SWAZILAND’S FAILING UNIVERSITY

There’s quite a heated exchange going on in the pages of the Times of Swaziland (and online) about the quality of education at the kingdom’s only university.

Swaziland only has one university, the state-run University of Swaziland (UNISWA), and according to those engaged in the exchanges it produces graduates of international quality – or people who are ill educated who carry worthless diplomas.

The truth is of course somewhere between the two.

As someone who worked at UNISWA for nearly four years, who headed the Journalism and Mass Communication Department, was acting head of the English Language and Literature Department and who sat on the university Senate for two years; let me add my two-pennyworth.

UNISWA has to overcome many difficulties ranging from the quality of the students who arrive to study there, to the experience (or lack of experience) of the people who teach there and the lack of resources.

I only have space here to write about the students. About half of the university’s near 5,000 students are studying on diploma courses that are below the level of bachelor degree. There are only about 50 students in total studying for masters degrees and no one is working on doctorate Ph.D studies.

That information alone should tell us that UNISWA isn’t really a university. In many countries an institution with that kind of student profile would be called a ‘college of higher education’ – it offers courses higher than those at school, but below degree level.

Then there is the experience of the students who arrive at UNISWA. In Swaziland the highest qualification a student can get at school is the old GCE O-level or the IGCSE (International General Certificate of Secondary Education). These qualifications originate in England where they are usually taken by school students at the age of 16 after five years of secondary school study. If their grades are good enough students can take an extra two years of schooling and take the GCE A-Level at aged 18. Those who get high grades at A-level may be admitted to university.

So you can see that in Swaziland students arriving at UNISWA to study are a long way behind their fellows in England. Indeed they are so far behind that they can never catch up.

My own experience of teaching students at UNISWA is that through no fault of their own they are not prepared for university study.

Children in Swaziland learn informally and formally. Informal education centres on the home and community where children are taught to respect and defer to their elders. This respect and deference does not encourage a questioning attitude in people.

Formal learning takes place at school, but analytical learning is discouraged because success for both individual teachers and schools is measured in terms of the numbers of examination passes. This encourages rote learning in the classroom and the cramming of students to pass examinations.

There is also a problem of the English language. University students have poor fluency in both written and oral English and the students’ lack of competency in the English language is the biggest challenge at UNISWA.

At UNISWA, as well as a lack of language skills I found there were a number of characteristics of journalism students that make educating them as journalists difficult.

Generally, they have poor reporting and interviewing skills, a low commitment to their studies, next to no knowledge of Swaziland outside of their immediate environment and slight knowledge of the world beyond the kingdom’s borders.

They do not read for enjoyment (and only reluctantly for their studies) and will only undertake class work if it leads to academic credit. This last point makes it especially difficult to motivate students to practice to improve their journalistic skills.

Especially problematic for journalism students is that they have next to no exposure to a range and variety of magazines, newspapers, television and radio. This is in part due to the small size of the Swazi media industry, but it also reflects their reluctance even to engage with media that is available within Swaziland.

I wrote at some length about journalism education at UNISWA for Ecquid Novi: African Journalism Studies in 2007.

So on the strength of the student population alone I think UNISWA fails the test. It is not a university at all, let alone a university of international quality.