University

A closer look at local and regional situations reveals persistent differences, in terms of institutional management, relations to the state, enrollments, and patterns of participation and academic careers. Beyond similar policy agendas, these realities signal contrasted histories and unequal states of development of higher education.

The fortune of universities and university education in countries that regained independence from waning European colonial "empires" (e.g., France, Britain) in the mid-twentieth century have differed, following routes largely influenced by their regional environment. If university education in Jamaica, Malaysia, Nigeria, and India still bears the mark of a common colonial origin, the universities of the West Indies in Mona, of Ibadan, of Malaya, and the Jawaharlal Nehru University of Delhi have, by will or by happenstance, been permeable and responsive to the realities and needs of postcolonial societies they had, to a large extent, not been designed to serve.

With a few exceptions, these countries are located in low-income regions where university education was reluctantly established in the agonizing days of the colonial era. As part of the colonial educational edifice, universities contributed to the spreading of a knowledge base rooted in the Western episteme. But as training centers of a mid-ranked indigenous bureaucracy, they also turned out to be the breeding ground of two generations of postcolonial political elite who led their countries as politicians, public servants, professionals, and businessmen. Following independence, the mission of universities established under colonial rule or with Western universities as their models was everywhere challenged and replaced by much more ambitious agendas for the development of genuine postcolonial university education systems.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, universities throughout the postcolonial world were still criticized for underachievement. The criticisms remained the same: it was said that the universities produced graduates who were unemployable; they inculcated alien values; they failed to serve the interests of the vast majority of the population through appropriate courses and research dealing with the problems of the common man; they engaged in pure research that adds little value to the economy; they lacked in innovation and perpetually copied innovations in the developed world that may not be suitable for local circumstances. Despite these criticisms, enrollment in higher education grew steadily over the period, and universities gradually emerged as protected spaces, promoting a unique gender-and minority-inclusive culture. From the 1980s, female enrollment grew considerably in the poorest countries while it remained fairly flat in Europe and America. However, in the case of sub-Saharan Africa, while significant progress was made, the troubles of history since the mid-twentieth century (unstable governments, supra-and international pressures, civil strife, pandemics) made it extremely difficult for universities to develop appropriate curricula or to adjust their research agendas to local needs and realities. Once the euphoria of the 1960s waned, universities fell victim to distrust from growing authoritarian regimes and were among the first victims in the 1980s of the structural

Gross enrollment ratios (GER) in tertiary education, 2000–2001

adjustment policies imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank on almost all African countries that qualified for loans.

Drastic cutbacks in research and infrastructure grants, along with the withdrawal of state support to student services and the rapid downfall of the standard of living of staff threw most developing world universities into a state of dereliction. The situation was condemned in the following terms by a task force convened by the World Bank in cooperation with UNESCO in 1999:

Since the 1980s, many national governments and international donors have assigned higher education a relatively low priority. Narrow—and, in our view, misleading—economic analysis has contributed to the view that public investment in universities and colleges brings meager returns compared to investment in primary and secondary schools, and that higher education magnifies income inequality. As a result, higher education systems in developing countries are under great strain. They are chronically under-funded, but face escalating demand. (The Task Force on Higher Education and Society, 2000, p. 10)