Students have expressed outrage after the University of Nairobi (UoN) increased the tuition fees for postgraduate courses and parallel degrees by more than double the current amount.

According to UoN, the increase in tuition fees is meant to help the institution cope with the decreased number of student enrolling.

Fees for liberal arts Master’s courses such as Communication and MBA have been raised to more than Sh600,000 per two-year program, up from about Sh275,000, signifying a 118 per cent increase.

Economics, Commerce and Law degree courses under the parallel arrangement have been increased by about 70 per cent to about Sh1 million for the four years.

The decision to target postgraduate and parallel students was arrived at after undergraduate students under the sponsorship of the state opposed the proposals by the vice-chancellors to triple the fees to Sh48,000 per year.

"The fees are up and they will apply to new students. It’s part of the restructuring plan that will lift the university from losses," said a UoN official.

An MBA course of 2 years has gone up to Sh602,000 from Sh280,000 and that amount is exclusive of project fees.

Law students will now have to part with Sh1.02 million up from the normal Sh715,500 while engineering students will part with an average of Sh2.1 million instead of the usual Sh1 million.

Under the revised fees, MA in Communication students will now have to part with Sh655,000 instead of the normal Sh275,000 while Medical students will not pay Sh3.8 million for the 5-year course up from Sh2.35 million.

UoN administration hopes to significantly increase revenues from the hiked fees, after the dwindling revenues at the institution saw it make a whopping Sh1.4 billion loss.