Thoughts about Some Aspects of University Finances

Yesterday I talked more with a faculty member about a seminar she wants us to develop.  Whereas I’ve worked with organizations that want to educate the community and are willing to do training on a shoestring budget, she explained that here the whole point of doing a seminar is to bring in money to the university.  According to her, the attitude is that there’s money out there, and the goal is to get as much of it as possible for the university.  The way that’s done is to try to interest non-governmental organizations (NGO’s) in funding the seminar.  This involves paying the presenter (actually AU, not any individuals) for developing and giving the seminar.  Then the NGO needs to show its board that there’s need for the seminar and that people will attend it, so they often pay participants to come sit through it.  Sometimes this is extravagant—they’ll foot hotel bills for people coming from Harare to Mutare or vice versa as well as paying generous stipends for expenses (gas, meals) for all participants.  The faculty member said sometimes people appear for seminars well aware of the money they’ve been promised but with no idea (or care) about the content of the seminar.  We’ve decided to proceed by talking to her contacts about what kinds of training they need, and then developing a pilot test that would be done on a shoestring.  This might eventually lead to funding if  the dean wants to market our seminar to NGO’s once we’ve developed and tried it.  I was clear that I have no interest in doing that in the time frame I’m here.
Today one of my students came to see if I had any idea how he could continue to finance his education.  He’s Zimbabwean and is in my undergrad class in the Health Sciences Management program, which is 3 years.  This is his second year.  A number of people contributed to pay his tuition the first year.  Last semester he paid all but $40. He was unable to take some exams with his class last term because of that $40 deficit, and he hasn’t been able to pay registration this term.  He now owes $1770 total.  He’s been told that some scholarship money may be available to help him during the last year of his program if he gets to that point, but his benefactors have said that they can’t continue to pay for his tuition, and have encouraged him to go to a public university (where tuition is more like $400/term, according to him).  However, none of the public universities has a similar degree program, so he’d have to switch majors and essentially start over.  I really feel for the students.  I’m sure this happens in the US to some degree too, but I don’t think it’s desperate enough or structured such that faculty are very aware of it.  Another faculty member is getting lists of students’ financial status from the bursar’s office because she can’t sign off on attachments for them unless they’ve paid at least ½ the semester’s tuition.  It’s down to the wire now, and many students still haven’t been able to come up with the all the money.  What’s that saying?  “For the lack of the nail, a shoe was lost.  For the lack of a shoe, the horse went lame. . . .”   I don’t remember the rest of it, but a lot of what happens in Africa seems like that.  For the lack of a quick test, that 54-year-old woman see earlier blog about health issues in Zimbabwe) died of malaria.  It’s sad.