My Story as Multidisciplinary Academic in the Global South

Background: Addressing the Global Education Crisis

There is a global education crisis occurring with little being done to effectively address it. Statistics on participation and availability of teachers show that even middle-income countries, such as Chile, are about 100 years behind average industrialized countries. The PISA educational outcomes for 15-year-olds in a few developing countries confirm this disastrous state of affairs. This article focuses on the role of higher education, which is supposed to generate the leadership to address this global education crisis and other major societal challenges for the Global South.

With inevitable technological disruption, much can be improved at a low cost in higher education today. Curriculum reviews can make programs more relevant and stop the production of unemployable graduates. Weaknesses in program delivery can be addressed by making academic appointments and promotions and student selection merit-based and through online remedial teaching. So why is this not being done?

This is in part the result of a double leadership failure, nationally and internationally. Perverse internal political processes still aim to exclude large parts of the population from higher education. The failure of international leadership and higher education policy-making is largely due to its detached nature. Policymaking seems to have been uninformed about real situations and the potential role of higher education in addressing broader societal challenges. A clear example is the UN Millennium Development Goals for 2015, which did not even mention higher education.

Concerning it is remarkable that many experts in global higher education have never lived or worked at universities in developing countries or the Global South. My case is different. My personal mission became to improve the quality of teaching, research, and governance at universities in the Global South by working shoulder-to-shoulder with local colleagues. Surprisingly, this turned out to be an unconventional choice and set me on a unique career path.

My Story

I started my career conventionally, earning my doctorate in economic history – a hybrid social sciences and humanities discipline – at an excellent university at the age of 30 and publishing my thesis with Cambridge University Press. As a multi-disciplinary researcher, I began my academic career in Costa Rica as an adjunct professor teaching in master's programs at a good public university. Later, I taught courses in several Latin American and Caribbean countries, including Guatemala, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, Turks and Caicos Islands, but also in India and Papua New Guinea. I established cooperation with academics and gave occasional lectures in China, Mexico, Peru, Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, New Caledonia, Fiji, Solomon Islands, and the Marshall Islands.

Uniquely, from 2012 to 2018, I served two terms as Vice-Chancellor of the Papua New Guinea University of Technology and Co-Chair of the National Rector’s Conference, as well as the Pacific Islands Universities Research Network. Before taking up my Vice-Chancellor's role, I had the privilege of working in executive roles at two leading universities in the Netherlands, gaining experience and receiving valuable executive training and coaching.

As Vice-Chancellor, I had to find access to resources abroad because the government had continual cash flow problems and would transfer only 80% of the University's budget on a monthly or bi-monthly basis. Fortunately, I was able to negotiate over 30 international agreements all beneficial to the University of which 12 were with India. With this variety of academic and executive roles, nobody can argue I did not have the opportunity to gain substantial international experience.

At the beginning of my career in 1994, I joined ULACIT in Costa Rica, a reputable private university. Within two years, I was promoted to the rank of Professor, which enabled me to supervise PhD students for their dual degree 3-year doctoral program with Carlos III, a Spanish partner university in Madrid. I worked with them until 2003. However, due to the Spanish university's own weaknesses and failure to promptly implement a Bachelor/Master/Doctoral structure, also known as the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd cycles in the Bologna Process, problems arose in this partnership. Recently, ULACIT withdrew from the partnership and partnered with a Arizona State University, an American university instead.

As an academic in Central America, I taught courses for excellent US-based programs in Central America and the Caribbean, as well as for some of the world's worst universities, to make ends meet. I learned a great deal from both types of experiences.

Often Ignored Lessons-Learned

From an outsider's perspective, universities in the developing world face a triple challenge of massification, increasing research content, and conforming to global standards, despite weaknesses in primary and secondary education outcomes. Additionally, they must try to stay relevant and avoid producing unemployable graduates.

From an insider's viewpoint, several basic challenges must be addressed before facing the future triple challenge. These are some lessons learned from over 18 years of working at universities in the developing world:

• Just because something is called a university does not mean it is a real university.
• Existing university governance usually does not ensure institutional autonomy or academic freedom at public universities.
• University leadership is generally weak, unable to lead necessary change, implement any long-term strategy, and mostly focuses on keeping itself in power rather than addressing the triple challenge.
• Many public universities are used by politicians as a source of patronage to appoint friendly academics or get their extended family members admitted, and suffer from endemic and fantastic levels of academic and financial corruption.
• Some private universities are run as businesses or even as money-laundering organizations for drug cartels.
• If an academic's own teaching or research challenges the status quo and is not seen by the government as part of a solution, it is likely to be seen as part of the problem.
• The digital divide is real, internet connections are atrocious, and universities are unprepared to deliver programs online.

These lessons and their wider implications are unclear to most of the idealistic bureaucrats in their luxury offices in the Global North.

However, what nobody prepared me for was how working at universities in developing countries would bring me in close contact with criminals and organized crime. When you realize that in many developing countries, the higher education system is corrupt, and you work within the system for several years, you cannot fail to notice how this corruption goes beyond simple financial fraud, conflict of interest, or breach of process.

Let me illustrate this dark picture with some concrete examples. One Vice Minister of Education confided that he was quite sure a private university's mayor infrastructure investment was funded by international drug cartels, but that he could not get the investigation going due to high-level corruption and incompetent police forces. One of the seven Ministers of Higher Education I worked with as Vice Chancellor had the habit of calling foreign academics, asking them to revert their whole salary back to him, with the threat of arrest and deportation from the country. One of the three Chancellors I worked with tried to sell a luxury University vehicle that had been stolen. This same Chancellor appointed professors single-handedly and used to send faxes with the names of his tribesmen whom he wanted to be admitted as students.

Financial fraud in higher education is rather ubiquitous, and few public universities receive clean financial audits. These audits reveal executives giving themselves unlawful retainers, gratuities, or hiring themselves or their buddies as consultants without ever performing associated tasks. Financial irregularities are covered up until they hit the statute of limitations, and police investigations are thwarted by staff refusal to file or sign affidavits. This is a deliberate strategy.

Sorting out a similar mess in higher education systems requires a concerted effort from various stakeholders, including governments, universities, academic staff, students, civil society organizations, and international organizations. The following are some possible actions that can be taken to address the challenges highlighted in the passage:

1. Strengthen governance and accountability: Governments need to ensure that universities are governed by competent and independent bodies, free from political interference and corruption. University executives and staff should be held accountable for their actions, and mechanisms for monitoring and reporting corruption and malpractices should be established. Transparency in financial management and decision-making is also crucial for building trust and confidence in the system.
2. Enhance academic freedom and integrity: Academic staff should be allowed to pursue research and teaching without fear of retaliation or censorship. Academic freedom and integrity should be protected by law and institutional policies, and violations should be promptly investigated and addressed. Universities should also promote ethical research and publication practices and provide training and support to academic staff and students.
3. Invest in quality education and research: Governments and universities should invest in quality education and research by providing adequate funding, infrastructure, and resources. They should prioritize the recruitment and retention of qualified and motivated academic staff and ensure that they receive competitive salaries and benefits. Students should also be provided with quality education and training that prepares them for the job market and contributes to the development of their critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
4. Foster partnerships and collaborations: Universities should collaborate with each other, with industry, and with international organizations to enhance the quality and relevance of their programs and research. Partnerships can also facilitate knowledge sharing and capacity building, as well as the exchange of students and academic staff. Collaboration can also help universities to leverage funding and resources from a variety of sources.
5. Raise public awareness and engagement: Civil society organizations, media, and other stakeholders should raise public awareness about the importance of higher education and the challenges facing the sector. They should advocate for policies and practices that support quality education and research, academic freedom and integrity, and governance and accountability. Students should also be encouraged to participate in decision-making processes and to hold universities and governments accountable for their actions.

In summary, sorting out the mess in higher education systems requires a multi-pronged approach that addresses the underlying causes of corruption, political interference, incompetence, and violence. Building strong governance and accountability structures, promoting academic freedom and integrity, investing in quality education and research, fostering partnerships and collaborations, and raising public awareness and engagement are some of the key actions that can be taken to strengthen higher education systems and contribute to sustainable development.

Final Remarks

The ties between organized crime and universities need to be severed, and criminals must be removed from universities, which have long been a haven for them. Many weaknesses of higher education systems in the Global South stem from the inability to carry out meaningful university reform and make them responsive to society's needs. Institutional autonomy and academic freedom are cynically used to block any type of reform, and other weaknesses arise from having to deal with high school graduates with an educational arrear of six or more years.

A lot can be done, but further globalization and steady pressure from aid and money-lending international organizations will be required to nudge countries towards effective education reform, including university reform.

At the same time, academics who understand what drives changes in higher education and have experience working at world-class universities should be offered employment in the Global South to achieve the transformation of existing universities or set up new ones. In particular, experienced university executives will be needed who are effective leaders and managers, have demonstrated understanding and know-how of university governance, shared governance processes, and international grant funding mechanisms, and can show how to leverage online education, industry and academic partnerships, as well as institutional and professional accreditation processes.

Meanwhile, many governments in the Global South are too comfortable leaving higher education systems alone, producing barely employable, half-educated bachelor's degree holders, and telling employers to "take it or leave it." In the interest of global peace, we must not allow them to get away with this.

References

Kazeem, Yomi. (2017). Africa will account for more than half of global population growth by 2050. Quartz Africa. Retrieved from https://qz.com/africa/1016790/more-than-half-of-the-worlds-population-growth-will-be-in-africa-by-2050

PISA for Development - PISA. (2020, July 16). Retrieved from https://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisa-for-development

Warren, John Universities in developing nations still need support from the Western academy. (2018, November 15). Retrieved from https://www.timeshighereducation.com/features/universities-developing-nations-still-need-support-western-academy

Winthrop, Rebecca, & McGivney, Elleen. (2016). Why wait 100 years? Bridging the gap in global education. Brookings. Retrieved from https://www.brookings.edu/research/why-wait-100-years-bridging-the-gap-in-global-education