Education Minister, Pelonomi Venson Moitoi, is very cautious when she speaks about the iconic Botswana International University of Science and Technology (BIUST): “All I can say is that there will be a school in Palapye.” As it turns out, the word school covers a multitude of sins: The initial plan for an international university is going up in smoke and government is considering scaling back its ambitious dream to a cheaper technical college.
Two years ago, as an army of yellow helmets were hacking BIUST from a 2,500 hectares stretch of Palapye trees and wild grass, the then Minister of Education, Jacob Nkate, was in hyperbole overdrive:”We have to develop a high quality university that we can market with pride to the whole of Africa.”
How this would be accomplished was the subject of lively discussions amongst BIUST’s initial planners.
Howard University and others provided technical assistance with an overall plan. Key concepts, including the emphasis on internationalism and public-private partnerships, were established early.
A critical task was to identify a founding Vice-Chancellor who would offer firm, experienced leadership. This search ended in September 2008 when Professor Kweku Bentil, 65, a citizen of the United States born in Ghana, assumed the challenging post.
His background was ideal: a civil engineer with construction experience who has led academic institutions before.
Professor Bentil sharpened the new university’s goals ÔÇö and perhaps raised them. The ‘Start-Up Phase’ of bringing the project on stream included the ‘design and build’ of facilities for a university of 1 000 students, with an early intake of 256 students per year, supported by 70 academic and administrative staff. Enrolment of first-year students from Botswana and across Africa has been announced for March 2011, with the first academic year to start in August 2011.
During the ‘Growth Phase’, the university would increase its numbers to 3 000 or 4 000 students, i.e. an intake of 1 000 per year, plus a steadily growing number of graduate students and researchers. The ‘Mature Phase’ will include the Technology Park and partnerships with industry; at that time the total number of students may reach a staggering 6 000.
That was until reality intruded.
First there was the delay in construction, which has disrupted plans to have the first student intake next year.
“There have been delays in the construction. Next Year may not be possible,” said Venson-Moitoi.
Indications are that even if construction were on track, the new university could not raise the planned initial intake of 256 students in the first year. Following the recent economic down turn, government has had to cut back on tertiary education sponsorship funding, and science students had the worst of it.
Although the University of Botswana had 750 slots for science students during the 2010 academic year, government has only been able to sponsor 600. With UB barely filling the slots for science students, there would be none left for the new university.
The rationalization programme initiated by Minister Venson-Moitoi’s administration comes as an afterthought to address the excess capacity, which has become evident at UB even before the new university comes on stream.
The situation is not helped by the fact that the Ministry of Education is scratching the bottom of the barrel and the new university will increase its annual budget by an estimated 10 percent.
Professor Bentil has been recruiting dynamic young scientists as future staff, especially Batswana and other Africans studying abroad. He helped establish an online BIUST Faculty Development Network to spread the word. He made it clear that his standards are high and he wants only the cream of the crop. Top notch scientists, however, do not come cheap and posting them 260km away from Gaborone where there would be good school for their children and leisure spots for their families entailed increasing the perks to make their posts attractive.
The crisis surrounding BUIST is expected to give a second wind to speculations that there was a lot of political interference. This is given further credence by reports that BIUST has not followed the route usually pursued to develop a new university: adequate funding, creation of an independent council, the hiring of a vice-chancellor and senior staff to plan the institution (both a physical master plan and one for programme development), and the recruitment of students and staff to open at a temporary site before moving to a new purposefully designed campus created following an international competition.
Instead, BIUST has been housed for a number of years in the Ministry of Education and staff has been allocated to plan and develop the new university. All this happened even before the site for the university had been cleared and provided with site and service development such as roads, a water supply, electricity and sewage disposal.
The entire BIUST building programme was expected to cost more than P10 billion, in both public and private capital. This is an enormous sum in a country of two million people, but for some time the Government seemed firmly committed.
When recession forced cuts to many development projects, the P429 million contract for Phase 1 was not affected.
A team of consultants is currently evaluating the viability of the phase 2 of the project which is planned as a Public Private Partnership. Minister Venson-Moitoi told Sunday Standard that she was still awaiting a report from the consultants to determine if government can afford it. This comes amid reports that government is considering scaling back BUIST from an international university to a technicon.
