Africa can’t wait until 2030 for the next round of United Nations Global Goals to address the urgent need for quality higher education. Despite including higher ed targets within Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 4.3, 4.9, and 17, these goals do not address the critical need for quality higher ed in the region. Rather they center on incremental development, enrollment rates, unsustainable practices and international dependency.
African higher education doesn’t have time to linger on ineffective policies. UNESCO warns that, by 2025, 258 million Africans will reach the higher education enrollment age. If this explosive student-age population growth could be channeled into higher education, national development across Africa would greatly benefit. However, if the international community continues its incremental development approach, prioritizing basic education before higher ed development, the region’s innate talent pool will remain untapped. Within the SDG’s 2015-2030 policy cycle only target 4.C offers hope for the mutual development of basic and higher education. Aid agencies and national governments should seize the opportunities within SDG 4.C to build of the capacity of Africa’s higher education institutes.
The education development community’s tendency toward incremental development rests on the argument that basic education should be prioritized because it is a prerequisite to higher education. Nonetheless, in 2008, UNESCO reported that across Sub-Saharan Africa there was a gap between the secondary school completion rate (27 percent) and tertiary gross enrollment rate (GER) (6 percent). This disparity signals that among students with the prerequisites for higher ed, access is urgently needed.
Incrementalists argue that higher education is a private good, with a relatively low rate of return on public funds invested. On the contrary, the societal benefits of higher education are positive externalities that spill over as the national GER rises. World Bank economists report that higher ed increases salaries, savings, tax revenue, employment rates, social cohesion and technological catch-up. Higher ed stems brain drain, bolsters institutions, lowers corruption, and improves health.
These benefits can only be imparted to a society that widely participates in quality higher education, where quality is defined by faculty, facilities, and curriculum conditions. Considering the need for higher ed development and its societal benefits, SDG 4.3 and 4.9 mistakenly delays developing quality higher in favor of enrollments rates, unsustainable practices and international dependency.
Target 4.3 aspires to “ensure equal access for all women and men to affordable and quality [higher education].” The goal of increasing access is noble, for in 2012 the Organisation for Economic Co‑operation and Development’s average GER was 32 percent, while Sub-Saharan Africa’s was only 8 percent. Separated by gender, GER was 8 percent for men and only 5 percent for women. The problem with target 4.3 is that its three enrollment rate indicators do not explicitly measure gender equality. Since the indicators are the measures of success, they are more important than the target’s vague wording.
The discrepancy between the target’s wording and indicators suggests that supporting gender equality is just rhetoric. Target 4.3’s three indicators focus on enrollment rates instead of quality outcomes. In developing regions, the barrier to “affordable and quality” higher education is not just access, it is supply. Given that gender equality isn’t measured, indicators are entirely quantitative, and “affordable and quality” are touted irrespective of reality. Target 4.3 is only paying lip service to quality higher education development.
