STUDENTS REPRESENTATIVE COUNCIL

SUMMIT - 2014

Organized By

Amabhubesi Training and Conferencing South Africa

Balancing Quality and Access in Higher Education in
Africa: The Role of ICT Based Learning

AWAAH FRED
Secretary General

All-Africa Students Union (AASU)

29 & 30 April, 2014 , 2014
Focus Rooms Sunninghill (Johannesburg) in South Africa

BALANCING
QUALITY
& ACCESS

IN HIGHER EDUCATION:
THE ROLE OF ICT-BASED
LEARNING

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PRESENTATION
OVERVIEW

Concept of Higher Education (HE)

Quality Issues in HE
Equity Issues in HE
The Common Ground Quality & Equity
The Case for ICT- based Learning
Concluding Remarks

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CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
OF HE
Higher Education (HE) can be defined
as that level of education offered after
the secondary level
HE has a positive effect on economic
growth and as well as on individual
employment prospects and well-being
HE is necessary for social reengineering
Growing evidence shows that the
quality of higher education delivered is
inextricably linked to the attainment of
the MDGs.
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LEVELS OF HIGHER
EDUCATION

Tertiary education is divided into 3 tiers :

Post Secondary School Level
Form a very valuable resource in any
given country, as it gives the main
resource in the development of the
country
University Level
Professionals
with
theoretical
and
analytical skills, and competencies
generally in application of the skills in
the developmental issues / needs
Further Education
For continual education

life

long

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INTRACACIES OF HIGHER
EDUCATION

Challenges to HE have increased and include:

Massification of HE
Rising public demand for better performance
of HEIs
Efficiency and accountability demands
Limited capacity by HEIs to absorb the
surging demands
Diversified modes of HE provision such ODL,
and E-Learning
Rapidly changing industry trends

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QUALITY ISSUES IN HIGHER

EDUCATION
The need to regulate HE has become
imperative in order to assure the quality offered
and produce competitive and comparable
products from the HE systems world-wide.
It is observed that only 1/3 of African Countries
have functional QA mechanisms; and where
they exist, they do not always consider
important areas such as training of trainers,
open and distance education, and cross border
education, in particular. (Source: UNESCO, 2008 New Dynamics of
Higher Education and Research: Strategies for Change and Development. Final Report of the
Regional Conference on Higher Education in Africa (CRESA), Dakar, Senegal)

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QUALITY ISSUES IN HIGHER

EDUCATION
QA Defined:
Quality Assurance: A systematic and continuous
attention to quality and quality improvement or
enhancement
It has two (2) Components
- Internal QA: Refers to the Institutions
mechanisms for ensuring and improving its own
quality
- External QA: Refers to periodic monitoring of
quality of HE at institutions by an External Quality
Assurance (EQA) agency or body
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WHY QA IN HIGHER
EDUCATION
Ensures that HEIs meet minimum standards
Referred as Quality Controls

Provides public assurance of Quality

Accountability

Promotes / Enhances Quality Quality

Improvement
Assesses HEIs or programmes in systematic
progression that contributes to enhancement of
the quality of the institution or programme
Quality safeguards the producer and consumer,
in HE it safeguards academic integrity

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WHY QA IN HIGHER
EDUCATION
Identifies the producer and consumer
and hence grants confidence to both, in
HE quality safeguards qualification of
graduates
Allows trade or marketability, in HE
cross-border education
Accreditation grants recognition by the
consumer and also the product itself

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WHY HEIs ENGAGE IN QA

Internal Drivers:
Desire to fulfil Vision and Mission of HEIs

Desire to deliver promise to stakeholders.

Need to meet the national requirements
Need to meet our emerging challenges:
a)Large Class Sizes
b)Funding
c)Ranking
d)Competitiveness

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WHY HEIs ENGAGE IN QA

External Drivers:
Increased Mobility Staff, Students, Research
The desire to internationalize
Globalization
Cross-boarder recognition of Certifications
Government policies such as transparency and
accountability,
Increased demand for quality by knowledge
end-users
Increase in the population of students seeking
for Higher Education, construction of
classrooms,

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QA AT THE CONTINENTAL LEVEL

At the Continental Level:
AU's Plan for the Second Decade of Education
for Africa (2006 - 2015)
Emphasizes promoting, developing and
assuring quality in African HE in all its
dimensions, including developing and ratifying
regional and continental qualification
frameworks to facilitate mobility of students
and staff.
Establishment of the African Quality Assurance
Network (AfriQAN) to implement the African
Quality Rating Mechanism (AQRM).
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EQUITY ISSUES IN HIGHER

EDUCATION
According to the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights (Article 26, Paragraph
1), access to basic education is not a
privilege but a basic human right, and
Higher Education is supposed to be
equally accessible to all by merit.
Ghana's 1992 Constitution renders this
aptly (Article 25, C) " high education
shall be made equally accessible to all,
on the basis of capacity, by every
appropriate means, and in particular, by
the progressive introduction of free
education"
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EQUITY ISSUES IN HIGHER

EDUCATION
Tertiary Gross Enrolment ratio for sub-Saharan
Africa is only 5.6% compared 26% of East Asia
and the Pacific, and 71% for North America and
Western Europe. (Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2009; Global
Education Digest)

To date no African Country has realized the

UNESCO defined level of 25% participation in
Higher Education. On the average, African
universities have a shortfall of 60% of what can
be termed as excellent researchers and
teachers. (Source: ACDE, 2008. Project Proposal on Establishment of the
African Council for Distance Education - Quality Assurance and Accreditation
Agency, ACDE-QAAA)

Massification is defined in terms of the gross higher

education enrolment ratio of a country, a ratio
approaching 50% is considered "mass enrolment"
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EQUITY ISSUES IN HIGHER

EDUCATION
Who is marginalized?
- The disabled
- Women and Girls
- The Disadvantaged
The predominant pattern of higher
education in the developing world
principally benefits the most affluent
households, who are also the most
powerful politically (Source: World Bank Higher Education
Paper: The Lessons From Experience, Comments From Around The World)

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EQUITY ISSUES IN HIGHER

EDUCATION

Cost-sharing with students in the way of

tuition fees hits poorer households first,
affecting women/girls disproportionately.

(Source: World Bank Higher Education Paper: The Lessons From Experience,
Comments From Around The World)

Social Conditioning

Children or parents from poorer households

may not value education if they ultimately return
to work in the household and on the farm.
- The rural student population continues to
diminish, and if only those who can afford a
university education go to university.
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EQUITY ISSUES IN HIGHER

EDUCATION
Broadening access to knowledge remains

paramount in HEIs scope of work, but as

important as this phenomenon is, it is destructive
to produce half baked scholars who cannot
compete in a globalized world
We risk churning out half baked scholars owing to
the massification of HE
The expansion of higher education enrolments
has failed to narrow wide disparities in the rates
at which students from higher and lower income
families enter let alone complete tertiary
studies
There is evidence that HE has in some instances
widened, rather than narrowed, social disparities
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POLICY ISSUES TO ADDRESS

EQUITY
Internal generation of funds (IGFs) to reduce
costs of HE;
Career guidance and counselling services which
aim to sensitize the populace to the benefits of
HE;
Institutional funding methodologies that provide
added financing for the support of students from
disadvantaged backgrounds;
Non-discrimination policies requiring provision
for students with disabilities;
Initiatives to make higher education better
adapted to the needs of non-traditional students
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THE COMMON GROUND, QUALITY

VS EQUITY
in the light of the challenges of meeting
the surging demands for HE, HEIs using
their traditional models of instruction
have proven incapable of meeting this
demand without compromising quality
Even as the HE space grows
exponentially, such expansion should not
self destruct quality.
It is therefore crucial that control
measures are put in place to check that
even as we meet the growing demands
for HE we do not overly compromise
quality.
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THE COMMON GROUND, QUALITY

VS EQUITY

Simply massifying HE will not address the

problem of equity.
Simply strengthening quality controls will
deny an incalculable percentage of the
citizenry access to HE, and hence hamper
socio-economic development.
The way forward is to create a viable fit
between quality and equity.
We must further explore the unlimited
potential of ICT-based learning if we are to
provide HE that is quality and equitable.

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ICT BASED LEARNING

Much of the literature continues to portray ICTbased Learning as just making available computers
to end-users.
This is a somewhat narrow view which obscures
the actual breadth and depth of ICT based learning.
It needs to be emphasized that ICT-based Learning
is much more than just supplying computers, it is
just one of the knowledge exchange activities;
a) Knowledge Creators
b) End-users
c) Technology Firms
d) HEIs

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ICT BASED LEARNING

Constraint Factors inhibiting efforts of HEIs
to exploit ICT:

Limited budgets
Low levels of private sector support
Limited technological capacity
Inadequate HEIs - Industry collaborations
End-user skills
Access to a reliable supply of electricity is
a general problem but is particularly severe
in rural areas because of the difficulty of
connecting to national electrical grids.
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ICT BASED LEARNING

There is a general lack of human resource
capacity to provide ICT training and
equipment
Huge gaps between urban and rural areas
in terms of access to ICT infrastructure
the average African university has
bandwidth capacity equivalent to a
broadband residential connection available
in Europe, [and] pays 50 times more for
their bandwidth than their educational
counterparts in the rest of the world.

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ICT BASED LEARNING

HEIs have struggled to overcome these
constraints, which has severely undermined
the effort to modernize HE and reach the
bracket outside face-to-face learning
models
Benefits of ICT-based Learning
a) Expanding Access to HE
b) Openness and flexibility
c) Lowering cost without compromising quality
d) An enabler for massification of HE
e) Overcoming geographical barriers
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CRITIQUE OF ICT BASED

LEARNING
Bases on choices on technological
possibilities rather than educational
needs. (Contextualised teaching and
learning needs to drive the ICT
intervention, rather than the technology
itself)
Compromises quality of programmes
and instruction
Skewed to Social Sciences
Lack of face-to-face communication
inhibits behavioral modification
Stifles creativity and innovation
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PROGRESS; ICT BASED

LEARNING
At the Country Level:
The following are illustrative of examples in progress made in ICTbased Learning:

Madagascar is establishing ICT villages with a digital

classroom, health centre, and community ICT access.
Mozambique has community multimedia centres
resulting from a merger between existing telecentres
and some radio stations.
Mauritius uses a fleet of cyber caravans to take ICT
facilities to remote areas.
Modeled after MIT's iLab, online laboratories have been
adopted by Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Nigeria;
Makarere University (MAK), Uganda; and the University
of Dar-es-Salaam (UDSM), Tanzania; to address the
acute shortage of laboratory space and equipment.
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a)
b)
c)
d)
e)
f)

PROGRESS; ICT BASED

LEARNING
In 2004 Parliament passed into law Ghanas ICT for

Accelerated Development (ICT4AD) policy, which is

currently at various stages of implementation. The first
pillar addresses the role of ICT in education.
The ICT in education policy for Ghana has six broad
objectives:
Ensure that students have ICT literacy skills before coming
out of each level of education
Provide guidelines for integrating ICT tools in all levels of
education
Provide means of standardizing ICT resources for all schools
Facilitate training of teachers and students in ICT
Determine the type and level of ICT needed by schools for
teaching and administration purposes.
Promote ICT as a learning tool in the school curriculum at all
levels

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CONCLUDING REMARKS
Institutions, systems, and stakeholders must
seek to ensure that quality, equity and efficiency
characterize all aspects of higher education.
- encourage partnership and collaboration in
designing and developing programmes across
borders
- Broad consultations
- Stimulate Innovation

For the purposes of leveraging ICT for HE, policy

makers should play this role with a very
important but often overlooked constituency,
students.
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CONCLUDING REMARKS
While it is evident that student groupings seem
to have lost focus in contemporary times, we
cannot write off this vital but missing link.
In many countries, students have acquired a
respected place in higher education governance
structures. (In Ghana, NUGS serves on the
GETFund, SLTF, and other HE governing bodies)
Moving forward, we need to formulate policies
with the students and not for the students
Here in Ghana NUGS was very instrumental in
the establishment of the GETFund which is
serving the needs of HE in an unparalleled
manner
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CONCLUDING REMARKS
AASU has demonstrated often that
students at African Universities and other
HEIs can be a very powerful bloc.
Harnessing such power to put pressure on
governments and lobby the private sector
will facilitate achieving a delicate balance
between Quality and Equity, leveraging on
the capabilities of ICT-based Learning.

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THANK YOU!

All-Africa Students Union (AASU)

State Housing Complex, P. O Box M274, Accra - Ghana
Tel/Fax: +233 (0) 302 258 484
Mobile: +233 (0) 243101626
Email: info@aasuonline.org

Website:

www.aasuonline.org
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