This year, Association of African Universities
(AAU) celebrates 48 years under the theme “Internationalisation of higher education.” Internationalisation
of Higher education is the process of
integrating an international, intercultural, or global dimension into the
purpose, functions or delivery of postsecondary. The main components of internationalization of higher education are global competition for talents, recruitment of international students, development of international branch campuses,
students, staff and scholars exchange programs, internationalization of the curriculum, and research and
education partnerships between
institutions regionally and internationally. The Association of African Universities was
established in 1967 to facilitate co-operation between its members and with the
international academic community. It is based in Accra, Ghana
Zimbabwe
universities are also members of the AAU. These include National University Science
and Technology, University of Zimbabwe, Midlands State University, Africa University
only to mentions a few. As we celebrate,
our universities are facing a lot of challenges in their day to day functioning.
Universities, in common with other
social institutions, face a set of constraints. These consist of substantial
accountability demands placed on them by a variety of internal and external
constituents and stakeholders. In the case of universities these range from
government, the main funder, demanding more stringent accounting for resource
use and a bigger say in the agenda of universities – from access standards and
numbers to curricular relevance and income-generation – to politicians, civil
society and business groups, donors and external partners, each pushing sectional
interests on the universities.
Harsh economic climate facing tends to
impact negatively on quality in our education.Most universities rely on government
funding but funding of universities by the state has reflected a negative
trend, funding has been left to individuals pay for their education. This year
the government stopped funding the state universities and this has a negative
bearing on the universities themselves in a dead economy like this. It actually
means that if students were complaining of poor service delivery by the
university it would be worse than what it was last year. This actually means
that Zimbabwean universities need to be able to generate income and realize
profit where possible. Moreover, this
University education has now become a
preserve for the elite people especially with our economic situation in
Zimbabwe. Very few students are able to pay for their education, worse still
barely a few months ago more than 20 000 workers were retrenched from their
work places. Government is unable to provide sponsorship and bursaries for
education yet the Cadetship scheme is no longer accessible to students.
Lecturers are poorly remunerated as
such their morale is low as higher education is underfunded. The economy has also caused many lectures to leave
the country in search of greener pastures. This means that the ratio of student
to lecturer is now very high. Most lecturers are leaving institutions of higher
learning into the private sector. This is so because most institutions which are
state funded are suffering the same economic conditions as the government of
the day. Most Universities lacks enough capital and infrastructure to carry out
its work.
Lack of funds to acquire resources,
bring external assessors as well as put in place quality assurance committees
and panels by universities is one of the challenges faced by these
institutions. The failure by these institutions
to rehabilitate buildings, libraries and laboratories students will not have
access to them while conducting their studies. For example National University
of Science and Technology has a block of buildings that were last worked on ten
years ago and this has left students without a proper library were at least
half of the students can go there and read. The current one is so small that
most students cannot access it especially during exam time.
Zimbabwe Universities need to generate income
and become self-sufficient.