This past week, the Carnegie Corporation hosted a meeting of African higher education experts in Nairobi to deliberate on how best to transformation African higher education.
A recurring theme during the conference was why, despite more than 50 years of existence and infusion of many resources by Government, little progress seems to have been made. For example, both the old and new institutions have suffered staff shortages, having to share the few available qualified academics as graduate training has lagged behind the rate of expansion. New universities have also become bastions of tribalism as staff recruitment (and in some cases student admissions) have become too localised. Merit has suffered with institutional managers having to promote the few available academics to merely fill the slots or have professors in their ranks.
At the meeting, it was recognised that African governments, which have traditionally received much of the blame for the slow pace of change are actually leading the way in espousing reform.
They have provided most of the money and incentives for expansion to public and private sector players.
In the area of governance, they have encouraged competitive recruitment of top university managers; and non-politicians now serve as university chancellors. Student and staff unions have been recognised and are represented in key decision-making bodies, token as some of this representation may sometimes be. Staff salaries have been on the rise and regulatory bodies have been strengthened.
In the area of equity, although more women and youth from marginalised regions are getting into university, they are mainly in the social sciences and are greatly outnumbered in university management. Universities have yet to come up with a more transparent and equitable criteria for admitting those from marginalised groups into learning and teaching programmes.
Some of the participants accused senior university managers in public universities of refusing to espouse efficiency in managing university business and for failing to mobilise external support. Even where they mobilise limited external funding, most public university administrations tend to use the resources given by respective governments rather inefficiently. They spend disproportionate funding on the comfort of chancellors, bloated university councils and senates, over-employment of support staff and construction of administration blocks while students lack basic minimum learning inputs such as laboratories and classrooms.
It is interesting how much some private universities have achieved in modernising their student facilities from fees collected from students. On the other hand, Government support notwithstanding, most public universities are characterised by the very old facilities and equipment funded by governments when they were founded decades ago. In some public universities, new departments and institutes are established to benefit favoured academics and not because they make academic or economic sense. Academics in public universities have not helped matters much. They demand more pay for which they are not willing to give back as much. Because of the income-generating craze, public universities are churning out thousands of students who have not had the benefit of basic foundation knowledge.
Nor are students any more progressive. If they can qualify without working hard, the better as evidenced by cheating in examinations and the little time they spend in libraries or on the Internet in search of knowledge. Real transformation can only be realised if governments hold universities to account for the funds they receive. It should not be enough to fund a university just because it is a Government institution; it must justify that support. Likewise, recruitment and promotion of management staff (from the chairs of departments and directors of institutes) should be transparent, merit-based and should consider ability to deliver.
Meanwhile, consumers of university education (students and employers) need more say in university decision-making.
