AFRICA UNIVERSITIES DAY

Picture courtsey of  www.aau.org

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.