Maquinaria para la perforación o percusión

The World Bank’s working paper on the Malawian education system attributed the high unit costs of higher education student to several factors: first, small student-teacher ratio (of 11, vs. SADC average of 17 and SSA average of 20). Malawi had one of the lowest university enrolment rate (average of 51 per 100,000 inhabitants; with male students double that of female, i.e., 70 vs. 33) in the SSA region. Most of the qualified students cannot enter university

education94because of limited university places, which was caused by limited accommodation. Because of the unavailability of other accommodation options, universities had to bear the costs of providing hostels, food and other living allowances. Spending for student provisions and allowances (see Table 5-4) far exceeded the tuition fee (of MK25,000) paid by residential students. In the opinion of the Director of Higher Education, the post-independence link of university places and accommodation was unsustainable:

The trouble with our university acts is that they link selection to the number of beds available. If the beds are one thousand, we can only take one thousand students. But we want to move away from there. We want the universities to outsource these services so the universities are not involved in offering bed space to students, giving them food, you know, companies should do that. So that now we can take in more students. But there must be available accommodation for these people to rent. Like Malawi Housing Cooperation has now built an apartment in Zomba for students to rent. And that’s what we want! So if you have money, go and build one. Our students would rent! That’s the way we want to move forward. We’ve outsourced catering, so that people expert in food industry should provide food

94

For 2011/12 academic year, 7791 candidates wrote the University Entrance Examination and 6615 (85%) passed. However, only 2379 (36%) were accepted based on the quota system. UNIMA claimed this was an increase from a 25% acceptance rate in past years (University of Malawi, 2011).

for the students. So that when the food is bad, they don’t go to the Principal of the College. So let the Principal concentrate on the core business: teaching and learning, research, outreach and consultancy. That’s what the university should be concentrating on! But right now they’re spending more of their effort chasing food, strikes from these labourers, carpenters... all those should be outsourced!

To increase enrolment figure, MZUNI and three (out of five) colleges95of UNIMA had increased its intake of non-residential (or ‘parallel’) students96. As a result, total university enrolment almost doubled from 4,659 (in 2003) to 9,081 (in 2008), with most growth coming from increased intake of non-residential

students. However, the CoM still maintained a policy of enrolling only residential students because of the need for practice-based learning. Students needed to travel frequently between the teaching hospital and the campus, both for study purposes and on-call duties (see quote below). Interviews with the

administration office of the CoM showed non-residential programme as not immediately feasible, though it was said that this policy could be considered for academic years with no on-call duties. Whilst the college was building more bed spaces with funding from the Norwegian government, the fundamental

problems associated with residential programmes remained unsolved: i.e., high private rental and transport costs. Capacity building in higher education perhaps has to go hand-in-hand with capacity building in supporting areas, e.g.,

expanding private housing and improving the public transport system. Otherwise, the universities have to continue paying for students’ accommodation.

Our medical students go on call. And therefore it may not be feasible to have non-residential students. Considering that the transport

95

The CoM and Kamuzu College of Nursing did not enrol non-residential students.

96

Unlike residential students, non-residential students did not get free accommodation within university campuses. They also paid full tuition fees (MK300,000, vs. MK25,000 paid by

residential students), their own food and other living expenses, because they were not eligible to apply for university loans.

infrastructure in Blantyre is not good, a student cannot live ten kilometres away and be on-call and leave at 10pm, because by 10pm there’s no transportation within Blantyre.

Dean of Undergraduate Study

The second factor quoted in the World Bank’s report was the high salary received by the university lecturers. Malawi paid its university lecturers 65.8 units of GDP per capita, which was 2.7 times higher than the average in seven countries with GDP per capital lower than USD500 (in 2007)97. Emoluments and benefits constituted 60% of the unit costs (see Table 5-4). Even so, salary

remained an important factor for staff attrition because Malawian salaries were still far lower than those in wealthier countries (see section 6.4 for comparison of lecturer salaries between different countries).

Actual cost per student (in MK)

Percentage

Emoluments and benefits 404,965 60

Student provisions/ allowances 47,594 7.1

Teaching materials/ equipment 6,519 1

Books and periodicals 1,374 0.2

Common services (represents general administration)

96,899 14.4

Table 5-4. Unit cost and percentage (2006/07 statistics) by expenditure category at UNIMA. Taken from (World Bank, 2010c).

The third factor causing high unit costs was the lack of cost-sharing (from students) and the dysfunctional cost recovery mechanism in the higher

education sector in Malawi. Because of merit-based enrolment, the universities enrolled a large proportion of their students from private secondary schools. Students attending these expensive secondary schools mostly come from well- to-do families, who could actually afford to pay for their children’s university

education. According to World Bank statistics, 90% of the university students were from the wealthiest 20% of the country. At the same time, student loans were only eligible for residential students but not for non-residential (including mature entry students, who were denied residential status), non-degree tertiary programmes (e.g. TEVET) or private university students. In other words, funding was concentrated on just a small number of public university residential students, who could most probably afford to pay the full tuition fee anyway. On top of this, the lack of an enforcement system resulted in slow and inefficient loan recovery. It was said (by a local online daily newspaper) that UNIMA students owed MK850 million. Regarding this issue, the University Finance Office said the solution was to let a domestic private bank to take charge of loan recovery. The rationale was that this bank was used by many Malawians thus it should be more effective in tracing indebted students.

Recognising cost-sharing as an essential step forward, the government planned to reduce its contribution to the unit costs. Student fees were planned to be increased from 0% (1997) to 47% in 2012 (Government of Malawi, 2000a). In the academic year 2011/12, the university declared a fee hike for residential

students from MK25,000 to MK80,000 (equivalent to a 220% increase). However, this decision was later revoked by the (late) President, who was also the

Chancellor of UNIMA, following protests from students, political leaders and civil society organisations. As a result, cost-sharing was difficult to implement

because it was politically unfavourable.

The next strategy attempted was the ‘quota’ system (or ‘equitable access to education policy’, as called by the government), which was applied for the first time for the 2010/11 academic year intake (Nyasa Times, 2011b). Under this system, each one of the 28 districts would be offered 10 university places98. After the first 280 places were filled up, the remaining places were open for merit- based competition. This policy also soon became political. It was criticised as a

discriminatory against the northerners, who currently outperformed their

southern counterparts academically. Because of the identity of the late President as a southerner, the northerners felt the decision was made based on

favouritism99. However, this decision was opposed not only by the northerners but also by the universities. There were worries about the quota system

absorbing students who could not perform in the university. In the CoM, the one-year pre-medical course is supposed to eliminate the inequality caused by different qualities in secondary education. There was concern that this could not be done if the inequality was too large100. Students from poor quality secondary schools were said to be weak in science subjects because of the unavailability of laboratory equipment in the schools. Eventually, the quota policy went through despite public and university resistance. However, this decision was reversed by the new President in July 2012, barely two years into implementation101.

To fundamentally solve the tension between costs, equity and quality of

university education, the government vowed to build five new universities in ten years102. At the time of fieldwork, the government had managed to source funding for only one university (which would be based in Thyolo). Therefore, it is unknown how practical or how quickly this promise could be materialised. From these instances, it is evident that educational policies are greatly influenced by domestic politics. In a way, these highly volatile political decisions had forced the

99

Words like ‘extinction’ was used to describe political discrimination imposed by the late President Bingu wa Mutharika towards northerners (Nyasa Times, 2011a).

100

Pre-medical programme was created to prepare students before entering first years, with special focus on areas under-studied at secondary level e.g. science, English and computer skills. Because of the lack of A-level programmes in the country, most students were enrolled based on MSCE (O-level equivalent) results. To compensate their lack of science knowledge, students who wished to enter CoM programmes needed to do the first two years of study in a science

programme at Chancellor College.

101

Joyce Banda took over Presidency from Bingu wa Mutharika, following the sudden death of the latter in April 2012. For the news of Banda scrapping the university quota system, see (University World News, 2012b).

102

A statement made by the President, Dr Bingu wa Mutharika, on the occasion of the state opening of the 2010/22 budget meeting of the Malawi Parliament (Government of Malawi, 2010).

individual institutions to look for their own ways for financial survival. In Chapters 6 and 7, CoM’s survival strategies through cost cutting (e.g. sharing resources using servicing departments) and income generation (e.g. research and consultancy) will be discussed.