Government funding in Higher Education

This week there are two articles on the funding of Higher Education (HE) that have caught my attention. One of the articles talk of a professor who has just discovered a “Better way to cut up of the pie” in South Africa, while the other one talks of a noble way of “Paying universities to lower their standards” in Italy. What is particularly interesting, Professor Malegapuru Makgoba, the Vice Chancellor of one University of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa considers it pretence in the government approach of seeing the 23 universities in South Africa as the same and using the same blurred vision to dictate their kind of funding. He advocates for the recognition of the “different histories, different capacities, different resources, and different visions and missions” each of the 23 universities in funding them.

What is intriguing is his argument for more funding for Humanities than science in South African universities. (This is not only a surprise because he is of a medical background, but also for the prominence science is being given for the economic development in Africa. I would argue also, given the AIDS scourge a person of his background would advocate for more funding for medical research especially in HIV/AIDS and TB). That is not to say that humanities (or social sciences) are lesser than the natural sciences. Indeed his proposal looks more proactive than reactive on one angle – that we need to first deal with our social and individual needs before we turn onto other areas like science. That is not to say I agree with his point of view. I would add that South Africa as a country as without doubt the rest of Africa need a proactive approach to the funding of projects and by extension higher education. That is, our reason for funding more humanities projects than science and technology projects in higher education should not be based on factors like the number of Nobel prizes we have in humanities as compared to sciences. Neither should it be pegged on the areas that we are good at, we need to explore new and diverse galaxies to find if there can be better life.

Just because South Africa is good in “international mediation, non-racism, reconciliation, justice, equity and even xenophobia” we should focus all our funding there. In fact, we can use that as a step towards exploring other areas like sciences or even medical research that is of betterment of the citizenry of this country and Africa as a whole. What the old professor seemed to ignore is that, despite what we can achieve in humanities, at the end of the day the “hungry child is going to aim to become a great scientist” not because there is lots of humanities in universities, but because there is food. In a time like his where everyone in the world has been alerted of a looming food shortage (although some are saying is artificial and speculative while others attribute it to the use of foodstuff in fuel/power generation), I would have expected the professor to advocate for some funding in food and agricultural research to feed the “hungry child”. Humanities won’t feed the child. In addition, it is time we changed the meaning of struggle from the mere creation of “a humane and just society... largely [based] on humanities”. Rather, we should transform the struggle to creating opportunities for the populace. I am yet to see a humane and just society where a section of it is destitute and hungry. While the iconography, native knowledge (and I may add wisdom), and unique history should be explored further, wide and deep, it should not be at the expense of science and technology. Well maybe I did miss a point.

In Italy, the economics are working. Universities (just like in SA incidentally) get subsidies from government based on number of graduates who “pass” through a university system. In this system, government “funds allocated to a university increase with the total number of full-time equivalent students (FTE), which is defined as the ratio between the number of exams passed and the number of exams that students should have taken.” The major concern of this approach is the allure of making more money by lowering academic standards. This especially becomes a problem because all universities are meant to be autonomous and offering their own examinations. In fact, as Professors Manuel F. Bagues and Mauro Sylos Labini and Ms Natalia Zinovyeva report, “graduates from universities with a high relative number of FTE students tend to do significantly worse in the labour market.” While this might be attributed to the high number of graduates the mills are producing (as compared to those graduating from high-grading university), there should be mechanisms of regulating the quality of academic offerings and standards at universities. Perhaps such mechanisms are favouring universities that “produce higher value added”, using “system based on external examiners” and “foster[ing] reputation effects in the market for higher education”. The latter could be done by “publicising data about how graduates of different universities and disciplines perform in the labour market.”

Let us see which university publishes data on employability of its graduates first!

The eLearning Adoption Survey: Day 3

Day 3: (14 responses received).
Are you an academic in higher education? Are you from or working in any of the following countries (Angola, Botswana, Burundi, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe)? If so, you are invited to participate on an eLearning adoption survey. Click here to participate. A guide on how to go about filling in the questionnaire is available here.

Day 28@1203 28 June 2008

Number of responses: 74

Number of valid responses: 38

Number of saved responses: 6

Countries represented: 11

Universities represented: 20

Day 13@1505 13 June 2008

Number of responses: 59

Number of valid responses: 30

Number of saved responses: 5

Countries represented: 8

Universities represented: 11

Day 9@1525 09 June 2008

Number of responses: 29

Number of valid responses: 16

Number of saved responses: 1

Countries represented: 6


Day 3@2017 03 June 2008

Number of responses: 14

Number of valid responses: 6

Number of saved responses: 1

Countries represented: 5 (Kenya (2), Mozambique (1), Rwanda (1), South Africa (1) , Zimbabwe (1)).

Universities presented: 6 (University of Nairobi (1), Africa Nazarene University (1), National University of Rwanda (1), Stellenbosch University (1), Catholic University of Mozambique (1), National University of Science and Technology (1)).

Gender representation (6 Male, 0 Female).

More information also available on my homepage.

All for Text Books and Digital Publications

Today I woke up two hours late than I usually do. Immediately after doing the morning rituals - showering, having breakfast etc, I turned on my computer to catch up with what has been happening in preparation for my first work-day in the year tomorrow. After more than three weeks of a restful break. I have several dozens of emails to read - and maybe act on - but what first caught my attention as I was going through my news alerts of my favorite topic - eLearning - is a digg from Kenya's eduvision entitled PDA's instead of textbooks in Kenya. As I went through it, I remembered a similar project by the International Association of Digital Publications in collaboration with the South Africa Institute for Distance Education. Both project aim at bringing low-cost educational technology, and access to educational content to the developing countries. The former focuses on Primary Education (and secondary), while the latter's focus is on Higher Education.
The principle behind the two projects is identical - availing cheap technology, and educational publications to the poor students of Africa. How cheap this is, is my first question. Secondly, if it is just content, without customization, localization, or contextualization, how is it going to enhance teaching and learning - or we are just making our students the legendary donkey that carries loads of books but does not have an idea of what it is carrying? The other question is the sustainability of these projects, what would happen when the donors support dries out? Seeing the the technology in use is foreign, mainly single sourced, and with no local expertise, I see a gloom future. For sustainability, we should have local experts who can drive the projects, processes and the technologies beyond its pilot. Do we need, for instance, to send the eSlate used in Kenya to its manufacturer when a reprogramming of the ROM is necessary? And in the same note, opening up these technologies for competition, and for using open standards will make them cheaper over time or at least avail more enhanced and better tools for the clients.
A question for eduvision: on this page, it is stated:

(and does so inexpensively: the necessary bandwidth to equip every primary and secondary school child in Africa with EELS would cost less than $2,000 per month)

Is the $2000 the cost of bandwidth for the whole of Africa? Am persuaded not to believe it.

Using Technology to Reach Out People on HIV/AIDS

Today is World AIDS Day and according to the UN "World AIDS Day is a day when people from around the world come together within a single effort. The global theme for the World AIDS Day 2006 is accountability - and the slogan is "Stop AIDS. Keep the Promise."" If the promise is to stop aids, then we got to use every means and methods to do that. Today, I remembered to wear my RED RIBBON and the whole day I have been thinking of what has/can be done on the use of educational technologies in general to reach out the masses. I have also checked some cartoons posted on the UN website. Even though I could not interpret the meaning of all of them, the ones I did passed on the message.
I write my reflections. As I write, I do it with a lot of sadness and helplessness. Am sad because I still think the whole of mankind has not done its fair share in eradicating and fighting HIV and AIDS. Helpless because despite what I do now, I might not reach the most deserving soul. I did to do it, nonetheless because it might be my fare share in the war against the AIDS pandemic because you are reading and might be inspired to do your fair share.
I have seen and/or reviewed a number of eLearning courseware on HIV and AIDS (most of them funded by the North or is it the West?). However, I have not seen or heard of an evaluation of the effectiveness of such courses in reaching the most deserving people in developing countries who are worst hit. It seems to me that the donors are ready to pump in money even before they do a thorough analysis of the contexts involved. Studies have shown that there is a link between poverty and the HIV infections. It is therefore very unrealistic for anyone to purport to be using eLearning to reach out to people who live on less than a dollar a day. To such people, technology would not be a priority. To them, we need a different mode of delivery and dissemination of information - and a totally new perspective of looking at the AIDS pandemic. I am not against the use of eLearning in HIV and AIDS education, am just questioning its effectiveness in reaching out to the poorest of the poor especially in Africa. Cellphones have been used (successfully?) in South Africa by medical and social workers to monitor patients on anti-retroviral therapy.
If you care, like I do, use more than one means to get your message on HIV and AIDS accross.

I am an eLearning Fundi

Why the name Fundi?

Fundi is a Zulu and Swahili word for an expert or specialist or a skilled craftsman. I have been in eLearning, in the context of Higher Educaiton both in the Kenya and South Africa. I have worked in many eLearning projects, and being a strong believer in my potential, I thing I rightly deserver the title eLearning Fundi. I believe that eLearning specifically in Higher Education in Africa is a reality that has come, that cannot be lightly wished off, that will test a Universities future success in terms of reaching out wider and newer markets. The sooner the Higher Learning institutions adopt and implement eLearning the better their chances for the future.

So what do the Higher Education institutions need to do? Lets engage in a creative discussion that would answer this question or more.