Ishmael I. Munene – författare

In the face of increasing social demand and cutbacks in state budgetary support, universities in African countries are now turning towards a multicampus system strategy. As African governments have adopted neoliberal education policies that place premium on entrepreneurialism, profit making, privatization, and markets as drivers of university development, a reshaping of the academic work and organizational framework have taken place. However, little is known about the impact of this paradigm shift on access, quality and governance in higher education. This book fills the void in research and academic knowledge about the impact of the emerging university configurations in Africa. It analyzes the paradox surrounding the performance of multicampus university systems as avenues of broadening university access but whose structural success may be qualitatively contested.This book offers a refreshing examination of the African multicampus university system from both an African and global perspective. It makes use of empirical data from Kenya collected during extensive fieldwork along with substantive library and documentary resources on the rest of the continents to fortify arguments and demonstrate important conclusions. This allows for a comparative analysis of policies and strategies used in the establishment of campuses, both within and beyond national boundaries in the continent, and will be a welcome contribution to the existing repertoire on African universities.

This book addresses the troubling dearth of knowledge that many American undergraduate students have about Africa. Many scholars with research interest in Africa are caught by surprise at the superficial knowledge that students bring to their classrooms; it is a knowledge base that is bereft of an insightful analytical framework of the pertinent issues just as it is deprived of a well-informed historical context of the events. There is no mistaking of the import the mass media and neighborhood folklore in shaping the students' perception about the realities of Africa's developments. Mitigating these effects requires access to a college-level introductory textbook on Africa covering a gamut of themes that are germane to the contemporary realities of the continent. It is a textbook that does not romanticize Africa, but addresses the persistent stereotypes that characterize issues about the region. The book does so in two significant ways. First, it offers a refreshing examination of African issues from an afrocentric perspective. This allows the writers to present issues from which they have practical experience, and for the reader to examine them from insider scholarship. Second, it provides an opportunity for scholars and readers to analyze the issues from an interdisciplinary perspective. Interdisciplinarity is a testament that issues are complex and no single discipline can sufficiently address them. A combination of these two approaches ensures that the book does not develop into a limited and parochial view of issues. The themes covered in the book include: disciplinary perspectives in African studies, ethnocentricism in teaching human geography of Africa, and topics of geography, religion and spirituality, mathematics, psychology, government and public policy, the transformation of higher education, rural development, communication and socio-economic development, culture and decision making styles all as they relate to Africa.

In the face of increasing social demand and cutbacks in state budgetary support, universities in African countries are now turning towards a multicampus system strategy. As African governments have adopted neoliberal education policies that place premium on entrepreneurialism, profit making, privatization, and markets as drivers of university development, a reshaping of the academic work and organizational framework have taken place. However, little is known about the impact of this paradigm shift on access, quality and governance in higher education. This book fills the void in research and academic knowledge about the impact of the emerging university configurations in Africa. It analyzes the paradox surrounding the performance of multicampus university systems as avenues of broadening university access but whose structural success may be qualitatively contested.This book offers a refreshing examination of the African multicampus university system from both an African and global perspective. It makes use of empirical data from Kenya collected during extensive fieldwork along with substantive library and documentary resources on the rest of the continents to fortify arguments and demonstrate important conclusions. This allows for a comparative analysis of policies and strategies used in the establishment of campuses, both within and beyond national boundaries in the continent, and will be a welcome contribution to the existing repertoire on African universities.

Using the Education for All (EFA) global movement as the setting, this book surveys the complex labyrinths of international education policy making, the design and implementation of system-wide educational reform, and the assessment of learning outcomes in the African context. It addresses the following questions: what does it mean for African states to reform their educational systems to meet the global agenda of Education for All and the Millennium Development Goals? Under what structural conditions have African governments implemented universal primary education programs, and with what outcomes? What are the lessons learned and how do these inform the post-2015 agenda for universal primary education in Africa and other developing countries? This book provides answers to these questions and opens the possibilities for new approaches to Education for All in the context of constrained resources, unstable political climates, and the agency of local communities. It is undeniable that African governments responded to the educational goals espoused in EFA and MDG paradigms through their own “education for all” plans and expended vast resources to realize these objectives. However, there remains a serious gap in knowledge about the design of these plans, the influence of local and international forces in their development, the challenges inherent in executing comprehensive and multifaceted reforms to achieve these goals, and the success of the reform measures as evident in student learning outcomes. This book addresses this knowledge gap in three ways. First, it utilizes empirical data collected over a five-year period from six African countries—Kenya, Mali, Senegal, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda—to illuminate how the global agenda on education has been debated, designed, and implemented across the continent, and with what outcomes. Second, it frames the six nation case studies within the wider logic of international educational policy agenda and the continent-wide search for education quality. Finally, the analysis of universal primary education strategies is undertaken from an interdisciplinary perspective thereby allowing a more comprehensive view of the educational reform.

Contextualizing and Organizing Contingent Faculty: Reclaiming Academic Labor in Universities seeks to develop a counterculture that eschews the neoliberal ideology and interloping market values in higher education. More than merely lamenting the disruptive effects of these marketplace values in higher education institutions, it develops both theoretical insights and practical organizing strategies pertinent to challenging new academic-capitalist values and behaviors. Contributors, local and international, present cases from various institutions to illuminate how national trends concerning contingent faculty are articulated, implemented, and challenged at the local level. They present organizing strategies which are analyzed from an interdisciplinary perspective, providing a thorough and comprehensive view of the contingent labor movement. This book will provide useful lessons to a broad array of audiences in universities, labor movements, and national and local governments.

Ensuring All Children Learn: Lessons from the South on What Works in Equity and Inclusion brings together a rich tapestry of cases from three southern continents focusing on issues germane to the access, learning, and retention in basic education in the context of Education for All (EFA). It is a narrative of both the disappointment that the implementation of EFA did not go as envisaged and of policy alternatives and hopes for a brighter future. The focus on Africa, Asia, and Latin America permits the reader to appreciate both the diversity of issues central to EFA and the physical spread of the challenges. The book confirms that whereas southern countries have adopted EFA as an overall policy goal, empirical evidence from the case studies uncovers critical lapses in policies and strategies. Four key issues inform the thematic analysis in the book: the overall experience in implementing EFA, the specific challenges faced, the lessons learned, and prospects for the future. The solutions to these challenges provide avenues for the attainment of basic education for all school-eligible children in tandem with the UN Sustainable Development Goal 4 on education.