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| Overcrowding, low funding plague African universities
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By Mamadou Amat
PANA staff writer
Dakar, Senegal (PANA) -
A UNESCO specialist on education has
identified the sudden explosion in student population and
inadequate financial allocation as two major problems plaguing
higher education in Africa.
According to Burunsi Juma Shabani, principal specialist at
the UNESCO office for Education in Africa (BREDA), the increase
in student enrolment has surpassed the capacities of
universities, thus making budget allocations increasingly
insufficient to provide students with quality training.
In an interview with PANA, Shabani, therefore, said "the
unemployment of graduates reflects that their training has no
relevance or quality that corresponds to employment needs."
"Many managers have complained about the low level of
university training in regard to the tasks that graduates
are required to perform," he cited.
Shabani said, though budgets were increased in certain
cases, the enormous needs make the money insufficient.
He cited how Cote d'Ivoire, which allocates 43 percent of
its operating budget to education in general and 20 percent to
just higher education alone, is not without problems in that
sector
"Because of the rapid increase in needs, the budgets are no
sufficient to purchase teaching materials and equipment as well
as enable teachers to have continuing education to update their
knowledge," he pointed out.
In reply to whether teachers' lack of training have a
negative effect on the performance and graduates, Shabani
enumerated several factors including teachers' "lack of
continuing education", especially in methodology.
He observed that university lecturers, in general, do not
have sufficient pedagogical training, and suggested that they
pursue continuing education courses to enable them cater to the
specific needs of students, the development of technologies and
other pedagogical aspects.
Shabani lamented that secondary school students are hardly
prepared for university education because their schools lacked
teaching aids like libraries and laboratories that enhance
practical training.
He pointed out how some institutions like the University of
Togo suppressed practicals in the science faculties as well as
dissertations and master's theses as factors that affect the
quality of education.
He said strikes also contributed to the poor performance of
African universities by forcing some of them to shorten their
academic year and hastily gloss over courses without giving
students enough time to understand and digest the subject
matters.
"It is absolutely necessary for us to adapt our training
programmes to benefit from new technologies," Shabani warned,
citing rapid progress in knowledge and technologies as firstly
demanded by globalisation.
With regard to the second challenge, he said it was urgent
for us to benefit from the advantages offered by the new
technologies in the education sector, but especially in research.
"The development of telecommunications, in particular, can
enable us to connect to international research networks and thus
make use of publications and other available documents," he
added.
He suggested the reformulation of higher education policies
among reforms that could salvage higher education in Africa.
"With the rapid increase in student population, we can no
longer have all the students on a single campus. The
infrastructure are no longer sufficient and we cannot
continue to build indefinitely."
Therefore, he suggested the need to envisage other forms and
types of higher education including distance learning courses.
Furthermore, private institutions of learning should be
provided with the necessary means to help cope with the explosion
in student population and lack of quality education.
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| Dakar - 11/06/2001 |
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