The State of Botswana Tertiary Education Capture Part Six
This is the last column on the State of Botswana Tertiary Education Capture in 2016. In this column we grapple with the problem of the so-called Educational priority areas. By priority areas it must be understood to mean the programmes that the Department of Tertiary Education Financing (DTEF) will fund students for in a particular year. It must be said though that DTEF doesn’t determine the priority areas for funding though it determines the number of students to be sponsored per institution, the so called institutional quotas. The priority areas are determined by a different body: the all-powerful Human Resources Development Council (HRDC).
The Botswana government approaches the matter of priority areas and student quotas in a manner that doesn’t encourage competition. It is ill-advised for a government to promise a tertiary institutions that it will sponsor a specific number of students that such an institution will admit. It is indeed most bizarre. It has never happened previously in our education system. Let us remember that there is nothing new with the Botswana government sending students to study at private tertiary institutions. The difference is that such institutions were based abroad in South Africa, USA, the UK and other places. The government has never had quotas to any such institutions. The students had to apply and get admissions from credible institutions though one must admit sometimes government would recommend a certain group of institutions abroad because of their excellent quality. But government never had to fix a specific number on any foreign tertiary institution. The current arrangement where there is a number of students allocated to a specific tertiary institution is terribly flawed because it doesn’t allow institutions to compete for the students. If there were no quotas, then institutions would compete by providing high quality education which would attract students to them. Admission would be based solely on the quality of education and learner experience. Tertiary institutions would improve their course offerings, staffing and infrastructure with the full knowledge that it would impact on their admission numbers. Now, the current situation where institutions are assured of learners in advance doesn’t encourage competition. Instead it appears as if government as a sponsor owes tertiary institution something. It appears that government encouraged owners of private institutions to build institutions with a promise that they will receive government sponsored students. Government should not allocate sponsorships per institution. The only thing that government as a sponsor should do is advertise priority areas (a matter I return to momentarily). Why should government go an extra step and determine where such sponsorship will take place locally? As long as an institution is providing an accredited program within the priority areas, it shouldn’t matter where the students do such a program. The government shouldn’t for example say it is going to sponsor X number of students to do Bachelor of Business at Mositaphala College of Business Education. All that government needs to do is say it is going to sponsor X number of students to read for a Bachelor of Business in a local tertiary institution and allow the institutions which offer such an accredited program to compete to attract the students to their program. There is absolutely no need to fix a quota to a tertiary institution. The problem with this arrangement is that excellent institutions with outstanding lecturers and facilities such as BUAN, UB, BAC and BIUST may be starved of students while they have the requisite capacity to admit students and students may end up at institutions run by fellows who wear skinny jeans who are clueless about education.
The second problem with the current arrangement is that it isn’t clear what would happen with new institutions in the future. Would the owners of such institutions have to beg for a quota from government too? The situation is untidy. Government must drop quotas and open the educational field for true competition.
I wish to devote this latter part of the column to address the matter of educational priority areas since it is related to the matter of quotas. It is not a bad idea to have educational priority areas. Actually for many years this country has had educational priority areas. However, such areas must be based on fairly well informed research. They should not be established randomly or to favour certain institutions who have assisted certain persons in their political campaigns. I am aware that there are budgetary constraints but the matter of what programmes to sponsor isn’t easy. This is especially so as the Botswana economy is not producing new jobs. We must especially be careful of the possible zombification of education. There is a great temptation to fund programmes in which individuals do something with their hands. I hear poorly structured arguments against thinking and theory. People don’t want to deal with the why question but more with the what. Can you use a machine? Can you do this? They are not interest in causes, solutions, theories, competing approaches, rights, analysis, synthesizing etc. What they wish for is the zombification of a learner ÔÇô one who knows how to use this machine to do this kind of job ÔÇô finish and klaar. They are not interested in producing an all-round citizen in possession of advanced critical skills that can be utilized to lift him from the morass of disease, injustice, poverty and dependency. They are not interested in one who questions. What they want is one who does something. Now both skills are important. We need our learners to have high levels communicative competence. Therefore they must study English and critical thinking. We must produce students who have high levels of moral and ethical temperance or else we are doomed as a people. Therefore we must have robust programmes and courses in ethics. Currently greater focus should be on funding our finest students to go into the finest programmes the country can offer. It must be said though that many of the educational priority areas that have been established by HRDC are really like punching the wind because most of them will graduate students into unemployment. Greater focus should be placed in job creation and attracting investment into the country to create enough jobs to absorb our graduates.
