Push to improve lecturer numbers and qualifications

Zimbabwe’s government has outlined plans to raise the bar in lecturer qualifications as part of an initiative to improve quality in universities. Standards plummeted during a decade-long political and economic crisis that sparked a massive brain drain in all sectors, including higher education.

The aim is for all lecturers to have PhDs by 2015 – although there is little likelihood of this being achieved.

Since the formation of a unity government in February 2009, initiatives have also been put in place to bring back academics who have left the country, either on short-term placements or in permanent positions – and some successes are starting to be recorded.

During a graduation ceremony last month at Midlands State University, Vice-chancellor Professor Ngwabi Bhebhe said strides had been made in attracting highly qualified lecturers, and his institution was on course to meet the 2015 target.

While in 2009 the university employed a mere 16 faculty with doctoral degrees, it now had “a complement of 68 PhDs”, said Bhebhe, adding that the institution was also funding supervisors of its doctoral students to visit the institution to interact with the students.

Acting Education Minister Dr Ignatius Chombo said the government was leaving no stone unturned in attempting to achieve its 2015 PhD target and that most public universities were recording similar improvements to those at Midlands State.

The flight of highly qualified Zimbabweans wreaked major damage on the higher education sector.

In 2010 the failed states index compiled by the international Fund for Peace reported that one in five Zimbabweans had fled the country in the preceding decade, many of them professors, doctors, engineers, lawyers or journalists.

A parliamentary report that year revealed chronic staff shortages at the flagship University of Zimbabwe with, for example, no lecturers at all in animal science, community medicine, metallurgy and clinical pharmacology. Medicine had only eight lecturers but needed 26, and three key medical departments had only two lecturers each.

Various initiatives have been put in place to fight the brain drain. One of them is a short-return programme championed by the International Organisation for Migration, which was launched in 2009 and brings professionals in the diaspora back to Zimbabwe.

Afterwards they have the option to return to their new countries or remain in Zimbabwe permanently. Universities are beginning to benefit from this programme.

Despite his other failures, President Robert Mugabe – who holds seven degrees, including in economics and law, and more than 10 honorary degrees – has always prioritised education, and Zimbabwe still has Africa’s highest literacy rate.