We can't afford to marginalise academics
A country without the means to educate its people is without the means to develop its society. Among the central instruments of education are our teachers in nursery, primary, secondary and higher education. Have we been neglecting and marginalising teachers at all levels of education?
The Kibaki initiative to make primary education freely available is a massive step forward in the history of education in Kenya. This has created a big demand for more teachers and even better training.
But teachers at primary levels should at least have completed secondary education, and teachers of secondary schools should ideally have had some level of higher education. The pinnacle of out educational pyramid is, of course, the university.
It is essential that the university be strong if we want other levels of education to remain competent. If we permit our universities to decay, we will soon witness the decay of secondary and primary schools.
Free primary education is when students do not pay money for it. Cheap primary education is when the quality is poor. We must not allow free primary education to decay into cheap primary education. Part of the solution is to develop and maintain excellent centres of learning at the top of the educational pyramid.
Incentives to attract lecturers
Kenya needs to create incentives to attract and retain the best lecturers and professors if the rest of the educational pyramid is to remain of high quality. Kenya has been losing well-trained people not only to America and Western Europe, but also to Southern Africa and the Middle East.
I remember a friendly debate I once had with Jerry Rawlings of Ghana at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. President Rawlings, as he then was, complained bitterly about the brain drain from Africa. Just when a young Ghanaian was about to graduate and become a medical doctor and help reduce infant mortality in his country, he was seen packing his suitcase on his way to practise in Canada, Britain or the United States.
In replying to President Jerry Rawlings, I pointed out to him that the causes of the brain drain were, first. Push-out factors, active in our own countries in Africa, and secondly, push-in factors in more prosperous and more congenial countries. Push-in factors in the Western world and South Africa include greater freedom of research, greater professional recognition, the open society and more material rewards.
The push-out factors in post-colonial Ghana or Kenya have included less freedom, limited openness, relative lack of professional recognition and worsening rewards for hard work.
When I was a professor in East Africa in the early years of independence, my salary at Makerere in Uganda - though worth less than $10,000 a year ,enabled me to look after my family, hire a cook in my home, employ an ayah for my children, a "house-girl" to house-keep, a gardener and a driver.
No professor's salary in East Africa today is capable of creating so many other jobs for the domestic workers of the country. Better paid professional workers like lecturers and professors are not only better motivated, they also help to create additional jobs in other sectors of the economy.
A highly motivated professional worker does not sit back because he has given employment to other wananchi (citizens). During my 10 years at Makerere University, I wrote and published seven books and dozens of scholarly articles.
In those days, a full professor's salary was the equivalent of the salary of a Permanent Secretary both in Kenya and Uganda. Since then, the value of the shilling in each of the East African countries has drastically declined. But even worse for the educational system, the rank order of university staff has been allowed to go down. University teachers and non-academic staff are valued less and rewarded less than they were in the first decade of independence.
Yet the burdens on those university staff have become heavier. Because of the population expansion, our classes are much larger, the demands of grading papers more extensive, the dormitories are more overcrowded.
Because the value of pay packages has gone down, most university staff need other sources of income - little additional jobs here and there. A kind of Academic Jua Kali.
This diversion of scholars from research is disastrous for the quality of our scholarship. There is far less time for research, less time for keeping up with the literature of one's field, less time for updating the quality of one's lectures, and of course less time for writing and research.
The days when an African professor could publish at least one book every three years seem to have receded into history. This has resulted in an enormous cost to the quality of East African scholarship. International recognition of the quality of our degrees is also at serious risk.
Domestic fountains of knowledge
We need to remember that while primary education is the foundation of learning, higher education is the fountain of knowledge. To ensure that primary education maintains its quality, we must ensure that higher levels of education are sustained as centres of excellence. By underpaying and marginalising university staff, we run the risk of drying out our own domestic fountains of knowledge.
This great country of ours does not deserve second and third rate universities. Let us mobilise our national resources to ensure that the whole pyramid of education from top to bottom has well supported students, well rewarded teachers, well motivated non-academic staff and truly committed wananchi.
But we must not leave the issue of resources only to the Government and the Kenya taxpayer. The private sector needs to be more involved in the rehabilitation and consolidation of quality education. We should find ways of activating and arousing the interest of commerce and industry in certain projects of the university.
Prof Mazrui is the Chancellor of the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology.
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