Description
Book SynopsisA comprehensive assessment of universities and higher education in Africa south of the Sahara.The authors draw on their experience from both Francophile and Anglophile Africa, and from teaching both in the sciences and the arts. North America: Ohio U Press; Ghana: Association of African Universities
Trade ReviewThe universities are in a state of crisis. Those teachers who can, flee abroad, while students crowd into slum-like institutions that can no longer teach them adequately. It is a crisis the authors foresee lasting into the next century. But they still feel there are strategies of reconstruction that can save the universities, notably by persuading their governments that they can be agents for national development, offering particularly the communications and managerial skills still in short supply in Africa. But they insist that academic freedom and university autonomy must be restored. -- Christopher Fyfe * THE TIMES HIGHER EDUCATIONAL SUPPLEMENT *
...a judicious overview of a large, if depressing subject, by eminent scholars who are not afraid to criticise their own colleagues as well as governments and outside agencies. * JOURNAL OF AFRICAN HISTORY *
It has...the great merit of placing the history of African higher education firmly in its international context. It is well written and manages to present a vast amount of information, including statistics, in an interesting and meaningful way. It is, finally, a book with a strong pedagogical bias where the lessons of history the reader expected (a firm condemnation of the imperial era and its neo-colonial sequel) are complemented by higher considerations derived from an objective assessment of the workings of the African academic world. -- Aline Cook * FRANCOPHONE AFRICA *
Table of ContentsAntecedents - before 1900; colonialism and higher education; decolonization and higher education 1945-60; the politics of independence and higher education 1960-70; the association of African universities; higher education and African development 1970s and 1980s; issues and problems of the 1990s; towards the 21st century; the mission of the university reviewed; new expectations and reorientations; the outreach.
