Higher Education Expansion and Social Inequalities in Sub-Saharan Africa: Conceptual and Empirical Perspectives

The development of higher education (HE) in sub-Saharan Africa has presented contradictory features and outcomes over the past two decades. On the one hand, the number of public and private HE institutions has increased in the present era of massification (where HE environments have reached almost universal access). This led to a diversification of academic programmes on offer, and enrolments surged to the point that sub-Saharan Africa experienced the fastest growth of all UNESCO world regions over the period. Yet on the other hand, gross enrolment rates (less than 10 percent on average in the region) remain by far the lowest and show slower progression than in other parts of the global South, as the rise in the number of institutions and in enrolment has not kept pace with population growth and increased social iii demand for higher education. These contradictions between dynamics typically associated with massified HE environments and features of highly elitist systems beg a closer examination of this process of expansion and diversification, and more specifically of how it has affected different socio-economic groups. Drawing on secondary data and policy material, and using three national contexts as case studies (Kenya, Nigeria and Senegal), the paper highlights how issues of inequalities and inequity in access to and participation in higher education were addressed by national policies in contexts of expansion and diversification. It then examines how the HE opportunities resulting from the expansion generated new inequalities at the levels of access to HE institutions and programmes, in student experience and in access to labour markets and social recognition. The case study perspective reveals how the relationship between growth and other dimensions of national HE developments are both context-contingent and shaped, or exacerbated by, international pressures. It allows a better understanding of the common challenges of African HE systems in terms of access “for whom?” “to what?” and “what for?” while avoiding excessive generalizations in conclusions and suggestions

Towards a National Graduate Destinations Survey in Kenya: An Exploratory Study of Three Universities

While concerns about graduate unemployment and the work-readiness of graduates in Sub-Saharan Africa abound, there is a severe lack of institutional data and academic research on graduate destinations on which to base policy changes. This article presents findings from an exploratory study of three major higher education institutions in Kenya. An online survey was conducted with recent graduates in a range of disciplinary areas, aiming to determine, first, what employment activities they were engaged in, and second, what associations there might be between those activities, the graduates’ background characteristics, and their experiences at university. Findings suggest that proportions of absolute unemployment are lower than expected, but that many graduates are transiting between provisional or part-time employment and internships, and have not yet obtained the graduate level jobs aspired to. Finally, implications are drawn out for potential national-level graduate destination surveys in Kenya and elsewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa

Evaluating the Sustainability of a Small-Scale Low-Input Organic Vegetable Supply System in the United Kingdom

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Universities and the post-2015 development agenda: an analytical framework

Higher education is increasingly acknowledged by national governments and international agencies as a key driver of development, and systems are expanding rapidly in response to rising demand. Moreover, universities have been attributed a central role in the post-2015 development agenda and the achievement of the sustainable development goals. Yet questions of institutional models and their differential impact on society have not received sufficient attention. This paper presents an analysis of the ‘anatomy’ of the university in order to identify the salient changes in the institution across time and location in relation to knowledge and relationships with society. A framework is proposed structured around three key dimensions: first, ‘value’—the extent to which knowledge is treated as intrinsically or instrumentally worthwhile; second, ‘function’—the role of the university in terms of storage, transmission, production or application of knowledge; third, ‘interaction’—the flow of ideas and actors between the university and society. This analytical framework is then utilised to assess two dominant tendencies in global higher education: commodification and unbundling. Finally, implications are drawn out for universities’ potential impact on development in low- and middle-income countries in the context of these contemporary trends

Documentation of Salo Region Rotary Clubs website

Developing web applications running on Joomla CMS (content management system) is nowadays a common trend in the WWW .Due to Joomla CMS ease of updating content, advanced system access rights, free technical support, inexpensive cost of development, are among some of the benefits. Many organizations are moving to Joomla environment in order to use these benefits. Salo Region Rotary Clubs were in need of an online system that they could use to store the previous clubs’ documents. They requested a system that would address that need and many others developed on the Joomla CMS Platform. The aim of this thesis was to document that developed system. While documenting the system, the thesis discusses how to get started with Joomla, how to develop the system on Joomla platform, how to test for major bugs, description of the main processes in Salo Region Rotary Clubs website and how it works. As a result, Salo Region Rotary Clubs have a website that is up and running. Easy to use and meeting their needs together with an illustration how to work with Joomla CMS

Book Review: Who's Hungry? and How do we Know? Food Shortage, Poverty and Deprivation, by Laurie Derose, Ellen Messer and Sara Millman, United Nations University Press, Tokyo, New York and Paris (1998)

The issue of hunger and the hungry has been part of the development problematique in developing countries, particularly in Africa. There tends to be in some literature an association between a country's level of socio-economic and political development and its ability to resist the vagaries of nature such as drought, which consequently leads to hunger. Part of this literature points to Africa's inability to successfully embrace modernization - modern farming, harvesting and storage techniques, an inability that then becomes part of the build up of hunger-prone situations