It is a problem that should have been solved by now because as early as the end of 2011, the outgoing CEO of the Human Resources Development Council, Dr. Patrick Molutsi, spoke about it at a meeting of the Trainers and Allied Workers Union. The problem: large tertiary education institutions that operate as stand-alone entities while serving small numbers of students are draining public (and donor) funds.
To illustrate how desperate the current situation was, Molutsi said that while training a nursing student at the University of Botswana (UB) cost P25 000, it cost thrice that amount to train another student at the Institute of Health Sciences (IHS) in Kanye “for the same programme and at the same level.” In Francistown, the manner in which three tertiary institutions – Francistown IHS, Francistown Technical College and Francistown College of Education – operates results in enormous wastage that extends into multiple dimensions. All three have huge campuses with a disproportionate number of students, are crowded in one place, each has its own principal, lecture theatre and numerous lecture rooms and is operated at huge cost to the government. Such enormous waste is a deep feature of many more such institutions across the country.
“Why not make them one institution?” posed the HRDC boss, revealing in that rhetorical question what his organisation had suggested to the government.
The merger he suggested would occur by way of a rationalisation strategy and serve as a crucial bulwark against wastage that still occurs in tertiary institutions. At the time Molutsi revealed that a cabinet memo on the strategy was circulating and he expressed hope that the upcoming budget-speech session of parliament would debate it. Six years later, little ÔÇô if anything, seems to have changed.
As part of effort to “strengthen the match between qualifications and labour market requirements”, the Ministry of Education and Skills Development has developed what it calls the Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP) which is to be implemented between 2015 and 2020. The Plan also reveals how desperate the situation is.
Expenditure per primary school pupil is P3, 930; P17, 342 per junior secondary school student; P17, 278 per senior secondary school student; P45, 478 per Technical and Vocational Training College student; and P244, 940 per College of Education student. In another section, the Plan quotes P100 000 as the average cost for educating a single student at a tertiary education institution. In this particular regard, UB makes for an interesting contrast with colleges of education. The figures mean that it costs substantially more to educate a primary or secondary school teacher over three years for a Diploma programme than to educate a lawyer at UB over five years for a Degree programme.
The research that preceded the development of the Plan “also found evidence of low enrolment and capacity underutilization at Colleges of Education which results in high unit cost.” Quoting a study that was done the previous year, the Plan says the following: “The Human Resources Development Council exercise on unit cost for tertiary institutions revealed that many institutions such as Institutes of Health Sciences, Technical Colleges and others such as Botswana Wildlife Training Institute, IDM and some Technical Colleges operate below capacity which contributes to high unit cost, low student/teacher ratio and low teaching loads/hours. At Institutes of Health Sciences, Bamalete Lutheran IHS had the lowest total enrolment of 62 students and the highest unit cost of P126, 365 in 2010. Gaborone IHS had the highest enrolment of 529 students and the lowest unit cost of P62, 233. However, the rest of the IHS had less than 50% of the minimum enrolment of 500 students recommended by TEC (HRDC). Student/Teacher ratios averaged 1:6-8 for IHSs and 1:5-4 for Colleges of Education.” TEC (the Tertiary Education Council) is the precursor to the HRDC.
In terms of the HRDC’s rationalisation strategy, institutions should be regionally clustered in order to enhance their productivity. By way of example, the Francistown IHS, Francistown Technical College and Francistown College of Education could be merged into a single entity. At the TAWU meeting four years ago, Molutsi said that such clustering would result in rationalised programmes as well as pooling and therefore prudent use of human, financial and infrastructural resources in the merged whole. Between those benefits, the institutions would be regionally focused and also be well-primed to compete both nationally and internationally. Should they so wish, these institutions could affiliate to universities of their choice, both here at home and abroad. In terms of professional development, Molutsi said that academic staff would be able to “operate as lecturers and researchers and not as civil servants.” Apparently, Botswana is not the only country that has found itself in a situation such as it is presently mired in. Molutsi said that South Africa, Japan, Europe, the United States and Scandinavian countries have also adopted rationalisation measures.
Beyond what Molutsi recommended, it makes perfect sense why the ministry would seek to introduce a framework that seeks to strengthen the match between academic qualifications and labour market requirements. Study after study has confirmed that there is a huge gap between classroom learning and what the workplace requires. That is actually what the employers themselves are saying. Years ago when UB researchers conducted a study on educational productivity, some of the people they interviewed were members of the Botswana Confederation of Commerce, Industry and Manpower – renamed Business Botswana. During these interviews, it emerged that the Botswana Accountancy College was the only tertiary education institution in the country that had succeeded in closing the gap between academic qualifications and labour market requirements. Globally, Botswana is among Top 5 spenders on education but as the World Bank says in a poverty assessment report that came out late last year, the country is “not doing as well as it should be given the resources it allocates to education.”
The ETSSP attributes the high cost and poor performance of the education sector in Botswana to a “complex mixture” including: poor budgeting and financial management, poor allocation of resources, over-design of institutions, inefficiencies in public investment and poor project management (resulting in cost-overruns), under-investment in primary level education, underutilization of capacity in some institutions, poor maintenance, over-crowding and poor human resources management which altogether culminate in poor total factor productivity. It recommends that a comprehensive study on unit costs for all levels of education to “accurately inform prudent budgeting and equitable resource allocation.”
According to the Plan, most of the remaining support to Botswana’s education sector comes from the European Union which provided a total of Euro 71.359 million between 2009/10 and 2013/14. Out of this amount, Euro 68.665 million was for budget support. For 2014/15 to 2016/17, it is expected that a total of Euro 47.207 million will be disbursed for education; of which Euro 45.360 million will be budget support. The other donors (whose support is not quantified) include Australia, the Commonwealth, China, Japan, Germany, UNICEF and India who provide training opportunities, technical support and infrastructure.
