Pity the University Students and Graduates
Everyone knows by now that Zimbabwe’s education has deteriorated to levels that will be tough to reverse without any radical policy changes. Other commentators have however opined that until there is a new political dispensation, we cannot expect any real change for the better, which could in effect rather ominously mean these woes will be with us indefinitely – of course with the post-September 2008 political power games being read as pointers to predict the country’s future. Others have pointed at the diamond windfall as just what the doctor ordered to fix the abject education and health services, but inveterate pessimists who know gemstones in the hands of an African politician are not holding their breath.
There still is unabated brains flight in the country’s once awed institutions of higher learning as academics apply for or are offered staff development programmes outside the country but never return to their varsities. And with good reason, some would say. Meanwhile, students who graduate with what have been mocked as unbaked degrees return as teaching assistants, something that would be frowned upon by serious academics. But then this can be found all over the whole education sector here where unqualified teachers are taking children for their O’ and A’ level classes and straight to university!
As we speak, for the umpteenth time the opening of some varsities has been pushed further and some students are already saying they are imagining the academic year may well begin in December when classes should have begun this month. I know a number of National University of Science and Technology students who have left for South Africa as they say they cannot just sit and wait for the unknown. While they have said they will be coming as soon as they are informed that classes have started, such stories have been heard before with many abandoning their studies altogether after having found jobs during their sojourn. All this despite the fact that once upon a time getting an opportunity to study at university was literally embraced with both hands as it was a guarantee that one was set for life. Now students abandon their studies without any second thoughts, after all they are failing to pay their fees, so why pay the exorbitant fees only to have lecturers absent from their posts? It makes sense then to exchange one’s academic cap for hustling in the mean streets of Johannesburg when a degree ought to provide one with a middle class lifestyle – at least in a normal economy.
Zimbabwean students themselves attending university here are witnessing how standards have gone down and one quipped that while some are quitting their studies and complain that they is no learning going on to give weight and meaning to “degree”, she will stick it out as long as in the end she gets that piece of paper that says she went to university and has “qualifications.” But the circumstances of young people who have university education become heart-rending when other countries we always thought viewed our education with awe become “suspicious” of these university degrees and have second thoughts about employing a Zimbabwean graduate.
A young man told a sad story recently about how his “degree” failed to get him a job in South Africa. You see, he got a degree from one of the “state universities” that were once teacher training institutions, but prospective employers in South Africa told him they did not recognise his institution and therefore his degree. He reports he was told the only Zimbabwean degree these people would accept would be from the University of Zimbabwe, but also with reservations. And their reasons? There is no meaningful education going on in Zimbabwe’s universities! How’s that coming from a bunch of people whose education standards is something people here have always mocked? Now the young man is back in the country clueless about what to do with his future despite having invested four years of his life studying toward his now useless degree. The superiority of Zimbabwean education is no doubt under scrutiny not just among Zimbabweans themselves, but also in the region if not across the globe and the unfortunate part is that young people who enter university and those who acquire other tertiary qualifications have their sights set on regional and overseas job markets as there are no employment opportunities here to match their “qualifications.” So where does that leave them? Skills development is no doubt every nation’s richest investment that overlaps generations but Zimbabwe’s circumstances raise the spectre of diminished returns, after all students are already virtually teaching each other and graduates being produced out of those “interactions.” The list of top 500 universities in the world was released recently and some watchers did not even bother to check where ours are placed.