How universities can contribute to national development

Developmental universities are devoted to assisting their countries address developmental challenges. Their mission focuses on two broad areas of development.

One role is the production of developmental research. This involves providing invaluable contextualised knowledge, insights and locally relevant recommendations for policy formulation and implementation; solving existential problems; creating technological products; and producing new knowledge that can be adapted for economic, political and social improvement.

Developmental research projects could originate in the university or be a response to a request from private organisations or government with appropriate funding attached.

Developmental universities’ other role is to develop and turn out relevant and impactful graduates with the skills, knowledge and disposition needed to meet the requirements of wherever the university is located.

Accordingly, the university is a powerful institution which grooms the next generation of agricultural scientists, social scientists, policy-makers, business leaders and entrepreneurs, public servants and other professionals.

Developmental universities carry out this role on an evidentiary basis by undertaking periodic surveys and conducting focus group sessions with alumni, communities, governmental organisations and industry about what expertise is needed to support a country’s economy and society. Secondary data is also collected through government ministries, departments and agencies.

Developmental universities

At the time of political independence from the European colonial powers, all existing African universities were perceived as developmental universities. In that sense, they were expected to turn out relevant and impactful graduates to address national developmental problems.

These national challenges included but were not limited to extreme poverty, rampant socio-economic inequalities, low work productivity, unemployment, poor health services, the need for bridge, dam and road infrastructure, food insecurity, tribalism, limited public services and degrading sanitation.

Even now, post-independence, African universities, whether mandated or not, feel that their core mission is the production of graduates who can contribute to national development.

Recently, for example, Makerere University, one of the oldest universities in Africa, declared itself the engine of Uganda’s development. Does that suggest that Makerere University has designed and successfully carried out numerous developmental research projects and has produced an army of relevant and impactful graduates to contribute to the development of Uganda?

These questions are critical in that countless African universities are stuck in status symbol mode. This is even more the case when African universities are yet to construct the criteria necessary for assessing the impact of the graduates they supposedly produce for national development.

Pedagogical challenges

Nonetheless, three major challenges can be identified with African universities’ mission to produce relevant and impactful graduates who contribute to national development.

First, those African universities do not collect any empirical data about the characteristics and type of graduates African societies and economies need for development. Thus, in most African universities, assessment of the effectiveness of the graduates they are producing is based on hunches and whims and sheer imitation of what is happening in the West.

Without data it is difficult to know how many graduates have been produced in any one area over a period of time; how many are in the process of being produced; how many should be produced in every academic year; what the requisite characteristics of those graduates are; and what happens to the graduates upon leaving the institution.

Of course, it is an undeniable fact that African societies and economies need engineers, managers, accountants, scientists, technologists, agriculturalists, computer programmers, primary and secondary school teachers and medical experts.

However, for example, what type of engineers or teachers do they need in terms of knowledge, skills and dispositions? For instance, what if the engineers or teachers that African universities produce are only able to function effectively in urban settings rather than rural areas? What if the teachers they churn out are unable to design locally relevant curricula, teaching pedagogies and assessment strategies to prepare young people for citizenship issues, apprenticeships or educational progression where they live?

A second issue is the lack of an empirical relationship between graduate production and the solutions needed for Africa’s hydra-headed development challenges. Turning out graduates does not automatically lead to solving African developmental challenges. Having a list of university graduates in various fields of expertise does not indicate that an African country is solving its developmental challenges.

In fact, the solutions to developmental challenges require both efficacious political and managerial action. There is the need to establish national institutions or planning frameworks that employ, coordinate and utilise, for example, engineers for national development. Without these institutional or planning frameworks, there will be no impact on these developmental challenges regardless of the number of engineers universities produce.

As far as African universities are concerned, an organisational structure must be created to foster lifelong learning via career seminars, career counselling, service learning and internships. This would help students to develop the skills and dispositions required for their chosen careers and cultivate a continuous learning habit.

Indeed, in African countries it is clear that most university graduates refuse to read materials such as newspapers. In fact, the belief that learning terminates rather than continues after graduation is well entrenched among university graduates in Africa.

The last issue is, how can African universities produce graduates who are capable of contributing to a country’s development? This must involve a special genre of pedagogies. Unfortunately, mere lectures, a battery of examinations and the traditional ‘banking education’ model of teaching, learning and assessment in African universities are most unlikely to produce relevant and impactful graduates.

‘Banking education’ is a term coined by Paulo Freire, a critical Brazilian educator and philosopher, to refer to a system of education based on mere reproduction of knowledge, the memorising of content and regurgitation of answers to academic assignments.

As he states in his famous book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed: “Education becomes an act of depositing in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiqués and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorise and respect.”

Inevitably, the banking system of education leads to treating students as objects upon which action is carried out rather than subjects of the teaching-learning process capable of engagement, contribution, participation and transformation.

A pedagogical tool that would allow African universities to produce relevant and impactful graduates for national development must provide students with ample opportunities for the application of knowledge through service learning and internships; for problem-based learning designed for the identification and solution of real problems; for instilling in students personal responsibility for their own learning; and for cultivating reflective practice and lifelong learning.

Student learning outcomes

Finally, relevant and impactful graduate production by African universities requires an output-focused approach to teaching, learning and assessment. This suggests that course content should be converted into or replaced by student learning outcomes.

Academic courses outline what the instructor or professor intends to cover in the course as well as what students will learn. Course content and course description are used interchangeably as they show the intentions of the lecturer or professor.

Student learning outcomes (SLOs), on the other hand, are statements of what students are expected to know, understand and demonstrate upon completion of a course of study, programme, assignment or activity. Consequently, SLOs are reference points for standards of performance and the quality of teaching, learning and assessment in an institution.

SLOs could be used to hold both lecturers and students accountable as they introduce an element of precision in the teaching, learning and assessment relationship.

Despite their merits, the critics have not spared SLOs. They argue that SLOs cannot be realistically reduced to a series of statements and that their implementation will reduce universities to becoming training or vocational institutions.

Certainly, it is impossible to predetermine all the possible student learning outcomes of a university course. However, SLOs represent what has been judged as quintessentially important for students to learn, understand or demonstrate in a specific field of endeavour.

They are similar to examinations which do not cover every theme and idea highlighted in a course. SLOs do not in any significant way damage the culture of openness associated with higher education.

SLOs have also been attacked as expensive in terms of the cost and time of implementing them. The critics argue that the cost and time involved in converting numerous university courses into learning outcomes-based courses would be enormous.

Nonetheless, with any reform there are inevitable cost and time issues. Of course, lecturers and professors have to be trained to write course outlines in terms of learning outcomes and use appropriate pedagogies to deliver the content.

Lastly, it has been argued that there is a high tendency for SLOs to be used as a monitoring tool of academic staff performance rather than to improve learning. SLOs’ primary purpose is to improve student learning, but academic staff also have to play their legitimate roles in student learning.

Having examined all the criticisms against SLOs, the benefits of having student learning outcomes for each course far outweigh the cost and time that would be spent.

In some African universities, it is likely the academic staff may resent and obstruct any implementation of SLOs. This is because SLOs bring accountability and transparency. And some academic staff may find them uncomfortable. Similar to any other organisational changes, the implementation of SLOs require effective change leadership within universities.

The principal purpose of teaching is motivating and actualising student learning. This makes teaching one of the most complex human activities. The fact is that students are not a homogeneous group with the same learning styles, parental support and financial status. Therefore, the outcomes of teaching are evidently uncertain and increasingly difficult to subject to vigorous quality standards.

Nonetheless, the degree of uncertainties in teaching can be significantly reduced through the adoption of student learning outcomes and other innovative approaches.

While a few South African universities have designed and implemented SLOs and other pedagogical reforms, other African universities have not and need to reform their pedagogies to make them effective producers of relevant and impactful graduates who can contribute to national development.

Dr Eric Fredua-Kwarteng is an educator and policy expert in Canada.