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In deciding the actual and indicative tuition fee levels, the Government has considered the results of a review on the existing tertiary tuition fee policy and the progress made by UGC and its funded tertiary institutions in containing the costs of tertiary education.
The spokesman said while tertiary education represented an investment of the community in its future generations, it was also an investment by the present students in their personal development and career prospects.
"The Government needs to ensure a reasonable balance between the community and the students in sharing the costs of tertiary education.
"We consider it a modest target to recover from the students 16.5 per cent of the recurrent costs, especially when the non-cash-limited Local Student Finance Scheme (LSFS) is available to ensure that no qualified student is barred from tertiary education because of a lack of means," he said.
In the 1990-91 academic year, the Government was spending $45.5 million on grants and $85.4 million on loans under LSFS. By the 1995-96 academic year, the respective figures have risen to $782 million and $878.2 million.
Over the past five years, the Government has increased first-year-first-degree places at UGC-funded institutions by 69 per cent from 8,575 in 1990-91 to 14,500 in 1995-96.
The expenditure on tertiary education stands at $9.6 billion in the current financial year, which amounts to 33 per cent of the recurrent education budget.
The rapid expansion and upgrading of tertiary education from 1990-91 to 1995- 96 has resulted in a real increase of 23.9 per cent (that is an average real increase of 4.4 per cent per annum) in student unit cost, which is determined by dividing the total recurrent expenditure of the UGC-funded institutions by their total number of full time equivalent students.
This rise in unit cost reflects an increased investment in research and teaching activities, highly qualified staff, and modern facilities.
"It is the Government's intention to achieve the 18 per cent target recurrent cost recovery rate by 1997-98 according to the phased plan laid down in 1991," said the spokesman.