Improving Higher Education Research at African Universities: The Study Programme on Higher Education Management in Africa

Abstract

To close the gap created by the absence of African scholarly input into the search for solutions to the African higher education crisis of the late 1980s, the Association of African Universities set up a Study Programme for Higher Education Management in Africa to develop local capacity for undertaking systematic research on issues of higher education policy and management, and increase the indigenous knowledge base of African higher education policy-making. The broad perspectives of this Programme could not all be met immediately. African researchers working on higher education issues had to be identified. These reasearchers had to be given technical training and financial support to enable them to improve the quality of their work and to promote greater dissemination thereof. Another concern was to foster relationships among such researchers and eventually have them exposed to the data of established higher education researchers and institutions in Africa and elsewhere. The author continues the discussion with a focus on a Research Grants Scheme established in 1993 and mentions the focus of the first batch of projects under the scheme. The majority of grant recipients were not specialist in higher education research, therefore there was a heavy emphasis on research training. The release of transches of the grant was therefore conditioned upon attendance at training seminars and workshops organised as part of the programme. The chapter describes the type of training workshops that were offered as part of the programme. The research themes are mentioned as well as the value that these research reports have towards the understanding of higher education in Africa.