Tanzanian Education in the Nineties: beyond the diploma disease

Abstract

In the 1970s, policies restricting the growth of post‐primary education and guaranteeing government employment for the few graduates limited the spread of the ‘diploma disease’ in Tanzania. The economic crisis of the 1980s meant growing underfund‐ing of education, which, combined with bureaucratic inefficiency and corruption, has led to the collapse of educational quality. Consequently, the majority rural poor have increasingly turned away from formal schooling, while the urban middle class continue to compete through education for the limited number of modem‐sector jobs. Liberalisation has resulted in rapid informalisation of the economy and the shrinkage of the public sector. But, just as previous reforms were unsuccessful in promoting rural development, so the present education system is incapable of promoting self‐employment in the informal sector. Dore predicted that, as a ‘late developer’, Tanzania would suffer an acute attack of certification sickness. That the symptoms are only now appearing among a relatively small segment of the population suggests, perhaps, that Tanzania is an even later developer than Dore imagined.