Region is not reaping rewards of HE investment – Study

Universities in Sub-Saharan Africa have failed to equip the region’s fast-growing youth population with market-driven skills needed for prosperous and equitable societies, and the region’s countries are not reaping the rewards of their investment in tertiary education, according to a new study by the World Bank.

The report, The Skills Balancing Act in Sub-Saharan Africa: Investing in skills for productivity, inclusivity, and adaptability, argues that despite massive university education expansion in the last decade, most countries in the region are losing ground when it comes to providing access to higher education.

According to Omar Arias, lead researcher of the study and manager for global knowledge and innovation at the World Bank, and his associate Indhira Santos, a senior labour economist, the average gross enrolment ratio in tertiary education stands at about 10% in Sub-Saharan Africa, but in some countries it is much lower.

“In more than a third of countries in the region, university enrolment is below 5%,” noted the two researchers.

Although university enrolment in Sub-Saharan Africa has historically lagged behind other global regions, what is worrying observers and stakeholders is that enrolment has taken an elitist path, effectively being rationed to a subset of youth from richer backgrounds. According to the study, the selection process has been persistently skewed in favour of the richest 20% of the population.

For instance, in Malawi, the study shows that only 1% of students enrolled in universities come from households in the bottom 20% of the income distribution, while another 3% come from the second poorest quintile. “In contrast, 80% of university students in Malawi come from the richest 20% of the population,” said Arias.

Overall in the region, gross enrolment ratios in tertiary education stand at 16% among the richest quintile of the population, but at only 2% among the poorest. In urban Kenya, having both parents with secondary education makes a person 3.5 times more likely to attend university.

In this regard the report is urging African countries to break with the past and start making smart investments in university education geared towards developing skills aligned with goals of productivity growth and social inclusion, in order to accelerate development.

No value from investment

What is emerging is that the region is not getting value from its investment in tertiary education. On average, Sub-Saharan Africa is spending US$2,445 per student per year, which is three times more than what other low- and lower-middle-income countries spend.

But despite such heavy investment in higher education in the last 30 years, building of skills by the universities has almost collapsed. “Systems for building skills have fallen short, and these shortcomings have impeded economic prospects,” stated the report.

The report is pushing African countries to look afresh at the expansion of university education that had been going on in Sub-Saharan Africa in the last two decades. According to the report, while expanding access to higher education is commendable, there is urgent need to start managing university education more carefully.

Foundational learning

The World Bank is recommending that countries ensure that youth acquire solid foundational skills in basic education, as a necessary prerequisite for college readiness. Governments are being encouraged to improve quality of basic education across gender, geography and ethnic lines in order to reduce the prevailing social inequities and disparities.

One of the biggest drawbacks of university education in Sub-Saharan Africa has been identified as the misalignment between skills that are taught and skills required in the labour market. In spite of perceptions of high average returns for a university degree in African countries, the misalignment has radically cut the value of degrees earned in most universities across Sub-Saharan Africa.

According to the report, misalignment of skills is the product of widespread lack of quality in university education, despite the presence of several high-quality universities in the region.

“Usually many students arrive at the university lacking educational foundational skills that are needed to acquire the intended advanced academic skills,” point out Arias and his associates.

Lack of university readiness, according to the report, has contributed significantly to young persons’ failure to prepare for the strong demands of a college education. In countries requiring university entrance examinations, many secondary school graduates fail to meet minimum standards, as was the case in 2016 in Liberia, when nearly all students failed the university entrance examination, according to the West African Examinations Council.

The World Bank report suggests that the lack of readiness for university education results in many students pursuing careers and degrees with limited labour market prospects.

“Despite skills shortages in STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] fields, too many students enter saturated or dead-end professions, especially in humanities, communications and social sciences, and end up in jobs unrelated to their acquired qualifications,” says the report.

STEM-related fields of study

Currently, average enrolment in STEM fields, including health, ICT, engineering and agriculture, stands at 29% in the region, while enrolment in education and social science is over 50%.

Furthermore, at 23%, enrolment in STEM fields is significantly lower among women. According to the report, average shares of enrolment in STEM in Sub-Saharan Africa have been constant since the year 2000.

In order to improve university education and close social inequity gaps, the World Bank is urging African countries to borrow from the Brazilian experience where, in addition to building high-quality STEM programmes at tertiary level, secondary education has also been improved across the country. In this way, between 2001 and 2012, Brazil was able to reduce higher education inequality by 50%.

In a five-point reform agenda, the World Bank urges African countries to allow higher education to be market-driven through aggressive mechanisms and governance reforms to provide future self-employed graduates, household enterprise, and wage workers with relevant skills.

Furthermore, it suggests governments should rethink university financing mechanisms by cutting wastage, and enforcing accountability in their efforts to improve equity, efficiency and quality. Towards this goal, public financing of students should drift away from blanket subsidies toward means-test and merit-based scholarships.

In addition, university enrolment criteria should be based on prior acquisition of basic education foundational skills that will ensure a student’s university readiness.

Countries should selectively and gradually support STEM university education, as economies transform with an emphasis on building engineering and technical managerial human capital, it argues.

Universities across the region are also being urged to adopt reforms geared towards work-based learning. “This principle should guide course offerings, curricula, standards, assessments, evaluations, and recruitment of professors, lecturers and researchers,” the report notes.

Instead, the entire university education system should be results-oriented and evidence-based to enable students, policy-makers, university authorities and employers to make informed decisions by providing regular access to quality data on institutional performance, labour demand, and graduates’ employment and earnings prospects.


COMMENT

I agree with you when you say that university enrolment has taken an elitist path - the richest quintile of the population are enrolled. But you can't leave HE transformation up to the market and you cannot fall back on meritocracy to solve issues of exclusion!

Allison Mlitwa on the University World News Facebook page