Higher education financing and equality of educational opportunities in Swaziland

This paper constitutes a major attempt at examining financial flows within the educational system in Swaziland as well as in computing the households, relative to public contribution to unit costs in education. It found that financial resources to the education system derive from the traditional sources, that is, government, local communities and households, non‐governmental organizations, private enterprises and corporations as well as foreign aid. While the government contributes about 83 per cent of the total fund in the tertiary level, the household and families contribution is higher at the primary, secondary and high school levels. This is an indication of the fact that higher education is heavily subsidized by the government at the expense of basic education, bringing about inequality of educational opportunities within the education system. To redress the imbalance in the funding mechanism, cost‐sharing or cost recovery measures are being proposed at the higher education level.