There is ample proof that Botswana’s tertiary education is going through difficult times.
The situation is worsened by the fact that, as a people, Batswana generally cherish education.
The biggest mistake we made was to sit back for a long time without building as many universities and colleges as we would have needed.
That has caught up with us and we are in desperate position.
People from outside are taking advantage of desperation by providing us with below standard levels of education.
Ordinarily, eagerness among our young people to attain education should be a trait that we cherish as a nation. Yet we look around us and we see it as a burden, exactly because we have not prepared well in time.
What we should do, and really fast, is to ensure that our young, who are so hungry for education, receive high quality education that is also of relevance to the needs of this country.
If we do that, it becomes a winÔÇôwin situation.
The students of today satisfy their burning desire for education, while the nation which foots the bill for that education benefits in that when the students emerge from the academic halls they join productive workforce that catapults the country’s economy to another level.
It is a nice equation that, if properly balanced with all the requisite variables, could take Botswana to sustainable development that depends less and less on diamonds that are after all getting depleted.
The reality on the ground is, however, much more disheartening.
Realising the stacks of money at the disposal of Botswana government and an insatiable appetite for education among its citizens, bogus universities and colleges from across the globe are descending upon us to take advantage of our plight and situation.
Something has to be done to stem the tide.
To their credit, government has set up such institutions like BOTA (Botswana Training Agency) and TEC (Tertiary Education Council) to help police the standards of education and training.
We urge these two organisations to be ruthless in their policing and safeguarding of the standards of our education, especially at tertiary level.
Botswana cannot afford to lose money to bogus institutions who, in turn, churn out illiterate graduates, on whom government would have spent a fortune to train.
We urge BOTA and TEC to once again look at what their mandates are.
Beyond the blue prints which form the confines of their polices, these two organisations will see that in their hands lies not just the quality of graduates we produce but also the future destination of this country.
It is not an exaggeration to state that the higher the quality of a country’s education products, the better the chances of those products competing and entrenching the interests of their countries abroad.
If things are not corrected immediately, it will catch up with the country in the next few years, when today’s graduates would be expected to fill positions of influence and power in both the public and private sector.
When that time comes, because the products would be of such low quality, there simply will be a power vacuum through which the nation would have to painfully grope for a good number of years until that phase passes.
Some of the universities that have set up shop in Botswana leave a lot to be desired.
It is strange that, for some of these colleges, lecturers and professors have not gone beyond a basic degree education.
In some worse cases, a teacher with a maximum of diploma education, because they could not get a degree is in turn hired to produce degree graduates. There is something wrong.
These people are in business. Before they can expect to make money from government they have to invest their own money.
It is insulting that in today’s era, a tertiary education institution would be found to be operating without an internet facility for the students.
It is an insult on the intelligence of the government of Botswana as the chief sponsor of students in the colleges that many such colleges do not provide library facilities to students.
Exactly how did such institutions get accreditation?
No wonder there is strong talk in these streets that some of these colleges have very strong ties with influential people running our government.
We urge the government to seriously consider fresh ways of restoring Botswana’s standards of tertiary education to their past heights.
Otherwise it will not be long before the whole thing catches up with us as a nation, especially when today’s students would, as a matter of inevitability, be expected to assume the leadership of this country by taking up positions of power and authority.
