Kenya
Strikes Shutter Universities
Universities in Kenya were brought to a standstill in early November by striking faculty members demanding huge salary increases. At some universities, the strikes, which lasted nine days, disrupted final exams and/or graduation ceremonies.
Towards the end of November, lecturers suspended their strike for two weeks to enter into negotiations with the government. The strike, which started November 9, caused the closure of several of the country’s seven public universities and was threatening to close the rest.
Kenyan lecturers are among the lowest paid in the region yet they teach some of the largest classes – a situation that has for years been grounds for disputes between academics and the government.
– The Daily Nation [1]
November 9, 2011
Mozambique
University Switches back to Four-Year Degree, Ditching European-Style Degrees
Fifteen faculties of Mozambique’s Eduardo Mondlane University [2] (UEM) will switch back to a four-year bachelor degree program from the recently adopted three-year program in the 2012 academic year. The switch is aimed at producing better-trained graduates ready for the labor market.
The university is Mozambique’s oldest higher education institution, and it had been evaluating the use of three-year degrees since 2009. The decision to return the curriculum to four years for the bachelor degree followed intense debates in academia, according to the Noticias newspaper, and hinged on the fact that students were generally considered to need a year of preparation for university studies after graduating secondary school.
Prior to the 2009 adoption of the European Bologna-style degree, most of the UEM undergraduate programs were four-year degrees, with some exceptions, such as for medicine, veterinary studies and architecture, which required seven and six years of study.
Mozambique is one Portuguese-speaking African country that has aligned its degree system with Europe, and many French-speaking countries including Senegal, Algeria and Tunisia, have also made major structural changes to their degree systems to align with the Bologna Process.
– University World News [3]
October 28, 2011
Nigeria
Just 40% of Lecturers Have Doctoral Degrees
At least 61 percent of an estimated 35,000 lecturers in Nigeria are still on the lowest rung of the academic ladder, ‘lecturer 1,’ according to the National Universities Commission [4] (NUC), which regulates university education in the country.
Executive secretary of the NUC, Professor Julius Okojie, said in October that “more than half [the number of lecturers in Nigerian universities] do not have a Ph.D.” The figure is about 21,350. Okojie said some university teachers “have stayed on the same job as assistant lecturers for more than 15 years.” He called for a reform of university teaching guidelines, noting: “It doesn’t augur well for the system.”
Analysts say increasing emphasis on the Ph.D. as a requirement for university teaching positions is pressuring lecturers to get a doctorate.
– Daily Trust [5]
October 19, 2011
Senegal
U.S. University Closes Branch Campus
Suffolk University [6] closed its branch campus in Senegal this year, citing loses of $10 million. The university decided it would be easier and cheaper to bring the 104 enrolled African students to its campus in Boston than keep teaching operations running in Senegal.
Suffolk University launched its Dakar, Senegal, campus in 1999, offering American-style higher education. This year’s shutdown is the latest of many around the world among U.S. institutions, reports the Boston Globe, after a veritable international branch campus gold rush over the last decade. Those that are closing are running out of cash as they struggle to attract enough students and develop a viable business model.
“In the last 10 years, there was a gold-rush mentality,’’ according to Jason Lane, who studies the internationalization of higher education at the State University of New York [7] at Albany. “Everyone was trying to start an international branch. But now the excitement is stalling.’’
Perhaps the most spectacular collapse of an international branch campus happened last year, when Michigan State University [8], failing to recruit even one-fourth as many students as planned, pulled out of Dubai after just two years in business. George Mason University [9] left the United Arab Emirates two years ago, before its inaugural class could graduate. Troy University [10] has closed three branches in the past year, in Guam, Sri Lanka, and Germany. Texas Tech University [11] plans to shutter its own German outpost by 2012. And that is just the U.S. schools that have failed in recent years.
– Boston Globe [12]
October 12, 2011
Tanzania
Private Ugandan University to Establish Campus in Tanzania
Tanzanian president Jakaya Kikwete has been outspoken in his desire to involve the private sector in building the country’s higher education capacity. And now he is welcoming a campus from neighboring Uganda.
Uganda’s Kampala International University [13] (KIU) is currently in the process of establishing its newest campus [14] in Tanzania’s commercial capital, Dar es Salaam. The new campus will add to a network of regional campus in East Africa that extends to Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda. Additionally, the university says it also getting ready to offer distance-learning options for students who cannot attend campus-based classes.
– Tanzania Daily News [15]
October 22, 2011