Financing tertiary education under fiscal stress in Botswana

ABSTRACT

Developing countries place a high premium on education because it is believed to correlate with economic development. Similarly, Botswana adopted an education-for-development policy when it became independent in 1966. Providentially, it discovered and mined minerals, particularly diamonds, and funded education. Unfortunately, Botswana is a diamonds-led economy and suffered revenue losses due to the global economic crisis. Cutback budgeting became imperative and one of the questions that arose was; who should pay for tertiary education? While the government continues to fund it, calls for alternative financing models have arisen. While the call is legitimate in a resource-limited environment, this article argues that there is a need to interrogate the present financing model to improve it before embarking on new initiatives. Finally, while this case study is Botswana-specific, lessons can be drawn for resource- strained African countries. That is, it is vital to interrogate existing models before thinking of new ones.     

Narrative inquiry into (re)imagining alternative schools: a case study of Kevin Gonzales

Although there are many alternative schools that strive for the successful education of their students, negative images of alternative schools persist. While some alternative schools are viewed as ‘idealistic havens’, many are viewed as ‘dumping grounds’ or ‘juvenile detention centers’. Employing narrative inquiry, this article interrogates how a student, Kevin Gonzales, experiences his alternative education and raises questions about the role of alternative schools. Kevin Gonzales’s story is presented in a literary form of biographical journal to provide a ‘metaphoric loft’ that helps us imagine other students like Kevin. This, in turn, provokes us to examine our current educational practice and (re)imagines ways in which alternative education can provide the best possible educational experiences for disenfranchised students who are increasingly underserved by the public education system.     

The state,markets and higher education reform in Botswana

Market forces are being introduced in public spheres such as higher education and public health, which hitherto were closed to such forces. Ironically, it is the state that is responsible for this process of marketisation. Some see this state action as leading to a growing influence of the state in public policy while others see an attenuation of its role. Critiquing this market–state incompatibility thesis from a geo-spatial perspective on globalisation, this paper calls for an articulation of state–market relations that emphasises their interpenetration. Using Botswana as a case study, the paper argues that although on-going tertiary education reforms in the country are characterised by the state's promotion of market forces this does not mean that the state is retreating, leaving the sub-sector to the vagaries of the market. Contrarily, the state is employing marketisation to reform the sub-sector so that it is responsive to labour and skills demands of an economy aspiring to be knowledge-based.     

AID, education and development in Botswana: A qualitative analysis

This paper deals with aid and education in Botswana. Three research questions are posed: is Botswana favoured in terms of the aid it receives; are there features of Botswana that make it attractive to aid donors; and is Botswana a model to other developing countries in the way it uses aid? Data were obtained from published and other sources and from interviews with personnel working for aid agencies and Botswana working for the Government. The atypical nature of Botswana is considered: the answer to the first question is negative and positive to the last two. The lessons drawn from the investigation are that Botswana's performance in deploying aid is exemplary in many ways but that the country is being penalised for her own success. Some of the implications of this are explored and a case is made out for increasing aid to Botswana as it could then serve as an exemplar to the developing world in its use of aid.     

高等教育公益性的现实理性

本文认为研究高等教育公益性应充分考虑高等教育所置身的现实复杂环境,而不能孤立地从理论上进行推演.本文从高等教育公益性内涵、现实价值、面临挑战与实现方式等几个方面对高等教育公益性的现实理性进行了讨论.     

The place of religion in public education

There is a legitimate place for genuine religious education within publicly supported schools in western pluralist democracies. The idea of the single common school is dead or dying in the densely populated parts of the western, English-speaking democracies. Once choice of school is conceded, then the religious school should be a central offering.Religion has a traditional place in most western democracies, eitherde jure orde facto. Further, there is evidence that religious adolescents make at least as good, and probably better, citizens than do those without religion.Finally, the idea of a consensually acceptable secular alternative based on high moral values is no longer tenable. Anything approaching a common school must be bound by minimal values not a high-level set, because there is simply no large set that is universally acceptable and agreed upon. In practice, urban, public schools serving heterogeneous clients rely heavily on exactly such a minimal set.     

Political preferences and public funding of tertiary education during the economic crisis

This article analyses how political preferences, which are co-determined by the beliefs of decision-makers and influences of interest groups and the general public, affect the decisions to maintain or cut public funding for tertiary education during the economic crisis. Our sample included 29 European countries which we divided into two groups depending on the level of public funding for tertiary education before the crisis, which we used as a measure of revealed political preferences. We then observed the differences in changes in public tertiary education funding during the crisis between these two groups of countries using five different indicators. Three of the five indicators show that countries with a stronger political preference for tertiary education public funding cut their spending on tertiary education to a lesser extent (or even increased spending) during the economic crisis.     

论公共教育资源重组和再生的路径选择

公共教育资源配置中各种有违教育公平原则的行为有其天然不合理性,重组势在必行。这就要求结合教育发展的趋势,从重组的理念重塑、结构再造、人力资源、生源与财政资源入手形成路径依赖,消除原有教育资源配置的弊端,完善教育权利保障与权利促进,确保公共教育资源重组及惠及广大弱势群体,实现教育公平和健康发展。     

Adult education and the empowerment of civil society: the case of trade unions in Botswana

The paper examines the potential role of adult education in the empowerment of civil society in Botswana. It shows that adult education can be instrumental in the empowerment of trade unions as organs of civil society in a liberal democracy. It argues that the country's democratic tradition can be sustained by a strong civil society. The paper traces the history of trade unions in Botswana showing that the state has mostly weakened them through legislation. It is contended that individuals participate in trade unions as their mouthpiece when they are in trouble with capital. Most trade union members reported not being aware of adult education activities in Botswana. The paper explores some of the weaknesses of the unions and suggests how adult education provision from adult basic education to adult and continuing education at the university could help to redress the workers' problems. It concludes by mapping out some practical ways in which adult education could empower the unions in Botswana as it has done elsewhere.     

Indigenous tertiary education – we are all learning: both-ways pedagogy in the Northern Territory of Australia

In this new era in tertiary education in Australia, the opportunity exists not only to meet the needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and thus redress low access and participation rates, but also to build a system that privileges Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledges and ways of learning. To be able to do such a thing would require a shared vision and approach from within the institution and across the academy. In Australia, there is one tertiary education provider with the experience and expertise to be able to develop such an approach – Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education (BIITE). BIITE has been engaged in the post-secondary education of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples for over 40 years, evolving from a small vocational programme to become a dual sector provider with over 2700 students from across Australia (BIITE, 2011, p. 21). BIITE's philosophy of adult education is that of both-ways, which has been built from knowledge shared by Aboriginal peoples in the Northern Territory. The methodology presented in this paper extends the both-ways philosophy into a generative framework that has applicability in the many different contexts of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander tertiary education in Australia. It is our intention to generate a broader discussion about this opportunity in tertiary education and shift the discourse from inclusion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students to recognising the knowledges and ways of learning of the first peoples of this land as a strong foundation for the entire nation's learning.     

经合组织教育新况:国际化进程中的投资与收益

全球化和知识经济的发展对高等教育体系提出了新的要求.高等教育系统正经历着重大的变革.在高等教育的管理体制中,教育主管部门应维护人民的利益,确保公共资源在高等院校中得以有效的支配和使用,使得高等教育有助于国家经济和社会发展.在各项政策提议中,重点应放在教育体系与劳动力市场和区域经济的联系上;使得大学与产业的联系能有效地促进研究和创新;参与到与外部利益相关者的制度和体制管理中来保障教育质量;增加院校长期预算中的资金投入;以及与国际化政策接轨.     

Culturally reimagining education: Publicity,aesthetics and socially engaged art practice

Abstract

This paper sets out to reimagine education through a cultural perspective and explores education as a performative practice that establishes certain borders of ‘public’ belonging. Wide-spread debates about the public dimension of schools and universities have focused on how economic rationales need to be replaced with alternative visions of education. This paper seeks to contribute to this revisioning of the public in education by reclaiming education as a specifically cultural endeavour, one tied to practices that are at once both performative and aesthetic. To this end, I draw on theoretical notions of publicity that highlight its performative character. I then offer a reading of a socially engaged art project in order to suggest ways in which this performative character of publicity can be seen to be educational. This paper argues that education itself emerges through various cultural enactments that delineate the contours of who counts as a public and who does not.     

函授教育的质量标准和质量观

1992年全国函授教育在校学员达50万,到了2000年,全国函授教育学生总数达到141.28万人,成为我国高等教育的重要组成部分。函授教育的产生和发展历程证明:函授教育这种传统远程教育是传统教育手段和技术进步整合的产物,也符合人们追求教育的需要,对传承文化、传播知识、扩大教育影响起到了不可估量的作用。如何看待函授教育的质量,关系到函授教育的发展和改革,必须认真加以探讨,本文拟从高师函授教育的发展谈函授教育的质量标准和质量观。     

The rise and attenuation of the basic education programme (BEP) in Botswana: A global–local dialectic approach

Using a global–local dialectic approach, this paper traces the rise of the basic education programme in the 1980s and 1990s in Botswana and its subsequent attenuation in the 2000s. Amongst the local forces that led to the rise of BEP were Botswana's political project of nation-building; the country's dire human resources situation in the decades following Independence in 1966; and its propitious economic climate in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Global forces included the global circulation of the World Bank's educational discourse on the primacy of primary education as a public ‘investment’ option and Botswana's desire to be a member of the influential transnational social structure. BEP's attenuation can similarly be traced back to both local and global forces. Local forces included the growth of youth unemployment, and a sluggish economy. Global forces included the globalization of neo-liberalism which called for cost-sharing/recovery measures, and, ironically, Botswana's ‘promotion’ to a ‘middle income status’ country. While conceptually the attenuation represents a case of policy reversal and in some ways a sense of ‘loss’, empirically, the attenuation has not been of material consequence to access to ‘basic’ education. This is attributed to the ambiguous position (best captured by the term ‘doublethink’) the Botswana government¹ has adopted in relation to the issue of school fees.     

On the distributional impact of public education: evidence from Greece

Household budget survey data and public budget consolidated data for 1987/88 are combined to yield a non-estimation based measure of the benefit of public education outlays in Greece. As expected for a country where education services are provided free of charge and the role of private education is limited, transfers in the fields of primary and secondary education contribute strongly to a decline in inequality. The distributional impact of tertiary education subsidies is shown to be negligible, although indirect evidence suggests that this could well be regressive. [JEL I21, D31]     

Beyond records and representations: inbetween writing in educational ethnography

Ethnographers are particularly interested in writing. They have paid particular attention to the practices of making field notes and to the ways in which their public texts represent those that they have encountered and studied. To date there has been less attention paid to the kinds of writing that used to make sense of experiences in the field. We call this inbetween writing. By examining our own processes of inbetween writing, and drawing on the work of James Clifford, we have produced a nine-part heuristic of inbetween writing. We argue that the heuristic could be used in research methods education to highlight the importance of writing to ethnographic sense-making and knowledge production.     

Approaches to Multicultural Education in Preservice Teacher Education: Philosophical Frameworks and Models for Teaching

The authors in this article connect teacher education to multiple theoretical frameworks around the ongoing debate and issues of multicultural education. Connecting conservative, liberal, and radical theories of multicultural education particularly to preservice teachers, the authors argue that a more eclectic theoretical avenue must be striven and struggled for if there exists any hope in transforming schools, particularly, as they note, in urban environments. Practical avenues are discussed that promote such a multilayered interpretive/analytical approach to social change.     

Mapping the typology of transition systems in a liberal market economy: the case of Canada

This research explores links between tertiary education institutions and between tertiary education and the labour market as determinants of provincial and national transition patterns in Canada. The study consists of a provincial analysis that maps the typology of transition systems across Canada’s devolved federated tertiary education structure. The results show that, nationally: the links between education and work are relatively loose aside from regulated occupations; there is an emphasis on general education; and qualifications are used as a screen for entry to the labour market. However, while Canada can be broadly understood as a liberal market economy, there is provincial diversity within the nation; and there are varying logics for the development of skill, deployment of labour, and relations between institutions. The institutional and policy frameworks, structure of jobs, and formation of skill in Canada’s largest provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec reveal diverse characteristics of transition systems. However, despite internal differentiation in the value of vocational education, variations at the provincial level have not been enough to shift the federal pattern as a whole. Instead, in Canada vocational education is generally stigmatised and viewed as signalling low ability and motivation.     

Whither the Common Good? A Critique of Home Schooling

This analysis shows home schooling to be part of a general trend of elevating private goods over public goods. The discourse around home schooling centers on issues of individual rights and private benefits, rather than the public good. Yet, the public has an interest in education because there are unavoidable aspects of education that make it a public good. However, home schooling denies this public interest. It undermines the common good in two ways. First, it withdraws not only children but also social capital from public schools, to the detriment of the students remaining behind. Second, as an exit strategy, home schooling undermines the ability of public education to improve and become more responsive as a democratic institution. Thus, home schooling is not only a reaction to, but also a cause of, declining public schools. Therefore, it diminishes the potential of public education to serve the common good in a vibrant democracy.     

论高职心理教育的原则、方法和途径

从高职心理教育过程分析可以发现,高职心理教育与普通学校心理教育有共同方面,也有独特之处。作为学校心理教育的一种,高职心理教育也有自己必须坚持的原则。高职心理教育的基本原则具有较强的针对性,心理教育的方法和途径也表现出明显的高职教育特色。