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Tag: Better Know a Higher Ed System

Better Know a Higher Ed System: Lusophone Africa

If you’re ever depressed about the state of academia where you live, spare a thought for academics in a set of countries that are collectively one of higher education’s biggest backwaters: the Lusophone African countries of Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Sao Tome & Principe, Mozambique, and Angola. The legacy of Portuguese colonialism hangs heavy over these countries.  After the Belgians, the Portuguese were probably the colonial power least concerned about educating native populations. They were also entrenched for a longer period

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May 29, 2015 No Comments

Better Know a Higher Ed System: South Africa (Part 2)

A couple of weeks ago, I laid out some of the basic issues in South African higher education.  Today, I want to focus on two particular sets of institutional issues that I think make the country’s policy landscape quite distinctive. The first area has to do with how institutions raise income.  Sub-Saharan African countries tend to fall into two groups: those that are over-reliant on government funding (most of Francophone and Lusophone Africa), and those that are reliant on private

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April 10, 2015 No Comments

Better Know a Higher Ed System: South Africa

So, I was in South Africa last week talking to people from various ends of the higher education system.  It’s a fascinating place, which is attempting the almost-unimaginably difficult task of creating a single, functional system of education from the wreckage of apartheid. One key aspect of contemporary South Africa is that genuine political competition is still some ways off.  Opposition parties exist, and the ruling alliance is experiencing some strain due to the increasing unhappiness of the main trade

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March 27, 2015 No Comments

Better Know a Higher Ed System: India (Part 3)

The basic situation in Indian higher education right now is as follows: The national government is putting most of its new money into the creation of new institutions (IITs, mainly), which are elite in local – but not international – terms.  That placates the politically powerful upper-middle class, but does very little for access. The rest of the public sector is required to chug along with limited funds. Capacity-absorption (that is, dealing with the growth in demand) is essentially being left to

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December 1, 2014 No Comments

Better Know a Higher Ed System: India (Part 2)

If you look at India’s higher education system, there are essentially two problems. 1)      Access.  This is a big country.  And so while 13 million or so students sounds like a lot, it’s only about half what China has – and sure, China’s a little bigger than India (1.36 billion vs. 1.25 billion), but thanks to its one-child policy, it’s youth population is actually smaller, meaning that the gap in participation rates is even bigger.  And, as in any rapidly modernizing

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November 28, 2014 No Comments

One Thought to Start Your Day

One Thought to Start Your Day is our founder and CEO Alex Usher’s popular daily blog, brimming with up-to-the-minute insights and informed opinions on today’s higher education industry.

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