It is widely recognised that higher education is crucial for socio-economic growth in developing countries. Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is lagging behind in this regard in spite of a strong expansion of universities in the last decades. However, this growth may have led to a deterioration of the quality of higher education. There is no dearth of recommendations how to improve this situation, but empirical studies about the concrete situation of tertiary education in SSA are largely missing. This study attempts to balance this dearth. A survey was carried out among 500 students of St Augustine University of Tanzania, the largest private institution of higher education in that country. Three topics were investigated: the social background of the students, their present socio-economic situation and the evaluation of the living and study conditions. (Contains 2 notes, 1 figure and 6 tables.)