Published: May 18, 2026
Hard truths. None of us like them, but all of us need them. Last week on my radio show, UL President Hour, on LUX-FM 106.5, I made a statement about the fact that UL’s registration fees need to go up. By Friday, that soundbite blew up on social media and I was asked if I really said it and really meant it. The answer is, yes, I said it and, yes, I meant it. What I did not say (contrary to social media reports) is that school fees will be higher next semester. I also did not say how high they would go. What I did say is that other schools, even in the subregion, have higher school fees than we do. That especially goes for national flagship universities.
It’s a fact – you can’t buy today’s rice at yesterday’s prices. As prices rise, if you pay less, you get less. I want more and better for Liberia’s students. If more costs more, we pay more and we get more. If we don’t have the money, we find the money. But we don’t keep living the “yesterday’s price” lifestyle when the world is moving on. We get creative and we get enterprising and we step up our game. This is what I am asking of UL.
Let’s say students have been paying LRD$200 for a student ID card for the last 10 years, and, today, student ID cards cost LRD$1100. I am just using ID cards as an example. Students ask why we don’t have ID cards now, but they don’t ask what is the cost of ID cards now? So, I present the research and say we can’t buy ID cards for LRD$200 anymore; they now cost LRD$1100. I say, what would you be willing to pay for these new ID cards, or what would you like to sacrifice elsewhere to make them possible? We all agree that ID cards are essential. Students say, we can’t afford more that LRD$200, and we don’t want to sacrifice anything. How possible is that, I ask? There is an assumption that UL’s overall budget can cover everything for free because the number seems so big, but then I explain all the other costs that the budget has to cover, and people nod their heads.
These are the kinds of conversations we have in the President’s Student Advisory Council. We share price research and we talk about the real cost of higher education today. As we discuss, all over the world, higher ed has gotten more costly expensive over the last several decades. For example, advances in technology alone (and the energy required to keep devices running) have boosted academic costs year after year. From the popularization of computers in the 1980s, the Internet and the world wide web in the 1990s, social media in the 2000s, cloud computing in the 2010s, and now, AI in the 2020s, there is no end in sight. Higher ed needs tech, energy, and money – in quantity!
Conversations like the ones we have in PSAC are a great way for us to read our reality together and consult about major decisions and big issues affecting UL. It is also a space in which we can dream together about solutions and the futures we want.
As the nation’s most accessible higher education institution, UL has a responsibility to keep our cost to students as low as possible. But we can’t just focus on “low”; we also have to focus on “as possible.” Even if they increase, prices have to remain within the realm of the possible for consumers. Yet and still, no matter how much we wish it, today’s rice can’t be purchased at yesterday’s price.
Let’s not be afraid of this reality. Rather, let us face it squarely together and figure out what we can do to meet it head on. Once we overcome the fear we have now, we will be amazed at the heights we reach tomorrow!
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