The higher education sector in East Africa is close to its lowest ebb, educationists warn as the region battles low access and falling quality.

The East African Community countries are struggling to accommodate surging numbers of students seeking an education, while simultaneously addressing the critical numbers who drop out of the system. Between 1996 and 1999, 57 per cent of all children enrolled for primary school, compared with 87 per cent and 72 per cent for Uganda and Kenya respectively. However, only 0.6 per cent of children in Tanzania actually entered tertiary institutions, and only two per cent and 3.5 per cent in Uganda and Kenya respectively.  Across the region, university education remains a largely elitist endeavour.

It is also largely a male pursuit. While the female enrollment rate into higher education has increased with recent government interventions, more still needs to be done to ensure that women access tertiary education. Up until well into the 1990s men greatly outnumbered women at most institutions in the region.

This situation, however, has changed dramatically, with the increasing privatisation of higher education. According to the study Educational Pathways in East Africa: Scaling a Difficult Terrain, while women currently make up roughly half, (and in some cases, slightly more) of students at most private institutions in the region, the numbers are approaching a modest 30 to 40 per cent at the oldest and most prestigious public universities (Makerere, Nairobi and Dar es Salaam).

Under-represented female

The study revealed not just significant female underrepresentation within the student body, but also in senior academic and administrative positions. Only a handful of women hold executive university positions in the region, with less than 10 per cent of academic managers (deans and heads of departments) being women at Makerere where there are also only two women professors. The University of Nairobi has only five.

Though it is widely believed that investing in education leads to accumulation of human capital, which is essential for creation of wealth and sustaining economic growth, a debate continues to rage over the role of universities, with some arguing that their main role was to enable graduates to get jobs when they leave the university, while others argue that the pursuit of knowledge is a noble goal in and of itself and that thinking of relevance only in terms of current demands from employers risks forfeiture of capacity to adjust to future opportunities.

In reality, many universities have already started operating, in the words of Christopher Lucas, author of Our Western Educational Heritage, as “an appendage to the world of business.”

In a recent study by Andrew Rasugu of the Institute of Policy Analysis and Research, Kenyan applicants to public universities were found to be influenced by the dynamics in the marketplace when selecting programmes leading to a greater preference for business, economics, medical, engineering and information technology degrees that are seen to be favoured by employers. The research revealed that although courses such as agriculture, criminology, disaster management, literature, poetry, and ethical education, and natural sciences are more relevant to sustainable development, they are unattractive to students.

‘Marketisation’ of education

The situation is replicated across the region. At Uganda’s Makerere University, according to The Observer, enrolment for courses like mathematics, veterinary medicine and religious studies has been declining over the years. A lecturer in history, Mwambutsya Ndebesa, attributes this to what he calls the “marketisation” of education.

“Our society has lost track of the meaning and value of knowledge and education,” he says.

His words are confirmed by the fact that prominent Ugandan politicians, including President Yoweri Museveni, have on several occasions lamented that the country’s universities teach “useless” courses such as, incredibly, development studies and peace and conflict resolution.

As universities strive to stay afloat in the face of dwindling government financing, there is a real danger that these unpopular courses may be dropped altogether.

Across the region, an emphasis on providing free primary and secondary education is also putting the squeeze on budgetary support for tertiary institutions. To counter this, many have had to diversify, introducing certificate and diploma courses as well as opening doors to privately-funded students.

Cost-sharing

Further, a system of cost-sharing has been introduced for publicly financed students. A conference dubbed “Financing Higher Education in Eastern and Southern Africa: Diversifying Revenue and Expanding Accessibility,” held in Dar es Salaam in March 2002 concluded that revenue diversification and cost-sharing were an imperative for “African higher education,” since “governmental (taxpayer) revenues alone are already insufficient (and will be even more so in the future) to provide the quality and expanded capacity of higher education needed in Africa.”

With the exception of Tanzania, East African governments have firmly established a dual track system. The purpose of a dual track tuition fee policy is to retain some level of free or very low-cost higher education for at least some students, while supplementing the government‘s scare public revenue with private revenue from families who are willing and able to pay.

In Kenya and Uganda, it is rapidly becoming more accurate to think of the university financing system as one in which most students have to pay tuition fees, while only a few receive government sponsorship. Tanzania, on the other hand, discarded its tentative dual track tuition policy (wherein most students were entitled to free higher education, a moderate tuition fee was charged to the self-sponsored students and modest fees were charged for food and lodging) to a policy in which all students pay a significant tuition fee, all tuition fees and food and lodging costs are deferred as loans.

The dual track system has helped ease the financial situation in the public universities. Makerere University, for example, has quadrupled revenue from the private entry scheme, from just under $4 million  in 1995/96 to $16.5 million in 2002/03, accounting for over half of the university’s funding. In the 2002/03 academic year alone, the University of Nairobi earned a total of $17.5 million through its parallel programmes. By the end of that year, income from students and parents in both modules contributed close to 40 per cent of the total university income. In turn, the government allocation dropped from 70 per cent of the university‘s income in 1995/96 to 49 per cent in 2002/03.

Dual track tuition policies have also greatly expanded capacity as illustrated by the dramatic increase in enrolment at Makerere University between 1992 and 2002 that grew sixfold from 5,000 to over 30,000 students and by the growth in total public universities enrolments in Uganda that reached 46,819 in 2004 with about 80 percent of the student body at Makerere made up of privately sponsored students.

Still, according to Prof Chris Nwamuo, a senior programme officer at the Association of African Universities, the drastic cuts in the public funding of universities and the attendant decline, neglect and poor quality which have characterised them over the years, can only be countered by private universities which will provide education to the great number of learners in a knowledge-driven and knowledge-dependent world. He writes that “in many parts of the world, private universities are known to be innovative, to seek alternative financing strategies, to develop effective management structures and to introduce demand-driven courses.”

One such university is the Aga Khan University, which provides post-graduate training of health service professionals, teachers and managers of schools, and the development of research scholars. It was granted its charter in 1983 as Pakistan’s first private, autonomous university. The university has campuses and programmes in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania offering post graduate medical studies and advanced nurses training. It also boasts an Institute of Educational Development located in Dar es Salaam and plans to introduce a new Faculty of Arts and Sciences in Arusha as well as a Faculty of Health Sciences in Nairobi, where it already runs a university hospital.

However, as more universities, private or otherwise, come online, there will be continuing issue regarding integration and standardization of courses and curricula. In 2001, according to a paper delivered by the then deputy vice-chancellor (academic affairs) at the Egerton University, Prof. A.M. Mutema, East Africa had no “formalised programme for exchange of students from one country to another and even within countries.  This means that students cannot transfer credits of courses taken in one university to another for purposes of continuing with their programmes.”

Uniform standards

In 2007, the Rockefeller  Foundation financed a three-year project to remedy the situation culminating in the Credit Accumulation and Transfer System (CATS) which, according to Prof Everett Standa, the secretary to Kenya’s Commission for Higher Education, by February 2010, was accepted by 47 of the region’s 64 Universities, both private and public. Further, as the EAC has expanded to include Rwanda, Burundi and potentially, South Sudan, there are potential benefits that can result from a regional approach to the provision of higher education include the pooling of resources, co-operative determination of standards and sharing of expertise and best practices in addition to enhancing intellectual capacities for research.

However, disparities in education standards between countries may lead to instances where qualifications can be questioned. It is therefore imperative that the quality assurance system initiated by the IUCEA in 2005 is fully adopted by all universities in the region. As Asman Kamama, the Assistant Minister in Kenya’s Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology, said in 2008, “we want to ensure uniformity so that people can go across the border and get jobs without the issue of having a sub-standard education [being raised].”

Such standardisation would also help graduates of a national system compete effectively in the global market, and the region’s universities tap into the rapidly expanding trade in education services in the current globalised and commercialised higher education sector.