In the early 1990's, Tanzania reintroduced a policy of cost of higher educational cost sharing designed to slowly move some of the costs of public higher education, which in recent years had been exclusively by the government, towards parents and students as well as other non-governmental parties. This dissertation, using a conceptual framework of the rationales of cost sharing in higher education, investigated into the difference this policy seems to have made at Tanzania's major public university, the University of Dar es Salaam, with particular attention to the enrollment of privately sponsored students and other discernible changes in university finances during the early years of this policy implementation. The study concludes that while cost sharing in higher education in Tanzania is justified on the grounds of sheer need for non-governmental revenue for public higher education institutions because of the declining Government appropriations to these institutions, along with the dire need to expand access and participation in higher education, its implementation has been lackadaisical.
