New minister’s university ‘stabilisation’ gets under way

A commitment by El Hadji Abdourahmane Diouf, Senegal’s new minister for higher education, research and innovation, to stabilise the university system has begun to materialise.

A ministry-organised seminar agreed on key measures, including a common university calendar, providing more university places and recruitment of higher education personnel, reported Sud Quotidien.

On coordinating the calendar, the seminar fixed the period scheduled for giving higher education course guidance to school-leavers as between 19 September and 15 October, so students for the coming university year may enrol from 21 October, according to the ministry.

On the more complicated question of dealing with overlapping university years and when those running late should be given time to ‘catch up’, “a period of 16 months is necessary to stabilise the academic year definitively”, Sud Quotidien quoted the ministry statement. “Students from the 2022-23 intake will start on 1 July, while those from 2023-24 will start on 25 February 2025 at the latest.”

Unfinished buildings

Union concerns had included delays in completing building works, and in recruitment of teachers; and, following the seminar discussions, the ministry undertook to “rapidly finalise current infrastructure projects to improve conditions of studies and research”; and “recruitment of 1,500 teaching and research personnel and administrative and technical staff”, reported Sud Quotidien.

Because of a lack of places in public universities for school-leavers entitled to higher education, for nearly four years the state had sent many of them to private institutions, reported Sud Quotidien. But managers of these establishments had been complaining about non-payment for their services, and the government ended the arrangement in 2019.

For the 2024-25 academic year, the new authorities had decided to resume the collaboration, reported Sud Quotidien, which quoted the ministry statement that it “encourages collaboration with the private establishments to diversify the opportunities in higher education”, and, for masters degrees, “a frame of reference will be set up to coordinate masters programmes at a national level”.

The ministry estimated the annual financial cost of the new measures amounted to CFA40,287,702,085 (about US$66.5 million), reported the paper.

Echoing problems discussed at the seminar, the higher education minister, on a visit to Assane-Seck University, said there was “absolute urgency” for the government to oversee completion of building works there “in the shortest possible time”, reported the Agence de Presse Sénégalaise or APS.

His visit took place a few days after the students had organised a protest march against postponement of the works, with demands for completion of 12 lecture halls under construction dating back to 2015. They were also protesting against the quality of the meals service.

The new minister said he had noticed Assane-Seck was confronted by “a lack of accommodation and of beds” and promised a programme to provide 1,000 beds “in the next two months”.

“We have diagnosed the situation, we know where the bottlenecks are. We have talked to the builder, and we know we can resolve the problem quite quickly,” APS reported him as saying.

He also recognised the “insufficient number of places in the university’s restaurants”, and promised the regional university student welfare service transitional help to find alternatives to cater for 400 extra students until a new restaurant seating 750 was built.

He acknowledged there were “many problems concerning classrooms and laboratories”, and undertook to take necessary steps to complete provision of new classrooms as soon as possible.

While the construction of laboratories was progressing, “a certain amount of technical equipment is lacking”, which he promised to rectify as soon as possible, reported APS. – Compiled by Jane Marshall.

This article is drawn from local media. University World News cannot vouch for the accuracy of the original reports.