Tertiary education in Africa

非洲高等教育

词汇

Tertiary education/高等教育，大学教育

A booming population is putting strain on Africa’s universities

人口激增给非洲的大学带来了压力

New initiatives can help to ease it

新方案可以帮助缓解这种情况

 

Aug 10th 2019 | KIGALI

“IN RWANDA IT’S not easy to get a job,” says Jean-Paul Bahati, a student at Kepler, a college founded in Kigali in 2013. But the 22-year-old believes his course will help him stand out. He studies health-care management, a growing industry in Rwanda. Kepler’s degrees are accredited by Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU), which runs one of the largest online universities in America. The first six months are a crash course in skills such as critical thinking, English, communication and IT. “I like that Kepler knows what employers want,” says Mr Bahati.

“在卢旺达，找工作并不容易，”开普勒大学(Kepler)的学生Jean-Paul Bahati这样说道。开普勒大学于2013年在基加利成立。但22岁的他相信他的课程将帮助他脱颖而出。他学习医疗管理，这是卢旺达一个正在发展的行业。开普勒大学的学位由美国最大的网络大学之一南新罕布什尔大学(SNHU)认证。头六个月学习的内容是批判性思维、英语、沟通和IT等技能的速成班。Bahati表示:开普勒大学知道雇主想要什么，这也是我对学校喜爱的一点。”

 

In recent decades millions of young people like Mr Bahati have swelled the number of students in sub-Saharan Africa. Today 8m are in tertiary education, a term that includes vocational colleges and universities. That is about 9% of young people—more than double the share in 2000 (4%), but far lower than in other regions (see chart). In South Asia the share is 25%, in Latin America and the Caribbean, 51%.

近几十年来，数百万像Bahati这样的年轻人使撒哈拉以南非洲的学生人数激增。如今，有800万人接受高等教育，其中包括职业学院和大学。这一比例约为9%，是2000年的两倍多(4%)，但远低于其他地区(见图表)。在南亚，这一比例为25%，拉丁美洲和加勒比地区为51%。

 

Both the number and share of young people in tertiary education in sub-Saharan Africa will keep growing. The region has about 90m people aged 20-24, a figure projected to double over the next 30 years. Whereas 42% of that age group had completed secondary school in 2012, 59% are forecast to do so by 2030. If African countries are to meet the aspirations of educated young people, they must ensure there are opportunities for further study.

非洲撒哈拉以南地区接受高等教育的年轻人数量和比例将持续增长。该地区约有9000万20至24岁的人口，预计未来30年这一数字将翻一番。2012年这一年龄段中有42%的人完成了中学学业，而预计到2030年这一比例将达到59%。如果非洲国家要实现拥有知识青年的渴望，他们必须确保年轻人们有深造的机会。

 

So far they have struggled. State-run institutions that trained the post-colonial elites are finding it hard to serve a mass market. In much of the region public funding per student has fallen since the late 1990s as enrolment has surged.

一直以来，他们一直在努力。致力于培养后殖民时代人才的国有机构发现很难服务于大众市场。自上世纪90年代末以来，由于入学人数激增，该地区大部分地区的拨款在每一名学生上的公共资金有所下降。

词汇

post-colonial/殖民地时期之后的

 

This reflects competing priorities. In the poorest African countries it costs 27 times more to fund a university place than one at primary school. Since students typically come from affluent families, university spending subsidises the children of elites. In Ghana, the higher-education spending that goes to the richest tenth of households is 135 times that spent on the poorest tenth. Policymakers find themselves deciding whether to spend scarce resources on helping poor children attend school or rich children go to university.

这反映了相互竞争的优先事项。在最贫穷的非洲国家，大学学费是小学学费的27倍。由于学生通常来自富裕家庭，大学支出补贴了精英家庭的孩子。在加纳，最富有的十分之一家庭的高等教育支出是最贫穷的十分之一家庭的135倍。政策制定者发现，他们要决定是把稀缺资源用于帮助贫困儿童上学，还是让富裕儿童上大学。

 

The effects of spreading public funding thinly are apparent on campuses. African universities have 50% more students per professor than the global average. Students are more likely to study humanities degrees than science ones, which are more expensive to teach. Over 70% of graduates have arts degrees, versus 53% in Asia.

在大学校园里，稀缺的公共资金的影响是显而易见的。非洲大学的每位教授要带比全球平均水平多出50%的学生。学生更有可能攻读人文学科学位，而不是理科学位，后者的教学成本更高。超过70%的毕业生拥有艺术学位，而亚洲的这一比例为53%。

 

More young people are heading abroad instead. In 2017 some 374,000 studied overseas, up from 156,000 two decades earlier. Many never return. One in nine Africans with a tertiary qualification lives in an OECD country, compared with one in 13 Latin Americans and one in 30 Asians.

越来越多的年轻人选择出国来代替国内教育。2017年，约有37.4万人出国留学，高于20年前的15.6万人。而他们中许多出去就再也不回来。九分之一拥有高等学历的非洲人生活在经合组织国家（主要为欧美和澳洲国家），而非洲人在拉美和亚洲的比例分别为十三分之一和三十分之一。

 

With the public sector struggling to meet demand for places and to offer a high-quality education, the private sector is filling the gap. From 1990 to 2014 the number of public universities in sub-Saharan Africa rose from 100 to 500, while private universities grew from 30 to more than 1,000. Many are small. In Kigali, the University of Rwanda has 30,000 students, while private ones have a few hundred each. But they are enrolling a growing proportion of students, notes Daniel Levy of the University of Albany. In 2000 about 10% of African students went to private institutions; by 2015 the share was 20%. In Rwanda more than half do so.

由于公共部门难以满足入学需求并提供高质量的教育，私立部门（大学）正在填补这一缺口。从1990年到2014年，撒哈拉以南非洲的公立大学从100所增加到500所，而私立大学从30所增加到1000多所。这其中（私立大学）大都是小规模的。在基加利，卢旺达大学有3万名学生，而私立学校只有几百名学生。但奥尔巴尼大学的丹尼尔•利维指出，他们招收的学生比例越来越高。2000年，大约10%的非洲学生进入私立学校;到2015年，这一比例达到了20%。在卢旺达，超过一半的学生选择了私立学校。

 

Students at private universities often benefit from new ways of teaching. Consider Ashesi, which has grown steadily since its founding in 2002 in Accra. Much of Ghanaian higher education is based on rote learning, observes Patrick Awuah, its founder and a former Microsoft engineer, and was not “teaching students to think critically”. He based Ashesi on American liberal-arts colleges, where students combine humanities and sciences.

私立大学的学生经常受益于新的教学方法。以阿什西学院为例，该学校自2002年在阿克拉成立以来一直稳步成长。“加纳的大部分（学校的）高等教育都是死记硬背”，阿什西学院的创始人、前微软工程师帕特里克•阿瓦(Patrick Awuah)评论道，加纳的高等教育并没有“教会学生批判性思维”。他将阿什西学院的教学建立在美国文理学院的基础上，在文理学院的学生将人文和科学结合起来。

Vocational outfits can innovate, too. ALX, a for-profit institution that opened its first campus in Nairobi last year, runs a six-month “boot-camp” in soft skills, then helps students find a six-month internship. Its gambit is that its brand becomes so strong that employers do not mind that its graduates lack a degree.

职业机构也可以创新。ALX是一家营利性机构，去年在内罗毕开设了它的第一个校区。该机构在软技能方面开展了为期6个月的“训练营”，然后帮助学生找到为期6个月的实习机会。它的策略是，它的品牌变得如此强大，以至于雇主不介意它的毕业生没有学位。

词汇

Vocational/职业的，行业的

 

“A traditional university model is very hard to make profitable,” says Fred Swaniker, the Ghanaian founder of ALX. He should know. In 2013 Mr Swaniker set up the African Leadership University (ALU), which was dubbed the “Harvard of Africa”. But its campuses in Mauritius ($15,000 per year for board and tuition) and Kigali ($9,000) are “too expensive”, he concedes. It has ditched plans to open dozens of campuses like these and is instead expanding the cheaper ($2,000 per year) ALX model.

“传统的大学模式很难盈利，”ALX的加纳创始人弗雷德•斯旺尼克(Fred Swaniker)表示。他应该知道。2013年，Swaniker先生建立了非洲领导大学(ALU)，被称为“非洲的哈佛”。但他承认，该校在毛里求斯的校区(每年1.5万美元的食宿和学费)和基加利的校区(每年9000美元学费)的学费“太贵了”。 非洲领导大学已经放弃了像这样开设几十个分校的计划，转而扩大更便宜(每年2000美元)的ALX模式。

词汇

Dub/刺；授予…称号

Concede/让步

 

Another reason for the shift is regulation. Gaining accreditation is arduous. Rwanda made ALU buy 90 desktop computers, even though it gives students laptops. Kepler’s application ran to 1,100 pages.

这种转变的另一个原因是监管。获得认证是困难的。卢旺达要求非洲领导大学购买90台台式电脑，尽管它给学生提供笔记本电脑。仅开普勒大学的资质认定就长达1100页。

词汇

Arduous/努力的；费力的

 

Yet the biggest barrier to expanding access to tertiary education is student financing. This is true for private and public universities, since in most African countries public ones charge upfront tuition fees. (Scholarships exist, but these are often granted on merit, not need, putting them out of reach of poor children with good but not stellar grades.) “The bottleneck is not the education model; it’s the financing,” says Teppo Jouttenus of Kepler.

然而，扩大接受高等教育的最大障碍是学生资助。私立大学和公立大学都是如此，因为在大多数非洲国家，公立大学收取预付学费。(奖学金是存在的，但这些奖学金往往是凭成绩而非需要发放的，让成绩优秀但并非拔尖的贫困儿童无法获得。)开普勒大学的Teppo Jouttenus说道：“扩大教育的瓶颈并非教育模式，而是资金问题。”

词汇

Upfront/预付的

Stellar/主要的；一流的

Bottleneck/瓶颈；障碍物

 

This is not just an injustice but a sign of economic inefficiency. The average gap between wages earned by graduates and non-graduates in sub-Saharan Africa is wider than in other regions. It would make sense if students could defer the expense. This would ensure that those who benefit the most from university cover the costs, leaving more public money for other things.

这不仅是一种不公平，也是经济效率低下的表现。撒哈拉以南非洲地区毕业生和非毕业生的平均工资差距比其他地区更大。如果学生可以推迟支付费用，这将带来更高的收益。这将确保那些从大学中受益最多的人承担费用，留下更多的公共资金用于其他事情。

 

Several African countries have introduced state loan schemes. But governments have struggled to chase up debts. The private sector is now trying to do a better job. Kepler and Akilah, an all-female college in Kigali, are working with CHANCEN International, a German foundation, to try out a model of student financing popular among economists—Income Share Agreements. CHANCEN pays the upfront costs of a select group of students. Once they graduate, alumni pay CHANCEN a share of their monthly income, up to a maximum of 180% of the original loan. If they do not get a job, they pay nothing.

一些非洲国家已经引进了国家贷款计划。但各国政府一直在努力增加债务。私营部门现在正努力做得更好。开普勒大学和基加利的一所女子学院Akilah正与德国的一个基金会 “国际·机遇”合作，尝试一种受经济学家欢迎的学生资助模式——收入分成协议。“机遇”基金会部分为选中的一部分学生预支学费。一旦他们毕业，毕业生将其月收入的一部分用于偿还“机遇“基金会，一直到最初贷款额的180%为止。如果他们没有找到工作，他们就不必付款。

词汇

Alumni/（统称）校友，毕业生

Kepler’s experiment began only in January. But models such as these should help more students gain qualifications, while encouraging institutions to think about their job prospects. That can only be good news for young Africans.

开普勒大学的实验在一月份才开始。但这样的模式应该有助于更多的学生获得入学资格，同时鼓励院校考虑他们的就业前景。这对非洲年轻人来说是百利而无一害的好消息。