Feature - Higher education another casualty of economic crisis

Tertiary education in Zimbabwe was at one time ranked among the best in Africa, but the achievements of the country’s education system are threatened by growing dissatisfaction and underfunding. Thousands of students who completed undergraduate studies at the University of Zimbabwe (UZ), the country’s oldest institution for higher learning, failed to graduate last month when lecturers complaining of poor working conditions and low salaries resorted to industrial action. Some lecturers withheld examination results while others did not complete marking scripts, insisting that their salaries should be raised, among other issues. As the deadlock between lecturers and the government continued, the university failed to open in early September for the second semester. Lecturers and non-academic staff from five other universities joined the industrial action. The government recently agreed to raise the salaries of university employees. The entry point for a lecturer is now Zim $755,360 (US $955), up from Zim $218,156 (US $273), while senior lecturers will earn a monthly gross of Zim $819,200 (US $1,000), up from Zim $242 240 (US $302). Although a compromise has apparently been made in relation to salaries, most university employees are still reluctant to go back, while the bulk of students are not sure whether to report at their various tertiary institutions or not. Employees have not been paid their September salaries. Besides salaries, staff and students alike complain of falling standards due to low levels of funding. Computers and other communication facilities go for long periods without maintenance, while lecture rooms, laboratories and libraries are ill-equipped. University residences can no longer accommodate the ever-increasing number of students, who have been reduced to a life of near-destitution following the privatisation of catering and accommodation services without a commensurate rise in funding. "Tertiary institutions of learning have lost their glamour... This is a result of a combination of factors, chief among them the inability by the government to prioritise the problems that have been dogging universities, teachers’ colleges and polytechnics," James Mahlaule, secretary-general of the Association of University Teachers (AUT), told IRIN. Mahlaule ascribed most of the problems bedevilling institutions of higher learning to the lack of effective communication structures between employees, the government and other stakeholders. "Existing communication channels are unsuitable, largely ad hoc, and they complicate our situation. Most of the time we are confused over whom to approach when airing our grievances, and we are not happy with the bureaucracy we encounter. We are often directed to make our submissions to the vice-chancellor, who then approaches treasury - where money matters are concerned - with the treasury supposed to deliberate on our concerns before going back to the vice-chancellor," said Mahlaule. The long process often led to frustration among lecturers and other members of staff and inconvenienced employees because, by the time they obtained feedback, their financial demands would have been overtaken by inflation. He complained that university employees did not enjoy the right of collective bargaining, which had led to the labour court recently declaring their strike action illegal. The dissatisfaction has been around for some time. In 1999 a parliamentary committee on education undertook a study in which it identified a lack of communication and consultation as one of the key problems plaguing tertiary learning institutions. "Academics expressed concern about [the] lack of openness to students and staff, poor consultation and poor responses from the Ministry [of Higher and Tertiary Learning] regarding students' genuine complaints," read the report presented to parliament at the time. University deans charged that complaints forwarded to central administrative structures were largely ignored, as were faculty inputs on the running of universities. Although the parliamentary committee made recommendations to improve the situation, Mahlaule said, they were still being ignored. The situation was compounded by the government's tendency to interfere politically in the running of tertiary institutions. "There is a lot of despondency, caused by political interference in the day-to-day affairs of the learning institutions. However, this is inevitable, considering the funding structures of our establishments." In theory, staff of state universities are employees of each university's council, which should provide the bulk of the funding for the institution. Since the councils do not have independent coffers, in practice the government provides up to 96 percent of the learning centres' financial needs, virtually acting as a donor. The institutions are therefore left with no alternative but to follow government directives. To resolve this dilemma, universities such as the Midlands State University (MSU) and the National University of Science and Technology (NUST) had started independent income-generating projects that they hoped would reduce their dependence on the government by 70 percent. But analysts said the drive towards financial self-sufficiency might be frustrated by the institutions' poor financial control records. The 1999 parliamentary report acknowledged that "financial systems at the UZ had a lot of leakages" - there were "ghost" students and lecturers, while accountability regarding donor funds was "questionable". Reports by both privately owned and official media have indicated that a significant number of students graduating from universities did not pay back government loans due to poor recovery systems. Mahlaule said a significant number of postgraduate science programmes had been funded by international donors, particularly in Sweden, Norway, and Belgium. However, large numbers of donors had withdrawn their support following the condemnation of Zimbabwe by many western governments over the government's fast track-land reform programme, which began in 2000, as well as alleged human rights abuses and electoral fraud. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank had also suspended aid. Mahlaule suggested that universities and other higher learning institutions should fall under the finance ministry instead of the higher learning department. "In line with the recommendations of the [parliamentary] committee on education, it makes sense that we be transferred to the finance ministry. This is the ministry we mostly deal with, and placing us under the higher learning ministry only succeeds in increasing bureaucracy," he said. Because there are high levels of political interference, lecturers say, the government always accuses the employees of tertiary institutions of being driven by political motives whenever they air their grievances. The acting higher education minister, Ignatius Chombo, recently threatened to stop paying lecturers' salaries if they continued with their strike. He charged that the striking workers had a political agenda to make universities ungovernable. Mahlaule dismissed the allegation, saying the government's tendency to politicise employees' genuine demands was one of the reasons the same problems kept recurring, and he regretted that these had adversely affected the morale of employees. "Members of staff are literally walking out because of disillusionment. They are handing in their resignations almost on a daily basis, and this is sad." Medicine, veterinary science, engineering, law, agriculture, commerce and the social sciences were the most affected faculties, he said. Lecturers have been joining the private sector, where better salaries and conditions of service were offered, or migrating to other countries such as Britain, New Zealand, Canada, the United States, Botswana and South Africa. The UZ is currently operating with less than 50 percent of the minimum number of lecturers required and the growing number of resignations is having a detrimental effect on the teacher-student ratio. Some faculties, particularly the medical school, are reducing their intakes. Departments have resorted to hiring part-time lecturers from the private sector in a bid to salvage the situation. A recent report by the Scientific and Industrial Research and Development Centre (SIRDC) indicated that close to 500,000 Zimbabweans, a substantial number of whom are college graduates, were economic refugees in the diaspora, particularly in the United Kingdom, Botswana and South Africa. Around 34 percent of them had left the country because of poor salaries at home, while 29 percent migrated in anticipation of career advancement opportunities, said the report. More than 80 percent of doctors, nurses and therapists who graduated from the UZ medical school since independence in 1980 had gone to work abroad, seriously affecting the health delivery system. Irked by the massive brain drain, President Robert Mugabe last year accused Britain of "stealing" Zimbabwean professionals. Employers said the problems dogging higher learning institutions had adversely affected the quality of education and the qualifications produced by the learning centres. "There is now a low regard for the kind of graduate being churned out by our universities and other tertiary learning centres," said an executive member of the Employers Confederation of Zimbabwe (EMCOZ) on condition of anonymity. "The general feeling is that the disturbances taking place at those institutions compromise the degrees and diplomas being churned out. Take the current strikes at state universities, whereby students ... have already lost more than a month of precious time. How is that time going to be made up for?" the executive member asked. "In any case, there is no guarantee that the situation will be normal when learning resumes, considering that students are underfunded and disgruntled. We might see a wave of demonstrations as students take to the streets to protest against poor financial payouts," he said. Since the late 1980s, university, polytechnic and teachers’ college students have been engaging in protests over poor conditions of study and living. The protests led to numerous prolonged closures of the institutions. The executive member said employers mostly preferred to train their own staff and, in cases where they absorbed college products, the graduates should demonstrate an excellent academic history. "Basically, the student suffers most. The employer treats him with suspicion and this makes unemployment levels soar," he added. Zimbabwe's unemployment rate stands at more than 75 percent amid massive company closures and an ailing economy with inflation at 400 percent and rising.