There was a lot of excitement and euphoria when a number of private colleges and universities opened up in Botswana a few years ago.
The excitement among Batswana and, indeed, government was based on the mistaken belief that the arrival of these institutions would reduce the costs of providing education.
As we know, training of students overseas is very expensive.
The exorbitant costs have meant that only so many could be trained.
While the coming of the colleges here has allowed for the training of a much higher number of students, that has come at a cost in the quality of education provided.
With the arrival of private colleges it was taken for granted that these institutions would provide quality education and produce graduates that are needed by Botswana’s job market.
Indications are that this has not been the case.
Compared to the days when the country used to have one university in the form of the University of Botswana, the situation seems to have deteriorated.
As we all know, a good number of these new colleges are very reluctant to spend money on resources that are crucial to the academic life of a well-rounded product.
In this day and age, some of them do not even have what would pass as an excuse for a library.
Bizarrely, the colleges are also allowed to use first degree holders as lecturers who are, in turn, expected to produce first other first degree holders.
Given the amount of money spent on these institutions, we think this is obscene.
While we may fault the University of Botswana for many things, up until recently it was a standard practice that one would need at least a post graduate education before they laid any claim to being a lecturer.
It is not clear to us how these glaring omissions have escaped the Tertiary Education Council, which is supposed to monitor these colleges on behalf of government.
While the concern has always been that there was a mismatch between the country’s education products and the industry requirements, it was never a concern, at least until recently, that the University of Botswana was churning out chuff that was of low quality.
We all know how versatile the University of Botswana graduates used to be.
With very little amount of retraining and reorientation, the University of Botswana graduates always settled when given an opportunity in the job market.
The same cannot be said about today’s products our private education provides.
If we are not careful, Botswana will, in the near future, be saddled with an army of semi-illiterate graduates from these private institutions.
The issue will not just be a mismatch, it may turn out that more money would have to be invested to take the illiterates back to class.
These are all very serious issues that the government has to address before its too late, not least because if left for too long, we may reach a state where Botswana would have to go back to the days of having to heavily rely on expatriate manpower; the only difference being that this time the shortage would have been man made.
It would seem like many of the private institutions that recently descended on Botswana do not have the welfare of students at heart.
Their primary motive seems not to go anywhere beyond extracting money from government, which is by far the biggest sponsor of education.
Matters are not helped by consistent allegations of corruption and conflict of interest between these institutions and some senior politicians.
On another, note we want to salute an announcement by President Ian Khama in his State of the Nation Address that extraordinarily gifted students will be trained at some of the world’s best universities.
This is a development that we have long called for.
Such selective training would provide Botswana with a pool of talent from which to choose future leaders to man various economic and indeed political arms going forward.
Going forward, Botswana will need world-class industrialists.
Such selective training is all the more important now given that the country is at present producing chuff at a very high cost.
The value of such selected students will increase when reality finally reaches our shores and we realize the extent to which we have been robbed by private colleges that continue to milk our government.
We also recognize the resolute determination with which President Ian Khama is pursuing the building of the second university.
We can only call on him to further expedite the process.
As we all know, the second university is way behind schedule.
There is no emphasizing the point that this university provides a ray of hope that, with it running, the quality of Botswana education could once again regain its lost glory.
