Student loan beneficiaries to undergo fresh means testing

THOUSANDS of continuing students in higher learning institutions who were allocated loans under past eligibility criteria may now have those loans withdrawn or slashed after the government’s introduction of a fresh means testing exercise beginning tomorrow The new move announced yesterday by Higher Education Students' Loans Board (HESLB) executive director Abdul- Razaq Badru will involve the screening of 93,295 continuing students countrywide over a period of 90 days.

“The exercise is aimed at getting updated information about the economic status of parents and guardians of all the loan beneficiaries.
Wherever we discover students benefiting from loans without having the proper listed qualifications, we will have no option but to withdraw their names from the list,” Badru told a press conference in Dar es Salaam.
From tomorrow, students will be required to log into the board’s website and fill in a questionnaire with details of their parents and guardians.

The same day, the board will start reviewing appeals submitted by students who have failed to access loans due to various reasons including technical errors.
According to Badru, HESLB has already issued loans to 20,391 first-year students in the first phase out of 25,717 targeted students in the 2016/2017 budget.

Of the 58,000 students accredited by the Tanzania Commission for Universities (TCU), 6,581 did not apply for loans, 8,781 applied as private candidates, and 9,940 qualified with equivalent qualifications, the loans board boss explained.
He said 1,416 students did not complete their applications due to various reasons, 245 students completed their secondary education more than three years ago, and 90 others were above 30 years of age.

Of the students who have benefited from the loans, 4, 321 were orphans, 118 were disabled, 295 were funded by organisations, a total of 6,159 took priority courses, and 9,498 took other courses but from poor families.
“By the end of this exercise we will have a correct database of the students’ beneficiaries of the loans offered by the government,” Badru said.

The government has set aside 483 billion/- to support about 119,012 students in this financial year.
But it recently announced new loans eligibility criteria guidelines that prioritise courses in line with an ambitious new industrialisation agenda for the country under the Five-Year National Development Plan and National Development Vision of 2025.

Some education sector analysts have cautioned that the new guidelines are likely to cause a crisis since many parents and guardians will now have to carry the burden of sponsoring students despite the government’s assurance that more students will be given loans