System to blame on university fees

I start my entry this week with two poignant quotations: “The school in many underdeveloped countries is a reflection and a fruit of the surrounding underdevelopment, from which arises its deficiency, its quantitative and qualitative poverty. But little by little, and there lies the really serious risk, the school in these underdeveloped countries risks becoming in turn a factor of underdevelopment.” Those are the words of Joseph Kizerbo, Burkina Faso’s former minister of education.

Then there is this one from the late Professor Frederick Harbison of Princeton University in the United States of America (USA): “Human resources constitute the ultimate basis for the wealth of nations. Capital and natural resources are passive factors of production; human beings are the active agents who accumulate capital, exploit natural resources, build social, economic and political organisations, and carry forward national development. Clearly, a country which is unable to develop the skills and knowledge of its people and to utilise them effectively in the national economy will be unable to develop anything else.”

Both Kizerbo and Harbison’s statements are a damning indictment of what is wrong with our education system and how that system has betrayed the very aspirations of the Malawian people—a system unable to channel skills and knowledge, most of which come with formal education (and a few that come without it), into productive endeavours.

On the other hand, this failing system is a pollination of bad leadership that has a deficit of strategic vision and inherent culture wars that blot common sense in policy making.

The current university fees debate on whether it is affordable or not stems from psychologically corrupt policy-making—and it is bringing violent chaos.

Following the University of Malawi’s (Unima) decision to hike tuition fees payable by students—what is being referred to as student contribution—from K275 000 to K400 000 per year—opinion has been divided and emotional.

At Unima’s Chancellor College, irate students staged protests this week that included breaking property and blocking of roads.

The road blockade forced visiting USA Second Lady Dr. Jill Biden and her delegation to cancel her humanitarian trip to Machinga during the week as her motorcade could not pass through the colonial capital en route to her destination.

Considering the students’ volatile behaviour that was seen as a security risk to the university and Zomba City, college authorities closed the institution indefinitely.

And now the students have to endure an extended learning period beyond their normal four years after which they should have been contributing to the country’s development agenda and ploughing back into the societies that helped to give them an education. We waste so much time in this country.

However, looking at the issue critically, the problem is that as a country, we introduce policies that fit our political and cultural psyches of the moment.

In this case, I am talking about introducing the wrong kind of quota after a confused president—the late Bingu wa Mutharika—started seeing non-existent professors with Northern Region roots huddling at some corner with illusionary students from the same region to give them answers to exams so that they do better than fellow students from the Centre and South.

And just like that—the illusions of an old man occupying State House became the basis of a policy that does not solve the problem of our education system—it worsens it.

Just look at the socio-economic profile of most of the students in our Higher Education institutions. I can bet my last breath that most of students in these institutions come from well -to-do families. Does it not beat reasoning to believe such students cannot afford to pay K400 000 a year when they are coming from high schools where they paid more than K1 million every three months or so?

The point is that there are genuine needy students that cannot afford this contribution, but they are a precious few because they have been crowded out by others who went to excellent schools where they got excellent grades and shined in the district they come from and dominated the allocated quota for that district.

We must have a quota system, but basing it on district of origins is the wrong way of doing it. We could have a system that has a special quota for community day secondary schools, national secondary schools, high schools and international schools.

That would also be a much better way of identifying the poor and needy students who cannot afford to pay fees; instead of relying on that form which allows a university lecturer’s child to successfully identify herself as needy and get a scholarship! n