Equity and Equality: The Poor and Higher Education Accessibility

The role of education in achieving socio-economic and sustainable development of nations is paramount. Therefore, Education For All is one of the Millennium Development Goals adopted by the United Nations and its member countries. In several member countries, strategies and policies have been adopted to achieve this goal. These include: a reduction in school costs through providing universal primary and secondary education and privatization/liberalization of the education sector including higher education. This study focuses on whether equity and equality reflected in education laws and policies, which target students from low-income families accessing funds to attain particularly higher education, are realised. The study finds that these are mere rhetoric because of biased financial support and discriminative learning environment. The study recommends that government should come up with schemes that raise household income, provide for all equally, and allocate funds to higher education institutions basing on number of students and faculty.