Namibians who want to further their education but they cannot, because after finishing their diploma or degree, they get jobs in other areas besides Windhoek and now are either trying to get back to Windhoek or are stuck with no further education. Some manage to do distance with Unisa. Why don’t our institutions want to offer part-time studies in regions or distances? It has been 19 years since independence but we do not have full operating branches in the regions of our two tertiary institutions in the country. The government is subsidising these institutions every year and they are charging very high tuition fees but they are not growing countrywide. They can create employment opportunities by expanding into the regions and bring tertiary education closer to the people in need. In Windhoek there are many limiting factor with regard to access to tertiary education: Windhoek is an expensive city to live in, everything you do will cost you; some people migrate to Windhoek for further studies but some stay back in their areas because they cannot afford to pay tuition fees, taxi and accommodation in Windhoek but they have the will to study. They stay at home and become criminals drug addicts and useless to society. If it was made possible for those people to be given an institutional branch in their area, part-time or distance learning opportunities, then things would have been different. It will be easy to focus on paying tuition fees, accommodation, if you stay at home, as well as transport since you could just walk! I know of at least one person who went to Windhoek to further his studies but only managed to complete his first semester and then quit as he could not afford high living costs of Windhoek.I don’t think it is an excuse to say we do not have qualified personnel and resources to decentralise or offer distance education. We have many people studying abroad and each year there are those finishing. I’m sure if an institution comes up with a very good proposal that will benefit the people the government will support it financially. If we cannot bring education closer to our people then we will always depend on foreign individuals to do the work for us. Ben Shigwedha