AFRICA: Halting the brain drain

Universities can do nothing about macro-factors that pull Africa's best young minds to the West, such as far superior salaries, job opportunities and quality of life. But much can be done to alleviate 'push' factors such as shoddy workplaces, lack of equipment, teaching overload and uncaring managers. Higher education leaders from Sub-Saharan Africa have created a "to do" list of actions that will help to train and retain the next generation of scholars.

At a University Leaders' Forum titled "Developing and Retaining the Next Generation of Academics", held in Ghana from 22 to 25 November, higher education heads and experts brainstormed potential initiatives at institutional, national and regional levels that would help to develop a cadre of young academics for the continent.

While circumstances and needs vary considerably among countries and regions, all Sub-Saharan Africa nations appear to face the problems of ageing faculty, brain drain, academic shortages and difficulties in attracting and holding on to young scholars - and many of the potential solutions are common.

Among urgent actions that university leaders at the Forum agreed were possible and should be taken were:

Institutional

* Establish the nature and size of current and future academic staffing needs at universities.

* Involve university leaders in tackling the next generation problem.

* Develop or improve succession and staff development strategies, policies and programmes.

* Work to grow postgraduate student numbers, to enlarge the pool of potential academics, as well as to improve postgraduate success rates and identify students with academic promise.

* Grow the diversity of postgraduate students, including by addressing gender imbalances.

* Create working environments more conducive for postgraduates, especially doctoral students, including office space, teaching opportunities and funding or scholarship support.

* Improve conditions for young academics, including competitive pay and pension schemes, easing heavy teaching workloads and creating opportunities for research, publication and conference attendance.

* Strengthen PhD supervision and mentoring, among other ways by providing skills training for supervisors and mentors and by drawing on retired or partly affiliated professors.

* Identify research, training, scholarship and fellowship opportunities and make them known to young academics.

* Simplify employment contracts and processes and make contracts more flexible.

* Provide programmes for pedagogical training and skills upgrading.

* Ensure effective administrative leadership and staff development units and programmes.

* Strengthen higher education quality and establish or improve quality assurance units.

Collaborative

* There are many innovative and successful initiatives underway to train and retain young scholars, and information about these best practices should be gathered and shared.

* Collaborate with other institutions to develop joint postgraduate programmes and-or degrees in order to increase postgraduate training capacity and share resources and expertise.

* Draw on scholars in the African diaspora for support, including with supervision.

* Seek donor, private sector and-or government funding and support for next generation initiatives.

National and international

* Gather national data on academic shortages and staffing needs, and strong arguments outlining the next generation problem and its solutions, as the basis for influencing government policies and securing government support for next generation initiatives.

* Work with higher education councils, commissions and associations to develop national next generation approaches and programmes.

* Encourage development of national policy and regulatory frameworks to support the training and retaining of academics.

* Work collectively at the regional level, within higher education associations and regional structures, to collaboratively address next generation problems. For instance, regional university or political associations could lobby for support from the African Union.

* Strengthen and publish databases of scholars, institutions and research and funding opportunities available to academics across the continent and worldwide.

There were particular suggestions from countries and regions, over and above those ideas that many countries shared.

The East Africa group of leaders (Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania) also suggested coursework across PhD disciplines to build capacity for instruction, sandwich programmes, provision of iLabs and eJournals to postgraduate students, prioritising PhD training in science and technology, and updating curricula and making them responsive to the needs of society, the private sector and government.

The Southern African leaders (Madagascar, Mozambique and South Africa) highlighted the need to develop new postgraduate learning methodologies (including shared learning), appropriate use of information technology, and course ware for teaching skills.

Alienating institutional cultures needed to be tackled, they added, and young scholars inspired to take up academic careers - including by highlighting the importance of higher education to national development. The mindsets of existing academics needed to be changed to make them more supportive of young scholars.

At the national level, there was a need to respond to the reality of sub-standard schooling, and to raise national consciousness of the looming academics staffing crisis. At the regional level, the case should be made for more support for and harmonisation of higher education within the Southern African Development Community.

In Ghana, participants said, over and above the already mentioned strategies, institutions should proactively set standards for scholarship, create forums to engage and inform the university community on issues around the next generation, and provide systematic orientation for newly recruited staff.

Leaders from Nigeria proposed split-site programmes for graduate studies, investigating options for more cost-effective training, and stressed the need to institutionalise research management and for collaboration between graduate schools and research management units.

Young academics should be attached to research programmes, and encouraged to take advantage of online programmes and supervision. Centralised laboratories could be built to improve facilities and equipment, and partnerships with industry, communities and local governments should be encouraged.

At the national level, there was a need for government to set up competitive national research and research grant agencies. Also, government needed to examine its stand on cost-sharing and to develop policies on differentiation in higher education.