Understanding the Higher Education Market in Africa


Book Description

This book offers theoretical and practical insights into the marketing of higher education in Africa. It explores the key players, challenges and policies affecting higher education across the continent; their marketing strategies and the students’ selection process. While acknowledging the vast size of the continent, this book aims to provide an understanding of the dynamics of higher education in Africa. This book recognises the private and government involvement in higher education provision and students and staff as stakeholders in the marketisation process. Strategic efforts are directed by universities to attract prospective students. This book further addresses issues such as the responses of higher education sectors to the notion of markets and marketing; consumerism and competition in higher education in Africa; conceptions of the commodification of higher education in Africa; and the dominance of Western epistemologies and their influence in transforming higher education sectors. Students as consumers in increasingly marketised higher education sectors in Africa are also discussed. Though primarily for marketing students and academic researchers, the book's feature of blended theoretical and practical knowledge means that it will also be of interest to marketing practitioners and university managers.




Strategic Marketing of Higher Education in Africa


Book Description

Strategic Marketing of Higher Education in Africa explores higher education marketing themes along the lines of understanding higher education markets, university branding and international marketing strategies, digital marketing, and student choice-making. The Higher Education landscape around the world is changing. There is global competition for students’ enrolments, universities are competing within their home market as well as in the international market, and as government funding for public universities is reducing there is pressure on universities to seek additional income by increasing their student enrolment. African universities are not an exception in this competitive market. This book is unique in providing a composite overview of strategic marketing and brand communications of higher education institutions in Africa. It recognises that there is a growing need for universities to understand the stakeholders and develop strategies on how best to engage with them effectively. Highlighting the unique characteristics, nature, and challenges of African universities, this book explores the marketisation strategies of African universities, with focus on the strategic digital marketing and brand management. The book provides significant theoretical and marketing practice implications for academics, higher-education administrators, and practitioners on how best to market higher education in Africa and reach out to prospective students. International practitioners aiming to market to Africans and start a partnership with an African university will also find this relevant in understanding the dynamics of the African market.




Linking Higher Education and Economic Development


Book Description

Finland, South Korea and the state of North Carolina in the United States are three systems that successfully have harnessed higher education in their economic development initiatives. Common to the success of all these systems is, amongst others, the link between economic and education planning, quality public schooling, high tertiary participation rates with institutional differentiation, labour market demand, cooperation and networks, and consensus about the importance of higher education for development. Linking higher education and economic development: Implications for Africa from three successful systems draws together evidence on the three systems, synthesises the key findings, and distils the implications for African countries. The project on which the book is based forms part of a larger study on Universities and Economic Development in Africa, undertaken by the Higher Education Research and Advocacy Network in Africa (HERANA). HERANA is co-ordinated by the Centre for Higher Education Transformation in South Africa.




Understanding Higher Education


Book Description

Drawing on the South African case, this book looks at shifts in higher education around the world in the last two decades. In South Africa, calls for transformation have been heard in the university since the last days of apartheid. Similar claims for quality higher education to be made available to all have been made across the African continent. In spite of this, inequalities remain and many would argue that these have been exacerbated during the Covid pandemic. Understanding Higher Education responds to these calls by arguing for a social account of teaching and learning by contesting dominant understandings of students as decontextualised learners premised on the idea that the university is a meritocracy. This book tackles the issue of teaching and learning by looking both within and beyond the classroom. It looks at how higher education policies emerged from the notion of the knowledge economy in the newly democratic South Africa, and how national qualification frameworks and other processes brought the country more closely into conversation with the global order. The effects of this on staffing and curriculum structures are considered alongside a proposition for alternative ways of understanding the role of higher education in society.




Development of Higher Education in Africa


Book Description

This volume of the International Perspectives on Education and Society series investigates the challenges and prospects for higher education in Africa, especially issues of development, expansion, internationalization, equity, and divergence.




Knowledge Production and Contradictory Functions in African Higher Education


Book Description

Reviews "This volume brings together excellent scholarship and innovative policy discussion to demonstrate the essential role of higher education in the development of Africa and of the world at large. Based on deep knowledge of the university system in several African countries, this book will reshape the debate on development in the global information economy for years to come. It should be mandatory reading for academics, policy-makers and concerned citizens, in Africa and elsewhere.” Manuel Castells, Professor Emeritus, University of California at Berkeley, Laureate of the Holberg Prize 2012 and of the Balzan Prize 2013 "The dominant global discourse in higher education now focuses on ‘world-class’ universities – inevitably located predominantly in North America, Europe and, increasingly, East Asia. The rest of the world, including Africa, is left to play ‘catch-up’. But that discourse should focus rather on the tensions, even contradictions, between ‘excellence’ and ‘engagement’ with which all universities must grapple. Here the African experience has much to offer the high-participation and generously resourced systems of the so-called ‘developed’ world. This book offers a critical review of that experience, and so makes a major contribution to our understanding of higher education.” Sir Peter Scott, former editor of Times Higher Education and Professor of Higher Education Studies, University College London, Institute of Education




Higher Education Marketing in Africa


Book Description

This book explores the key players, challenges and policies affecting higher education in Africa. It also explores the marketing strategies and the students’ selection process, providing theoretical and practical insights into education marketing in Africa. In particular, it focuses on the competition for students. The growing number of student enrolments, the public sector’s inability to meet the ever-increasing demands and new private universities springing up mean that it is essential for universities to identify their market and effectively communicate their messages. Although there has been substantial theoretical research to help shed light on students’ choices and universities' marketing strategies, little work has been undertaken on higher education in the African context. Filling that gap in the research, while at the same time acknowledging the regional differences in Africa, this book offers empirical insights into the higher education market across the continent.




Higher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa in the 21st Century


Book Description

This book contributes to the understanding of regional and global perspectives on the development and challenges the higher education sector in sub-Saharan Africa faces in the era of globalization. It focuses on the critical aspects of the higher education sector in the Global South, with a particular emphasis on sub-Saharan Africa. It brings together empirical, theoretical and philosophical perspectives from researchers in some of the leading universities in sub-Saharan Africa. The book highlights the higher education sector’s stages of growth and development and the contemporary challenges it faces in aligning its goals and capacity globally, and maintaining its image and public identity locally. This book covers neoliberal educational reforms, leadership and governance, pedagogy, technology, the global knowledge economy, and digital advancement. It delves into how the nature and practice of learning, teaching, research, and community engagement as core functions of higher education are re-oriented to contribute to societal transformation in Africa. Further, the book discusses the implications of contemporary issues in higher education: internationalization, employability, leadership and management, and accountability and autonomy in teaching, research, and community engagement.




Sharing Higher Education's Promise beyond the Few in Sub-Saharan Africa


Book Description

Despite a spectacular expansion of the higher education sector in Sub-Saharan Africa, the supply of tertiary education has generally failed to keep pace with demand and the region continues to lag all other regions in terms of access to tertiary education. This is in part a consequence of deeply entrenched patterns of inequitable access to higher education, and the perpetuation of what researchers refer to as “elite systems†?. To date, access to tertiary education in Sub-Saharan Africa has unduly benefitted students drawn from the region’s wealthiest households, and overall enrollment remains disproportionately male, and metropolitan. These factors stifle the catalytic potential of higher education, corroding its potential for driving economic growth and sustaining poverty reduction. Instead, patterns of access to tertiary education have generally reinforced and reproduced social inequality, instead of eroding its pernicious social and economic effects. This report aims to inform an improved understanding of equity in tertiary enrollment in Sub-Saharan African countries, and to examine the extent to which inequity functions as a bottleneck inhibiting the ability of African universities to effectively drive improvements in overall quality of life and economic competitiveness. In our survey of the evidence, we also aim to identify which policies most effectively address the challenge of promoting equity of access in SSA tertiary education systems. In order to achieve these objectives, the report collects, generates and analyzes empirical evidence on patterns of equity, examines the underlying causes of inequity, and evaluates government policies for addressing inequity.




The Challenge of Change in Africa's Higher Education in the 21st Century


Book Description

The Challenge of Change in Africa's Higher Education in the 21st Century brings the reader face to face with the mega challenges and key opportunities in Africa's higher education sector in the twenty-first century. Mwenda and Muuka are two of Africa's emergent scholars, with 20 published books and over 100 articles published in peer-reviewed journals between them as of 2008. Authors who are diverse in their knowledge and experience of the complexities of education in Africa join Mwenda and Muuka in this treatise, which traverses the higher education milieu on the continent from Cape Town in South Africa to Lagos in Nigeria. Stated simply, those who have long called for a new generation of scholars on education in Africa will find a healthy and refreshing answer in The Challenge of Change in Africa's Higher Education in the 21st Century. The motivation for this book was the editors' recognition of gaps in the current understanding of higher education in Africa. The book has clear advantages and defining features over other books on higher education on the continent in the following respects. The Challenge of Change in Africa's Higher Education in the 21st Century is a book written from and with twenty-first century realities, making it a significant addition to the continuing and urgent search for solutions to the continent's development dilemma. It is therefore critical reading and research material for many stakeholders including students, professors, universities, and research libraries on the one hand and higher education ministries in Africa on the other. The role of international development agencies and non-governmental organizations towards enhancement of higher education in Africa cannot be overemphasized.