In the early 1990’s Tanzania reintroduced a policy of higher educational
cost sharing aimed at slowly shifting some of the costs of public higher
education, which in recent years had been exclusively borne by the
Government, towards the beneficiaries of higher education, i.e. students and
their parents as well as non-governmental parties and other stakeholders.
The Government’s principal objectives for reintroducing cost sharing in
higher education were to: expand access/participation in higher education;
make the beneficiaries of higher education contribute to its costs; recover
the costs of food and accommodations; establish a legally protected
students’ loan scheme; and make higher education system more responsive
to the labour market needs.
This paper highlights on the findings of the doctoral dissertation research
study on: “Cost Sharing and Participation in Higher Education in SubSaharan
Africa: The Case of Tanzania,” conducted at the Tanzania’s major
public university-the University of Dar es Salaam-from January to May
2003. The paper mainly focuses on the Government’s principal objective of
expanding access/participation to higher education through cost sharing by
using the proxy indicators of: admission and enrolment rates; enrolment of
privately sponsored students at the University of Dar es Salaam; total
enrolments in private universities and colleges; students’ socio-economic
statuses and religious affiliations to determine whether or not the
reintroduction and implementation of cost sharing in higher education policy
has really expanded access/participation in higher education to all segments
of Tanzanian society as envisaged.