So, even in highly costly disciplines such as medicine and engineering, students are charged the same fees. In so doing, the state has set a good platform which enables intelligent or hard-working students to achieve whatever level of education they wish to attain with a minimum financial contribution.
One important advantage of this dispensation is the fact that poor students, who would normally have been kept out of the system, can receive good university education and, consequently put their knowledge at the disposal of their country. But this level playing ground picture is not all that perfect across the board.
Although many courses are free, some minimum financing is always necessary to improve the quality of learning because the government offers the teachers and hardly anything beyond that. And to improve the quality of teaching, students have to acquire other didactic materials and teaching aid such as books, paying for access to the various learning gadgets which new information and communication technologies offer. These other forms of services are hardly ever taken into account, but they bloat, as it were, the overall expenditure on education.
The performance of the Cameroonian economy has not been good enough to significantly stem rising unemployment, let alone having openings from which students, through part-time jobs, can earn some money to supplement their needs. Many students, obviously conscious of the situation have not waited for government job openings. It is now commonplace to see students on the country’s major university campuses promoting petty businesses that can help them pay for their fees and other sundries necessary for their up keep.
In so doing, such students vindicate the government’s desire to see the university system produce creators of jobs rather than job seekers. They also imbue themselves with a spirit of independence which is also necessary for job creation in the future. Barbing saloons, handy fast foods, telephone call box operators are common scenes in and around university campuses. Many cannot thrive because of heavy taxes, the need for order often demanded by the internal revenue service and the university authorities.
There is need to keep campuses clean and orderly so it is necessary to raise revenue necessary for the country’s development. But when all the issues are put on the scales, it becomes clear that they do not deserve being given a black eye. These petty businesses are the bath water and the baby our hardworking students. Rather than throw the baby with the bath water, government should rather look for ways of helping and encouraging them.
