AFRICA: Attracting top graduates into academe

There is no mystery about what the challenge is for skills-short African countries that do not have enough academics to teach rapidly expanding student populations, says Professor Brian O'Connell, Vice-chancellor of the University of the Western Cape in South Africa. "It is producing more good graduates and enticing them into academia." But dramatically increasing student numbers and thus the pool of potential new academics will require major increases in higher education funding - as well as the teachers that institutions do not have.

The problems faced in training and retaining a new generation of academics in Africa are shared by all countries, although the solutions could be rather different, said O'Connell in an interview with University World News at last month's University Leaders' Forum in Ghana titled "Developing and Retaining the Next Generation of Academics".

There was broad agreement at the forum on a number of actions that could immediately be taken to relieve academic staffing crises in universities. These included developing nurturing programmes for promising postgraduate students, drafting national plans to support the training and retaining of new academics, conducting audits aimed at identifying shortages of academics and future needs, and working to convince governments of the link between higher education and development - and thus of the need to increase funding for the sector.

O'Connell said commitment to building a strong cadre of young academics presupposed a deep respect for knowledge within Africa's different cultures and nations, understanding of the importance of higher education to continental development, and the political will and leadership to commit to modern knowledge projects.

But it emerged from the forum there is not a uniform commitment to knowledge in Africa, particularly with respect to South Africa:. "It appears that in Sub-Saharan Africa there is no shortage of good quality candidates for higher education study.

"In fact, competition for entry into higher education is fierce, whereas in South Africa the challenge is finding enough students with the necessary competence for university," commented O'Connell.

"In Tanzania, only half of all students who achieve 'A' passes in school-leaving examinations get into university. In this and in other respects the challenges for countries are different, O'Connell said.

"While in many Sub-Saharan African countries schools and teachers are respected and parents are committed to the education of their children, South Africa's school system is deeply troubled, teachers are not respected and often lack professionalism, and communities do not support education. The result is low educational quality and poor academic performance."

So while a major challenge for South Africa is developing a vibrant, cherished school system with committed learners and teachers able to produce many more school-leavers qualified for university, in many other African countries it is rapidly expanding higher education, which is already growing at a continental rate of 8.7% a year - one of the highest regional growth rates in the world, according to a recent World Bank report.

This, O'Connell argued, would increase the number of potential new academics but would also require governments to commit far more money to higher education and a large increase in staff to deal with expanding student bodies.

"In the short term, importing such skills seems to be the only answer. From this newly created large pool, the challenge will be to excite students, draw them into the academic world and get them committed to an academic career".

This is a long-term strategy. What is immediately possible is developing mechanisms through which top students could be nurtured and developed into proficient academics. The different countries participating in the forum, O'Connell pointed out, "agreed that such a process is not only feasible but necessary and should be implemented as soon as possible".

Another suggestion widely accepted was for each country to draft institutional and national plans to develop academics, using promising students already in universities.

One proven model, O'Connell said, was developing programmes of up to three years in which doctoral or post-doctoral students would be provided with an individual mentor and paid a salary to complete their research while having first-hand contact with all the elements that relate to the task of the academic.

"Promising students would be given significant time to attend to their studies while beginning to tutor, lecture and even assess over time. They would be guaranteed a position in the academy on successful completion of the programme."

Another area of broad agreement was the need to convince African governments that higher education is a prerequisite for development, that every effort should be made to resource the sector sufficiently to enable it to produce the numbers and types of graduates needed for economic growth. Africa has averaged 6% Gross Domestic Product growth in the past five years but is being held back by drastic skills shortages.

It was suggested that a detailed audit of current and future academics needed to be undertaken by all universities in all African countries, O'Connell said. This would enable universities to engage with national governments with solid and detailed information "so that a dramatic up-scaling of new entrants into the academic world can be rigorously argued for".

That, O'Connell added, is what his University of the Western Cape and other South African universities intend to do: "We will look at how many people are retiring and resigning, how many new programmes are coming on board, where our intakes will be increasing and what new areas of research are likely to emerge. With such information we would develop a better understanding of what our future needs will be, and we could start a new discussion with government."

Government might be persuaded to accept the burden of the costs of a 'next generation' programme on the basis of sharpened understanding of the proven correlation between numbers of quality graduates and the prosperity of countries.

Finally, O'Connell said, it was felt that country, regional and Sub-Saharan African higher education organisations should engage with national and continental leaders about the role of higher education in development and of political leaders in promoting high-level knowledge.

karen.macgregor@uw-news.com