Name of the Witness: Suresh Babu
Title and
Organizational Affiliation: Senior
Research Fellow, International Food Policy Research Institute,
Date of the Hearing: May 6, 2008
Name of the
Congressional Subcommittee: House
Committee on Foreign Affairs’ Subcommittee on
Title: Higher Education in
Introduction
It is well recognized that the development of Sub-Saharan African countries crucially depends on how well they position themselves in the global knowledge economy. Participating in the global knowledge economy requires high level of capacity in various sectors and at all levels. While policymakers in African countries increasingly recognize the role of higher education in building national capacities, the African higher education system continue to suffer from the poor policy priorities in the last two decades. The higher education systems in African countries are under severe financial strain accentuated by gross underfunding and increasing demand for higher education.
Two major efforts are needed to revive higher education systems in African countries:
·
Reform the higher education system to meet
the growing demand for both quantity and quality of higher education; and
· Improve the quality and relevance of the educational programs through dynamic approaches to curriculum and content development, sharing, and delivery.
In this brief, a select set of questions are addressed in order to guide such efforts.
How would one
describe the state of higher education in Sub-Saharan
In the last fifteen years, Sub-Saharan African countries have seen a multi-fold increase in demand for higher education with rapid growth in the rate of enrollment in all areas of training. Yet, higher education in Sub-Saharan Africa has suffered long through a series of neglect in most of the countries with few exceptions. In the last decade, however, some countries have been reversing this trend through various reform efforts that are internally organized and implemented, while a majority of the universities and colleges are still struggling to survive and to meet the growing demand for higher education. Some key challenges are highlighted below.
Long neglect of higher education systems
Given that the international community focused, in the last two decades, on improving basic literacy through “Education for all” programs, the higher education systems in much of Sub-Saharan Africa received inadequate funding. This resulted in deterioration of institutional capacity and quality of educational programs. Further, due to population growth coupled with income increases, the number of postsecondary students who enter the market for higher education increased exponentially. This increased demand cannot be fully met by the existing higher education institutions, due to their inability to expand structurally, attrition of the faculty, deteriorating infrastructure and facilities, and continued low public funding for higher education. There is need for devising new approaches to increase the enrollment and accommodating this growing need for higher education. However, a part of the increased demand in the last ten years has been met by the expansion of private educational institutions, most of which solely depend on high tuition fee from the students to run their programs.
Brain drain among the faculty
Due to the continued neglect of the higher education institutions, over the years, well trained faculty members have migrated to other opportunities. Among the faculty that remains there is little motivation and reward for their work, due to low salaries and poor work environment. There has been some revision in terms of increasing the retention of the faculty through university-wide reforms and pay increases in selected universities. These are but exceptions rather than the rule. In addition, due to recent growth of the economies, faculty members continue to leave for other high-paying domestic, regional, and global opportunities including consulting and private sector jobs. This has created acute shortage of teaching staff and has resulted in high teaching workload. Further, this has lead to low quality of course delivery.
Limited role of private sector institutions
Low capacity of the faculty coupled with high enrollment of students from increasing demand for higher education resulted in low quality education in most of the universities. Although a part of this increasing demand for higher education is met by growing number of private sector institutions, their absorption continues to be limited and to selected areas, such a business management where they could make financial recovery through tuition fees. Thus, access to affordable higher education in agriculture, engineering, and science and technology fields in which capacity development is crucial for economic growth, continues to be a challenge to millions of qualified students with secondary school education.
Quality and relevance of the curriculum
Another immediate challenge facing the higher education systems in Sub-Saharan Africa is the quality of the curriculum and the relevance of the educational programs. Currently in much of Sub-Saharan Africa, the curriculum and course contents do not fully address the changing needs of the growing economies. Thus, the relevance of the educational programs in developing problem-solving capacity and the skill sets needed for the knowledge economy remains limited. Higher education institutions in most of the African countries need to upgrade their higher educational curriculum and course contents to effectively compete in the regional and global marketplace.
Lack of research- based universities and distance education
Continued financial woes, poor governance, lack of leadership,
resistance to change, mismanagement, and gender inequality confront most of the
higher education institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa. These challenges hamstrung most of the
universities to go beyond their teaching mission. While quality of higher
education critically depends on the capacity of the faculty to generate, absorb,
and translate exiting knowledge, programs that support research are also
crucial. While there are few institutions that are emerging as research-based
universities, much of the educational programs in
Learning from the reformers
Learning from universities (University of Dar es Salam, Makerere University in Uganda, University of Malawi, and Eduardo Mondlane University in Mozambique, and National University of Rwanda to name a few) that have succeeded in reforming their institutions will be a first step in sharing best practices with others who are attempting to meet the growing challenges of higher education systems in Africa. It is important to reward the winners who have made efforts in the last 10 to 15 years to reform their institutions and to encourage those who are currently attempting such reforms to increase the quantity and quality contributions of higher education systems.
In summary, soaring demand for higher education Sub-Saharan Africa cannot be met by the current institutions with low levels of learning infrastructure, inadequate trained teaching faculty, and poor quality of curriculum and course contents. Improvements are sorely needed through appropriate reforms to enhance the learning infrastructure, accessibility, and affordability of the higher education system.
What are the major
challenges facing African colleges and universities in terms of curriculum
development, infrastructure, faculty, and student recruitment and retention or
other areas?
Several challenges confront universities and colleges in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Poor quality of education
Low quality of education in much of the higher education system in Sub-Saharan Africa is a result of underdeveloped curricula that are not dynamic and that do not respond to the emerging needs of the economies. Courses and programs currently offered by the universities, while help in developing general skills are not highly demand-driven. In many universities, the curriculum has not been revised for several years. The rigidity of curriculum development process, which takes 3-5 years on an average, makes the courses and programs offered by the universities less relevant to the changing needs of the growing economies. Emerging issues that confront their economies are seldom addressed as part of the curriculum. As a result students come out to the job market ill prepared. This poses a challenge in terms of the quality of education as well as the relevance of higher education systems in Sub-Saharan Africa. Even with old curriculum, due to the inadequate availability of current editions of text books and reading materials, the courses offered do not remain current. Improvements in curriculum design, course content, and learning materials with research based knowledge from both within and outside Sub-Saharan Africa will increase the relevance and competitiveness of higher education programs.
Low number and capacity of teaching faculty
The supply of well trained teaching faculty is low in many universities. While the absolute number of teaching staff may have increased in some universities, the student-faculty ratio has increased in the last ten years due to high enrollment of students. There is an acute shortage of capacity to teach both undergraduate and postgraduate courses. On an average, only 30 percent of the faculty has PhDs in their respective fields. While the demand for teaching at the undergraduate level has increased, up-gradation of skills of the teaching faculty has been slow and minimal. Thus, capacity to teach skills related to problem-solving and development of innovation and entrepreneurial capacity remains low. Retention of quality teachers and researchers is a major challenge due to low salaries and high workload. Development of parallel degree programs in several universities in the same city stretches the teaching capacity at the national level. At the post-graduate level, inadequate capacity to guide student thesis results in high levels of dropout rates among the registered candidates.
Low incentives and motivation
The salaries of the faculty continue to be low, and hence retention of high-quality faculty remains a problem. Those faculty who remain, end up taking part-time jobs to supplement their income levels. Those who are able to do research take up consultancies on the side that are poorly coordinated within the university systems. Since faculty activities are not coordinated through structured research programs, participation of faculty in consultancies do not add value to the knowledge base or to teaching programs. This combined with lack of learning resources affects the quality of teaching. Developing and motivating a new generation of teachers is the current need for reviving higher education systems in Sub-Saharan Africa. Additionally, limited office space, overcrowded class rooms and learning infrastructure, inadequate learning and teaching materials including unavailability of current editions of text books, and library facilities pose major challenge to motivating and retaining teaching staff.
Meeting growing demand and attracting students to key areas
With limited teaching capacity and growing enrollment of students, the current higher education system in most countries, is unable to meet the demand and maintain the quality of education. Public institutions attract good students but leave a large number of qualified students out due to capacity limitations. While private institutions absorb a portion of them, the high cost of tuition remains a constraint for low income students to enter private institutions. Students from low income families cannot go to private schools due to lack of scholarships and funding. With high demand for business management and engineering skills in the job market, basic sciences and agriculture remain the last resort of the students. Attracting students to key fields such as agriculture, for example, a sector that contributes to 35% of GDP and supports 70% of the population in African countries is a priority for creating a workforce that will contribute to poverty reduction and overall economic development.
What kind of support
should the international community provide African colleges and universities in
order to help them to provide a greater number of students with high quality
education?
The international community can support Sub-Saharan African universities and colleges in two major ways:
· help them reform their system to meet the increasing demand for higher education; and
· help offer high quality and relevant educational programs that meets the needs of the society.
Supporting the Higher Education Reform Process
· There is an urgent need to encourage the institutional reform process that has been underway in several countries at the higher education systems level. Rewarding good performers through appropriate incentives and supporting those that are in the process of reforming would be essential. Several approaches as mentioned below could help in such support.
· Infrastructure support to higher education institutions - that are currently attempting institutional reforms- in up-grading library facilities and computer software and in increasing the use of educational technologies for both research and teaching would be an effective way to support such reform processes. Improving the infrastructure for internet-based communication would also help in intra-university knowledge sharing and improving the learning management systems.
· Supporting new modes of delivery of education, such as distance education and e-learning could be an effective approach to increase the income-generating opportunities for universities and to offer short -term and regular educational programs in emerging areas with high demand. This will also help to meet the growing demand for higher education by reaching out to students in remote areas.
· With the growing number of private institutions offering higher educational programs, most countries in Sub-Saharan Africa require regulatory mechanisms for maintaining standards and quality of education programs. This requires strengthening national capacities of university commissions of higher education in various countries.
· Improving the quality of management of university systems through management training of leaders of university systems for designing, implementing, and evaluating reform processes and by learning from others who have successfully reformed their higher education systems would be useful.
· As part of the reform process, creating opportunities for university-based research through seed funding for research and development centers within the universities that immediately address the problems of society would encourage faculty to remain in their positions and effectively engage in professional development activities.
· Programs that connect industries to research activities in the universities are another way to encourage participation of faculty in research and development of industries and to sell their time to increase their income earning opportunities. Projects funded by donors that relate to development programs could be connected to research activities of the faculty in a structured manner. Developed well such collaboration could transform each university into a knowledge hub for the society that it serves. Bilateral missions could play a significant role in this effort.
·
Supporting the emerging professional associations
at the national and regional levels for various subject areas is one way to
improve the sustainability of existing networks of scholars. Increasing publishing opportunities for
researchers in local journals published from
· Attracting students through competitive mechanisms to the public universities would bring in high quality students to various educational programs. However, establishing the credibility of the university system through academic auditing, performance measurement, organization, and management of the educational programs is also essential.
· It is important to contextualize the support to higher education depending on the need at the national level. Some countries are progressing well in terms of reforming their higher education systems while others are lagging behind. The needs of the countries widely differ ranging from support to curriculum development to faculty strengthening for new areas of education.
· Provision of scholarships to disadvantaged groups that are not able to participate in higher education systems is important. Public-private partnerships in identifying talented students and mentoring them through organized mentorship programs would help in developing a new generation of scholars.
Increasing
the Quality and Relevance of Curriculum and Course Contents
· An immediate need in many universities and colleges is to increase the quality of education through revamping the curriculum and course contents to meet the emerging skill needs of the growing economies. Supporting universities with regular review process and revision of curriculum will help increase the relevance of the educational programs.
· Developing partnerships with international organizations and universities in developed countries for supporting contextualized curriculum and course content development, sharing and delivery is a priority.
·
Developing a network of educators and course
content generators in various fields through a platform for course
content development, conversion, and delivery would help in quick up-gradation
of curriculum and course content. By
encouraging development of local content by the African professors, the quality
and relevance of materials taught within
· Institutional and faculty capacity strengthening through up-gradation of teaching skills for designing curriculum, developing course content, and delivering educational programs could vastly improve the quality of education currently offered.
· Staff development plans of selected universities could be supported through exchange of staff members and through short-term capacity building efforts focused on various fields with lack of capacity for teaching.
·
A higher education corps of educators
could be established to attract professors from North America and
· Developing a quality assurance mechanism through the support of regional organizations such as Association of African Universities would help in the process of monitoring the quality of education offered through both public and private institutions.
Are there potential
pitfalls of increasing aid to African colleges and universities?
Poor governance and mismanagement continues to be a major constraint in several universities and colleges in Sub-Saharan Africa. This is partly due to inexperienced administrators, lack of priority setting, and pilferage of resources through corruption and mismanagement. These are some of the pitfalls through which increasing aid to colleges and universities may not reach the intended beneficiaries. However, such pitfalls could be minimized if appropriate systems are put in place to ensure that the assistance offered is used for intended purposes. Most importantly, sustainability issues must be built in for the universities to continue the efforts initiated by the aid provided to them. Some lessons are worth highlighting:
· A major lesson from the past efforts to strengthen university systems is that provision of aid to passive receivers will result in only marginal benefits and will cease right after the project period.
· Supporting institutions with indigenously developed long-term plans and those who have initiated reform process must be a priority.
· Development partners must avoid short term approaches to institutional building. Building university systems takes a minimum of ten to fifteen years. Short term help however, in upgrading institutional facilities will help those who have initiated internally designed reform process.
· Long-term investments in few selected institutions that could serve selected countries would be better than spreading the resources thin to cover a wide range of institutions. Donor coordination within the countries is essential to avoid competing interests in the same institution.
· Lessons from institutional strengthening in Malawi, Mozambique, and Ghana indicate combining research and teaching programs to upgrade the educational programs and providing opportunities for local faculty to conduct collaborative research increases the retention of the staff and improves sustainability of institutional building efforts.
· Given the current low level capacity to teach and conduct research activities in many of the universities, supporting regional thematic research and teaching networks will help fill immediate gaps in several fields. While some institutions have high level capacity for research and training in selected areas, such capacity remains scattered and currently underutilized. Combining such individual and institutional capacities through regional networks has proven cost effective in offering research and teaching programs in several higher education fields.
What benefits to the
continent could US support for the expansion of colleges and universities
bring?
To be relevant, universities and colleges in Sub-Saharan Africa ought to become knowledge centers. In order to make meaningful contribution to the growing demand for higher education and to provide quality education programs, they need to address a series of challenges outlined above. However, such challenges can be overcome with additional support and stimulation for the reform process within the university systems.
Two major benefits will accrue from the external support for
expansion and improvement of the universities and colleges: improved quality of
education through curriculum and content revision, and improved quantity of graduates,
through speeding up of reform process, to meet the growing demand for skills
needed for competitive economies in
Additionally, by accommodating more students through reduction in the cost of education and improvement in the financial sustainability, higher educational institutions would be able to meet their objectives. By strengthening the capacity of the universities for improving the quality of education and for better management of their education systems, the external support in the long run will help in increasing the number of graduates at all levels, and in improving capacity of the institutions to offer high quality educational programs. This could lead to better skill levels of a large number of graduates who would contribute to the growth of the economies.
By supporting the infrastructure of the universities through better educational technologies, the current digital divide could be reduced. Improvements in the skill levels of faculty to conduct research and educational programs and to better manage higher education institutions can result in retention of trained faculty. Finally, improved quantity and quality of graduates with problem-solving skills and innovation capacities can increase the speed of growth of the national economies and result in improved quality of life of large number of poor people in Sub-Saharan Africa.