The University of Liberia authorities have threatened to throw out dozens of indebted students in the sum of US$ 1.4 million in both tuition and registration fees respectively.
Since the present semester started the university is yet to collect above 10 percent of its revenue in tuition and registration fees from majority students in the undergraduate, graduate and professional school programs and this is hindering academic programming at the institution.
But UL’s President, Julius Sarwolo Nelson, who expressed his frustration when spoke to the media recently in Monrovia, has vowed taking drastic measures through radical means to address the prevailing situation.
He said non-compliance or indebted students in both categories have been shifted by removing them from the digital platform preventing from sitting in class to write any final examination doing this semester until full settlement made.
Nelson stated that most undergraduate students have not yet made payment of their registration fee of L$2,500 each while those in the graduate and professional schools are refusing to pay tuition as well.
With this, the university said it has issued a stern warning to the delinquent students to make full settlement of their financial obligations with a confirmation receipt issued by its various accounts at notable banking institutions or forfeit the semester’s final examinations.
“Graduate and professional schools’ students are in huge arrears, while those in the undergraduate program do not want to pay their registration fee of L$ 2, 500. This is hindering effort of providing quality education to the growing student population at the university,” the UL President noted.
In 2018, the President announced a tuition but not registration free policy program only for undergraduate at state-owned universities and colleges throughout the country.
With this, the University of Liberia, William V. S. Tubman University, Nimba and Grand Bassa University College as well as county-based community colleges are implementing tuition free policy at undergraduate level.
Though this policy is not yet legislated it good intent of levitating burden on struggling students and their parents from paying tuition seems to have been abused by the very students.
Because bulk of them in the lower level (undergraduate) alleged failure to pay registration fee of L$ 2, 500 or its equivalent of US$ 13. 25 cents per semester has given the policy a bad publicity.
Likewise those in the upper range (graduate and professional schools) also refusing to pay tuition and this have gotten on the nerves of the University of Liberia’s administration to sound warning does not augur well.
