With the fees payable by international students seeking UK degrees rising every year, the newly opened Victoria University in Kampala, Uganda believes it has spotted a gap in the market. At Victoria, the University of Buckingham, like many other UK universities in outposts around the world, is offering its degrees to students on their own doorstep. Buckingham proposes to charge Ugandan students less than a fifth of what they would pay to do the same courses in the UK.
With demand for higher education in the African country outstripping supply, the Victoria model is one the British government wants other UK universities to copy — but the undertaking carries with it the potential to damage Buckingham’s reputation if standards are seen to slip. Buckingham already has similar arrangements with institutions in Singapore and Sarajevo, while other UK universities have foreign campuses in places ranging from Dubai to China, but East Africa represents new ground.
Martin O’Hara, vice chancellor of Victoria and former vice rector of the National University of Rwanda, says the new private institution will “provide what is needed in the public sector”, namely “high quality at a good price”. Victoria is expecting to enroll 200-300 students for undergraduate courses in the next academic year.
Buckingham will offer B.Scs in business and management, with information systems, accounting and financial management, and computing, while Victoria is accrediting bachelor’s degrees in nursing, science and public health. The Buckingham degrees will be priced at US$7,000 (Rs.3.15 lakh) per year, although for those enroling in the first year, Victoria is offering a 50 percent discount. Five years from now, Victoria aims to enroll 4,000 students, says Prof. O’Hara, adding that the institution has long-term plans to expand this figure to between 12,000-15,000, with additional courses potentially including medicine.
Frances Robinson, director of international programmes at Buckingham, says the two universities’ syllabuses were “almost identical”, except for the introduction of “African themes” at Victoria. Moreover, Victoria’s teaching staff will have to be of the same standard as in the UK, she says, and most will be expatriates, at least initially. As for examinations, “it looks extremely likely that we will use the same external examiners as we use in Buckingham”, she adds.
The risk to Buckingham is reputational rather than financial, because the initial $20 million (Rs.98 crore) capital investment in Victoria is furnished by Edulink, a company based in Dubai. Edulink, which helped set up Middlesex University’s Dubai campus, says the project is for the “long term” and the priority is academic excellence, rather than profit.
Buckingham will take a cut of Victoria’s tuition fees, but declined to reveal how much. “We aren’t in this for money. Our business model is that it would be quite nice to have a partner in Africa, a partner in Asia and a partner in America,” says a Buckingham spokesperson.
Excerpted from Times Higher Education