Academic delays derail HE and public confidence in it

Students across Burkina Faso have been suffering the effects of major delays to courses and examinations within the West African country’s higher education system, although the government has taken steps to resolve the problem.

Despite these efforts, delays have been particularly intense over the past two academic years, being attributed to a combination of strikes by both students and lecturers.

The students have been striking over demands for better education infrastructure and suitable learning environments, with lecturers demanding better living and working conditions.

Overcrowding is adding to the problem, with a single teacher often having to assess thousands of students, complain lecturers.

Indeed, a single lecturer can be responsible for 2,000 to 3,000 students, especially in first-year university classes – generating a huge paper marking workload.

As a result, courses are not being delivered on time, and evaluations are taking much longer than they should to process, with cohorts from different academic years being forced to overlap or merge, and teaching staff plus students being asked by Burkina Faso’s Ministry of Higher Education, Scientific Research and Innovation to sacrifice holidays to help catch up with academic schedules.

Courses running behind

According to figures published by Burkina Faso’s military-controlled government as of 1 October 2023, of the 321 higher education programmes administered by Burkina Faso’s higher education and research institutions, 159 programmes – almost half – were behind schedule.

At l’Université Ouaga I Professeur Ki-Zerbo (Professor Joseph Ki-Zerbo University), Burkina Faso’s largest public university based in the country’s capital, Ouagadougou, where about 50,000 students registered in the 2022-23 academic year, some courses are running months or even years behind.

According to Kadré Sawadogo, a student in natural and applied sciences at the university, the first academic year of his course has already taken more than two calendar years and still is not complete: “While we started [our course] in April 2023, we haven’t finished our first year of the bachelor degree,” he told University World News.

He expects his class will be forced to merge with students on the 2024 intake for his course, as the delays mean the two-year groups are almost at parallel stages in the syllabus.

For Mahamadou Kabré, a linguistics student in the university’s arts and communication unit, who enrolled in the 2023-24 academic year, the delay to his course is also very noticeable: “We just started our first semester work on 28 April [this year, and] I don’t think we’ll finish [until] next year,” he told University World News.

Others say they have been less affected by the delays, particularly those who started their courses in the most recent (2024-25) academic year. René Tiendrebeogo, another first-year undergraduate linguistics student, told University World News that teaching on his course is managing to keep up with the scheduled syllabus.

“Looking at the progress of our seniors in the class of 2023, we can say that things are going well for us,” he said, adding: “We hope that we will complete the first year of our degree in one year.”

Private institutions less affected?

The Professor Joseph Ki-Zerbo University of Ouagadougou is not alone in experiencing major hold-ups in the teaching and administration of its academic courses.

This problem is more pronounced in Burkina Faso’s public universities, almost all of which are experiencing delays, whereas the country’s private universities and other higher education institutions claim to be less affected.

At l’Université du Faso (the University of Faso), a private university based in Ziniaré, approximately 50km from Ouagadougou, Binta Dicko née Diallo, the university’s secretary general, declined to say whether its academic years had been forced to overlap but stressed the university has implemented a system to prevent delays to its courses.

“Each programme – including bachelor and masters degrees – has a set number of hours per semester,” she told University World News.

Dicko explained that teaching fees are paid before the end of the course, and that temporary teachers have been brought in to plug staffing gaps: “Each professor is entitled to a maximum of two courses per semester [and] professors have their schedules before the start of the semester,” she added.

Post-coup plans

Burkina Faso’s government, under Interim President Ibrahim Traoré, who came to power in a 2022 coup, has implemented reforms to address the problem of academic delays at the country’s public universities.

For instance, in July 2024, at Joseph Ki-Zerbo University, representatives from the ministry of higher education, scientific research and innovation unveiled an operational action plan in front of an audience comprising the university’s president, students, lecturer-researchers, teaching unions and administrative, technical and manual plus support staff.

The plan includes special exemptions to limits on overtime hours and the validation of teaching units at 75% of the total number of hours, a factor that must be taken into account in scheduling.

Campus Faso, an online platform that helps students apply for courses and find out information about universities, would also be used to help manage the administration of programmes, according to the plan.

It also proposed the establishment of monitoring committees to ensure adherence to teaching and assessment schedules and that courses experiencing the worst delays continue teaching during the August-September vacation period.

Four months after the plan was unveiled, in November 2024, Burkina Faso’s minister of higher education, scientific research and innovation, Adjima Thiombiano, claimed that 81% of the academic backlog had been resolved.

The minister stated that, as of 30 September 2024, 261 – or 81% – of the 321 university courses offered in Burkina Faso had been “standardised”, while 60 courses – or 19% – still lagged behind schedule, and student and lecturers’ complaints suggest the problems still persist.

Innovative and efficient administrative systems

Thiombiano also announced the implementation of what he described as a more innovative and efficient administrative and academic management system, which includes the use of distance learning tools and the intensification of the use of the Campus Faso platform in academic and teaching activities across Burkina Faso. It manages academic administration for new Burkinabe or foreign students and is run by the country’s General Directorate of Higher Education.

These improvements to the delivery of teaching will be complemented by a major upgrade to Burkina Faso’s higher education infrastructure and a focus on boosting the numbers of university teachers in the country.

A government spokesperson told University World News: “The Presidential Initiative for Quality Education for All is a structural response [to Burkina Faso’s higher education demands] that devotes ... a massive investment in universities through the construction of 39 [lecture] amphitheatres (each with either 500 or 1,000 seats), university residences and restaurants, boreholes, and five kilometres of paved streets for each university.

“We intend to set up a vast doctoral training programme [to] train at least 300 doctoral students annually to ensure a large pool to solve the crucial problem of human resources [in academic staff]. We will also review the study regimes to better contextualise the training,” added the spokesperson.

Post-school pipeline

For high-school and middle-school teachers in Burkina Faso, the delays in Burkina Faso’s higher education system are a concern for the pupils they are preparing for further study.

Aimé Dahourou, a certified high-school and middle-school teacher specialising in law and legislation, who is also president of the Burkinabe Association of High School and Middle School Teachers and president of the education promotion ‘Educate or Perish’ association told University World News that the problems in Burkina Faso’s higher education system undermine public confidence in society as a whole.

“For several years, we have observed that public universities in Burkina Faso have been facing chronic delays in the execution of educational activities.

“This state of affairs, nevertheless, raises many concerns among both educational stakeholders and society in general,” said Dahourou.

He added that this situation has a direct impact on student motivation. Those who aspire to university, he says, are beginning to doubt the value of higher education: “This is a real situation we’re experiencing, and the impact is clear: it demotivates some students. This situation can also frustrate parents.

“Because, when you invest in your child, you hope that they will continue their higher education in good conditions. Aside from the delays caused by this situation, the loss of time, energy and money leads parents to ask questions,” he said.

Dahourou said that overcrowding is also a major problem in Burkina Faso’s universities: “We see some classes that we have to divide into two cohorts. One takes classes in the evening, the other takes classes in the morning. Some classes arrive while others haven’t finished yet,” he explained, noting that this creates a slow and disrupted teaching environment.

He also cites administrative dysfunction, which leads to the slow validation of grades, as a further bottleneck.

In Dahourou’s view, a lot of these problems are due to insufficient funding for Burkina Faso’s universities. However, he credits the country’s current government with taking recent steps to try to make the sector more efficient, through digitalisation, recruitment and investment in infrastructure.

His teachers’ association is calling for the adoption of a harmonised academic calendar between Burkina Faso’s public universities: “[We should aim for the] optimisation of academic timetables and the increased use of digital tools.”