Who said university education is cheap?

In today’s tough economic climate, we must let go of the fantasy that a college degree is—or should be—cheap. Insisting on free or frozen tuition isn’t progressive; it is economically naive. Premium education is a luxury service, and like any high-end product, it comes with a price tag.

It is high time the public appreciates that university education requires heavy financial lifting. Public tertiary institutions cannot realistically be expected to maintain, let alone improve, their quality standards on a shoestring budget. The cost of delivering a world-class degree encompasses state-of-the-art laboratory equipment, expansive library resources, and highly qualified faculty members. When tuition fees are artificially suppressed, we are essentially demanding that universities bake an academic cake without the eggs, flour, or sugar. Expecting elite graduates while operating on a poverty-level budget is akin to squeezing blood from a stone.

Furthermore, let us talk about the glaring elephant in the lecture hall: inflation. Over the past three years, since tuition fees in public universities were last adjusted, the cost of literally everything required to keep a university running has more than doubled. Take diesel, the lifeblood of institutional backup generators and university transport fleets, as a prime example. In September 2025, diesel was selling at a somewhat manageable K2 730 per litre. Fast forward to today, and that same litre will set you back a staggering K5 806. That is a gut-wrenching rise of more than 100 percent.

If the fuel driving our academic engine has more than doubled in price, how on earth are universities supposed to keep their campuses illuminated, transport students to field trips, and run administrative offices on tuition fees calculated in 2023?

The same inflationary avalanche has swallowed the costs of food for cleaning supplies, utility bills, and teaching materials. Pretending that universities can absorb this economic onslaught without adjusting their fees is frankly absurd.

Yet, the knee-jerk reaction to any proposal for a tuition hike is a chorus of predictable outrage, often arguing that raising fees denies the underprivileged access to education. While protecting the vulnerable is an absolute necessity, fighting against fee increases is the wrong tool for the job. Instead of keeping universities artificially cheap for everyone—including those perfectly capable of paying their own way—we should be advocating for a targeted, sensible solution: the government must increase the Higher Education Students’ Loans to perfectly match the proposed tuition raises.

By scaling up the loans offered to genuinely needy students, we hit two birds with one stone. First, we ensure that no deserving scholar is forced to defer their studies or drop out on financial grounds due to the fee hike. Second, we ensure that universities actually receive the revenue they desperately need to upgrade their facilities and maintain educational excellence.

But let us be brutally honest: keeping university fees artificially frozen does not magically manufacture quality education for anyone. It merely guarantees that the institution deteriorates to a point where the degree you eventually receive becomes fundamentally useless.

A crumbling, underfunded degree does nothing to break the cycle of poverty; it only gives poorer students the exact same glorified, worthless certificate as the wealthy. Real social mobility requires meritocratic standards and well-funded facilities that can actually prepare graduates for the modern workforce.

Furthermore, let us consider the concept of fairness. The romanticised idea of ‘free’ higher education ignores the reality that tertiary education provides significant personal financial returns to the individual. Even with varying opinion on the matter, it is broadly acknowledged that university graduates tend to secure better lifetime earnings. Is it truly fair to ask the average taxpayer—many of whom never attended university and rely on basic farming or small businesses—to subsidise the luxury degrees of future lawyers and engineers through their taxes? While government can rightly provide some public support, expecting the State to foot the entire bill amid global economic shocks is a recipe for a collapsing education system.

If we genuinely want our universities to compete on the global stage, we must face the music. We cannot continuously pump thousands of kwachas into fuel tanks, groceries, and imported goods while expecting university tuition fees to remain stuck in 2023. Increasing tuition fees is never a popular policy, but it is the uncomfortable, bitter pill necessary to prevent public universities from devolving into glorified ruins. Quality education costs money, and it is time we stopped pretending.

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