By Bida Elly David
The vice chancellor of the University of Juba has reiterated shortage of lecture halls and continuous depreciation of facilities in public Universities suggesting admission of students in either less number or increment of tuition fees as a remedy.
In a statement seen on his Facebook page yesterday by No.1 Citizen Daily Newspaper, Professor John Akec the vice chancellor of University of Juba said the University is currently battling lack of space for students as over 1000 combined fresher undertake lectures in a hall.
Prof. Akec underscored that public universities have been battling shortage of lecture halls and operation on poor facilities with no external funding for improvement.
He said that the Universities depend heavily on the collections generated from the students to improve their structures for better learning but still the efforts have been turned down.
“Consequences of Low-fee mass-higher education. Overcrowding of lecture halls (first years combined physics class on the mechanics at the University of Juba of one thousand (1000) students is a problem. Poor facilities are what the university is going through” he stated.
Akec underlined that more critics against managerial decisions to increase the academic fees would hinder the academic progress of the students since the environment would not be sustainable for learning.
The VC added that it is upon the government to either allow the University to improve the facilities through generation of development fees from the students or limit the level of intake to certain level.
“Either we admit very few students or raise tuition fees to improve facilities to improve the surrounding of the University” he said
Formerly the vice chancellor of the University of Juba had initiated increment of tuition fees as a mechanism to create a sustainable learning environment for students at the University of Juba but it seemed the tentative idea was trashed by sources against the plan.
The University earlier came up with fundraising initiative as a way to generate financial resources in support of the concept note to improve the University’s learning infrastructure.
Akec moreover said that through joint efforts, public universities would be transformed into better places of learning for all young people across South Sudan.
University of Juba VC said that his mission is to ensure that all young people of South Sudan become competent human resources that would change the Country to attain competitive and comparative advantage with other Countries in the globe.