Western troop withdrawals a ‘challenge’ for universities

The withdrawal of US and other NATO troops from Afghanistan by 2014 poses a challenge for Afghanistan’s universities, which are responsible for turning out local professionals able to take over non-military tasks, a top Afghan higher education ministry official has said.

While it is only troops that will be withdrawn by 2014, a large percentage of aid money and development assistance is provided by the US military, particularly in remote areas of Afghanistan.

Some local academics fear that the departure of American and other Western troops could mean that Western aid agencies forget about Afghanistan.

However, the immediate challenge is to ensure that qualified people are available.

“Definitely it is our very important goal to ensure that Afghan graduates are able to take care of civil areas of life” as foreign troops depart, said Deputy Minister of Higher Education Mohammad Osman Babury, speaking at the margins of the British Council’s “Going Global” conference in London on 14 March.

Much has been done to set higher education back on its feet in the past decade and to rebuild a quality system in the country. “Despite all the progress and achievements, there are huge needs for higher education in Afghanistan,” Babury told University World News.

“In certain aspects we are doing well, and in certain aspects we need progress, but generally we are moving ahead. So I believe if there will be a well-organised and well-agreed strategy for higher education, that will avoid any interruption in 2014.”

The year 2014 is when Afghanistan’s current national higher education plan 2010-14 comes to an end. The plan’s aim is to ensure that higher education more closely matches national needs, particularly given the different goals of aid donors and the priorities of different regions.

Work is only just beginning on a post-2014 higher education plan that will take into account the withdrawal of troops, who provide some infrastructure and engineering services, although organisations such as USAID and the British Council have said they are committed to continuing assistance to higher education.

Babury said it was important to ensure continuity and sustainability. “A lot has been invested in Afghanistan during the past 10 years in every area of our lives, and these donors don’t want to see the failing of their investment and their efforts and contributions.”

But there are critical shortages of engineers, technicians, accountants and other professionals to ensure reconstruction and economic growth, and also the lack of an effective administration that can provide social services at the local and national levels.

“We are working on need assessments at the national level, and needs assessments at the institutional level. Our aim is to graduate competent people who would be able to respond to the needs of communities,” Babury said.

Expansion so far is not enough

A decade of expansion of higher education has meant that the number of students enrolled in public universities has increased dramatically from around 7,000 in 2001 – the year the Taliban regime fell – to 10 times that figure last year.

The goal for 2013 is 115,000 students at some 26 public and 54 private universities, Babury said, while acknowledging even that would not meet Afghanistan’s human resources needs.

However, some 150,000 young people pass the school-leaving exams, known as the concours, and qualify for university entry. There is not the capacity to absorb them all into higher education.

Many of those who do not progress beyond high school are women. Only one in five university students in Afghanistan is female.

“We believe the share of women should be increased,” Babury stressed, in particular by helping those who pass the concours to access universities with extra classes.

Another way to increase women’s participation in higher education is to build women-only dormitories attached to universities, he said. Around a dozen of the country’s 26 public universities now have women’s dormitories, but some are virtually empty due to the security situation, as women stay away.

Afghanistan is grappling with huge shortages of public funds and poor infrastructure as well as security issues, which keep many students in outlying provinces from attending university.

With limited public funds, private institutions now enrol a larger number of students than the public sector. Private institutions “are growing very rapidly”, said Babury.

Despite the country’s dire needs, three months ago the ministry imposed a moratorium on new private institutions. “The main reason was quality. And also, in big provinces we are not keen to have duplication in terms of engineering and medicine, [though] we welcome more diversity. For now there is a moratorium on new applications,” Babury explained.

Last year President Hamid Karzi said the pursuit of profit by some private institutions was harming the quality of higher education.

But with a moratorium on private provision in place the need for quality public institutions has become more acute. The ministry “is committed to doubling enrolments [in public institutions] by 2014,” Babury said.

Meanwhile the ministry has put in place new by-laws for quality assurance and accreditation of institutions, both public and private. “Peer reviewers have been nominated and will be trained soon,” he said.

Site visits of public universities would also begin soon.