A common theme running through the interviews with staff was that while they supported widening participation, they were concerned about the lack of resources that had been invested to support increased numbers and new constituencies of students.
The major challenge is infrastructure development for the accommodation of students and then lecture theatres - even the staff, some of the classes are so huge that you wonder who is learning what so that quality it looks like is sacrificed for quantity. You can also look at the congestion you have on the timetables, timetabling. We have a lot of problems where even at times, we don't have places to have lectures.
Lectures currently contain 600 students. Ideal is 50. That has huge staff recruitment implications. On the other hand having to handle 600 students has a big impact on the lecturer's motivation - how can they possibly attend to the very varied and wide-ranging needs of their students?
This also has a huge effect on the prospects for professional development and for making any kind of contribution to research. Time that the lecturer has after school is put on the table for the welfare of the students. At the end of the day you realise there's a deficit in self- development. The lectures dedicate time to do research, that is why you're here. So the more and more time you spend scoring quizzes of students, the more and more time setting certain assignments etc, the less and less time you have for yourself to do research and it affects your own output and it affects your own capacity and ability to be effective.
These deteriorating working conditions have the potential to deter new generations from entering the academic profession, thus raising problems in relation to succession planning:
And another major challenge is that we are facing is getting the next generation of lecturers; very brilliant students who should have been lecturers do not want to come back even though people say that they come to the university to teach and they end up not wanting to. The fact is that it is not everyone who has done a masters that is able to teach at the university. There are people who have the flare and capacity to do such a job, such students would not want to teach at the university.
It was believed that quantity without quality would drive the brightest African students abroad, and that the strengthening, re-vitalisation and development of African universities should be a priority. A senior national policymaker, 'M', has an ambition to make African higher education a player internationally:
We have come up with a programme to promote the teaching with the provision of higher education locally and also foster relations with universities outside in African countries and beyond. Rather than all the time sending our students outside, we want to have something like foreign exchange programmes with them. This will build the quality and image of higher education locally. The more research we do locally, the more graduate programmes we offer, the greater the standing of local universities in the eyes of the international community and in our own eyes.
Discussion questions
- What is your understanding of the working conditions that are being described?
- What are the immediate and long-term strategic priorities in planning for change?