Quality Assurance and Relevance of Engineering Education in Africa

Abstract

Economic development is correlated with the development of higher education: enrollment ratios in higher education average over fifty percent for countries belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), compared to twenty-one percent in middle income countries, and six percent in low income countries (World Bank, 1998a). The World Bank realizes the importance of investment in higher education for economic growth and social development and its publication Higher Education: The Lessons of Experience (1994a), focused its attention on the challenges and the constraints facing higher education institutions around the world and recognized these as a symptom of a crisis. The report found that developing countries were particularly hard hit by the crisis in higher education. In fact, the fiscal constraints faced by many countries, coupled with increasing demand, has led to overcrowding, deteriorating infrastructure, lack of resources for nonsalary expenditures, such as textbooks and laboratory equipment, and a decline in the quality of teaching and research activities