It has been a deliberate government policy to empower the growth of private universities and privately owned colleges, by sponsoring high number of students going to the institutions.
But it has come at a huge cost.
As a result of such a policy, Government owned University of Botswana (UB) and Botswana International University of Science and Technology (BIUST) ÔÇô the country’s two education jewels are now struggling to survive.
We now have government ministers shamelessly saying BIUST and UB should find ways to raise money on their own.
Sponsoring students to privately owned institutions was good for as long as BIUST and UB were saturated.
That policy was also good for as long as the private institutions could work on enhancing quality, investing on facilities and more importantly hiring well trained academic and research staff.
But clearly these privately owned universities have failed in all the above and there is absolutely no reason why Government patronage to them should continue.
To make matters worse a combination of factors have connived to an extent where today both BIUST and University of Botswana, the country’s two most prestigious learning institutions are struggling to even attract students to them
Attracting international staff is an even steeper task.
This is because they are expected to share government funding with private colleges.
BIUST and the University of Botswana were never supposed to compete for government financing with private institutions.
They not only deserve preferential treatment, they are entitled to it.
This view we have always held, and nothing has happened to make us change.
They are the country’s real learning centres; with real libraries, state of the art laboratories and hiring genuinely trained professors with some of the best qualifications in the world.
A threat to the credibility of these two institutions is a threat to integrity and credibility of the country’s education system.
They are the true guardians and guarantors of a stable supply of the country’s Human Resource needs.
As it is quality at UB has dropped. And private institutions have not stepped up to the plate because they were never up to the task.
Unlike the whole lot of colleges and so-called universities in the private sector that mushroomed overnight not as a result private investments from owners but rather in anticipation of milking government money, BIUST and the University of Botswana are in it not for profit.
It is thus disingenuous and even possibly criminal for some in Government to say BIUST and UB should compete for money with these private colleges.
BIUST and University of Botswana are not business enterprises.
They are public enterprises. The history of UB, especially how it was formed, should discourage our leaders from subjecting it to kind of heartless capitalism that they are doing.
Over the recent past, the growth in government expenditure in private colleges, measured against shrinking expenditure in BIUST and UB has been perhaps the most glaring manifestation of increasing sophistication of self-dealing in this country.
There is enough proof to show that owners of the privately owned colleges are some of the biggest financiers of the ruling party.
This means that by appropriating more money to these private colleges, politicians in power are effectively using back channels and cloaking illegality with some kind of official legitimacy.
Given the low quality of their products, poor investments in learning facilities, and most worryingly questionable credentials of the academic staff in many of these colleges, a growth in their student intake especially at Government expense is a clear example of publicly-financed illegal trade against the future of these children.
Public expenditure on education has been growing over the last 20 years. But that growth has not been accompanied by growth in quality.
If anything our education system, given its disproportionately large budget has become a favorite theater for rustling and crooked business adventurists, many of them with no interests at all on the quality of products churned out by their institutions.
