Student loans

The need to eradicate poverty through increased literacy

One of the central goals defined by the Government of Mozambique in its long-term amelioration strategy is “poverty reduction through labour-intensive economic growth”. The highest priority is assigned to cut poverty in rural areas, where 90 percent of poor Mozambicans live, and also in urban zones. The Government recognizes also that, for this amelioration strategy on poverty eradication to succeed, expansion and improvement in the education theory are critically prominent elements in both long-term and short-term perspectives.

Education

In the long term, universal access to education of proper capability is significant for the amelioration

of Mozambique´s human resources, and the economic increase will depend to a significant increase on the education and training of the labour force. It is very prominent to make a significant mass of well trained and very mighty workforce which in turn will improve the full, literacy, intellectual development, training capacity and technical skills in discrete areas of the country’s economic and commercial development.

In the short term, increased access and improved capability in basic education are mighty mechanisms for wealth redistribution and the promotion of collective equity. This course is consistent with the provisions of the new Constitution of Mozambique adopted on 16 November 2004, in its articles 113 and 114 which deal respectively with education and higher education. Colse to the year 1990, the Government of Mozambique decided to turn its social, economic and political orientation theory from the centrally-planned theory inherited from the communist era and adopted a western-style of free market system. At the same time, it was also decided to adopt basal changes in the education programmes. Since drastic changes and wide ranging effects were resulting from the adoption of the new economic and political orientation, it was significant to supply new guidelines and rules governing the supervision of institutions of higher education.

The struggle continues: “a luta continua” !

The economic and political changes were progressively introduced with success through legislative and regulatory reforms. However, it has not been very easy to evenly turn rules of collective and cultural behaviour. In particular, vulnerable younger generations are the most affected by the rapid changes in society, while the reference model and values they expect from elder habitancy in the modern Mozambican community seem to be shifting very fast. And in some instances, there seem to be no model at all. The new wave of economic liberalism in Mozambique, great defined by the beloved belief of “deixa andar”, absolutely meaning “laisser-faire”, was mistakenly adopted as the guiding principle in the areas of social, cultural and education development.

The “laisser-faire” principle is great understood by economists and entrepreneurs in a theory of open market and free entrepreneurship, under which the Government’s intervention is reduced to exercising minimum regulatory agency. The recent significant economic increase realized by the Government of Mozambique (10% of successive increase index over four years) is attributed in general to this free market policy. This principle should be carefully differentiated from “laisser-aller” which, in French language, rather means lack of discipline in academic, economic, collective and cultural environments.

Reforming higher education institutions represents a real challenge, both at the institutional and pedagogic levels, not only in Mozambique, but elsewhere and in particular in African countries faced with the question of “acculturation”. The youth seeking knowledge opportunities in national universities, polytechnics and higher institutes, where students are somehow left on their own, having no longer any need to be under permanent supervision of their parents or teachers, are disoriented. Since reforms in higher education institutions take longer than in any other institutional environment, it is significant absolutely to adopt enough transitional measures to riposte to urgent need of the young generations.

This essay reviews current trends and the recent historical background of higher education institutions of Mozambique. It argues against the adoption of the classical model of higher education from European and other western systems. In its final analysis, it finds that there is need to include ethical and deontology (social, cultural and moral education) components as priority sectors within the curriculum in higher education institutions, with a view to instill in the students and lecturers inevitable African values in general, and in particular, national Mozambican models. It is rejecting the neo-liberal thinking, which proposes that students in higher education institutions should be allowed to enjoy unlimited academic, collective and intellectual uncontrolled independence, in conformity with western classical education and cultural orientation. It advocates for significant mental and brainstorming on key issues towards the amelioration of inevitable cultural and ethical models in higher education institutions which could be used to promote knowledge amelioration and poverty eradication in the country’s rural areas and urban zones affected by unemployment, pandemics and economic precariousness.

The colonial legacy and its cultural impact on higher education in Mozambique.

Many experts have described the Mozambican mother of higher education as an custom for colonialists and “assimilados” . The first custom of higher education in Mozambique was established by the Portuguese government in 1962, soon after the start of the African wars of independence. It was called the general University Studies of Mozambique (Estudos Gerais Universitários de Moçambique Egum). In 1968, it was renamed Lourenço Marques University. The university catered for the sons and daughters of Portuguese colonialists. Although the Portuguese government preached non-racism and advocated the assimilation of its African subjects to the Portuguese way of life, the notorious deficiencies of the colonial education theory established under the Portuguese rule ensured that very few Africans would ever succeed in reaching university level. However, many educated African were led to adopt the colonial lifestyle.

In spite of Portugal’s attempts to advance African educational opportunities in the late 1960s and early 1970s, only about 40 black Mozambican students – less than 2 per cent of the trainee body -had entered the University of Lourenço Marques by the time of independence in 1975. The state and the university continued to depend heavily on the Portuguese and their descendants. Even the schoraly curriculum was defined agreeing to the needs and policies defined long ago by the colonial power.

Soon after Independence in June 1975, the Government of Mozambique, from the Frelimo party, adopted a Marxist-Leninist orientation and a centrally planned economy. The educational theory was nationalized, and the university was renamed after Dr. Eduardo Mondlane, the first president of Frelimo.

Many cadres trained in Portugal and other European and American universities came also with their own educational and cultural background. Apart from the Eduardo Mondlane University, new collective and private universities and institutes were established. These include the Pedagogic University, the Isri, the Catholic University, Ispu, Isctem and Isutc. Most of these institutions adopted a curriculum clearly modeled on the classical European model. There is still need to merge African customary values in the course profiles offered and study programmes advanced by these institutions.

The customary role of a university is to enlighten and serve as a reference within the society: “illuminatio et salus populi”. Today, Mozambique is one of the most culturally and racially diversified community of Africa. This diversity should be carefully as a cultural treasure for the nation. It has become however apparent that it’s more a “Babel Tower case”, as no unified Mozambican values appear to make from this wide variety. With the creation of new collective and private universities and new faculties, it would become easier to increase a significant mass of university lecturers and schoraly professionals, who would in their turn, affect the society, creating and instilling national inevitable values and ethical theory of escort in the younger generations. agreeing to many lecturers and students contacted at Uem, Universidade Pedagogica Up and Udm, the impact of higher education on the amelioration of inevitable academic, scientific, collective and cultural values in Mozambique is yet to be felt.

It is however significant to riposte the importance of newly introduced community-based education programmes in some institutions. For instance the emphasis on community and assistance has guided curriculum amelioration at the Catholic University; its course in agronomy (Cuamba) concentrates on peasant and house farming systems and leans heavily on study and outreach within local farming communities. The Cu course in treatment (developed in collaboration with the University of Maastricht) which concentrates on teaching medicine, was particularly deemed proper for the rural and urban poor populations of Mozambique, as it is more based on problem-solving and focuses much more on customary issues.

New Reforms in higher education institutions with a more participative approach

Mozambique is one of few countries in Africa where a new generation of leadership has stepped forward to enounce a foresight for their institutions, intriguing trust among those complicated in higher education amelioration and the modernization of their universities. In a series of case studies sponsored and published by the Partnership for Higher education in Africa , it was confirmed that African universities covered by the studies have widely varying contexts and traditions. They are engaged in broad reform, examining and improvement their planning processes, introducing new techniques of financial management, adopting new technologies, reshaping course structures and pedagogy, and more important, reforming practices of governance based in particular on their own contexts and traditions.

Important institutional reforms regarding the strategic planning experiences of the Eduardo Mondlane University (Uem) were initiated and implemented so far. Two strategic planning cycles were developed, the first in 1990 and the second one in 1996 / 97. The second one was meant to adapting to the impacts of newly adopted multi-party democracy, market competition, and globalization. Whereas the first reform cycle was the succeed of high level officials at the University, the second one was generated using a participatory methodology deemed to be more effective in intriguing the university staff in the process.

It is prominent to listen to everyone, and to be seen as listening. We are also convinced that discrete components of the habitancy in Mozambique should be complicated in the next phases of the process with a view to define what kind of education orientation the habitancy would wish to have for their children.

There is prominent advance but yet miniature schoraly impact on the amelioration of the community

Considerable advance has been so far made in post-independence Mozambique. After the introductory problems caused by the long years of civil war and then the long efforts necessitated by the adjustment to a market-driven cheaper and a multi-party democratic political order, Mozambique is now carefully to have a higher education theory that offers a wide variety of course options and full, study opportunities. However, a major infirmity highlighted by many observers is that all the institutions remain basically concentrated in the capital city of Maputo and its neighboring provinces. It is argued that they serve only a miniature fraction of the Mozambican population, and are destined to train the elite of prominent habitancy in government and in the professions, manufactures and commerce. It is also alleged that the majority of the students who succeed in entering collective and private institutions of higher education are from relatively rich families.

It is ultimately emphasized that nearly 80 per cent of university students in Mozambique use Portuguese as their significant means of communication, thus strengthening the perception of establishing, reproducing and consolidating a hereditary elite, with model values copied on western societies. In response to this challenge, it was recommend that the government should encourage the emergence of new and non-traditional Heis closer to the local communities, able to riposte more rapidly and flexibly to the demands and expectations of the collective and private sectors for a high capability trained workforce, while addressing both regional and socioeconomic imbalances in the country.

In our final analysis, we find that the impact of higher education institutions on the amelioration and dissemination of customary African collective and cultural values would be very miniature for a long period. As long as the access and feed-back from all levels of the community and regions will be left out of the core interaction with the very educated elite and higher education institutions in general concentrated in Maputo, the role of universities in promoting African inevitable values, a culture of schoraly ethics and deontology in the whole national community will be very limited.

The process of “Nation building” needs to rely on a strong schoraly support. One of the Government’s main constitutional commitments is to promote the amelioration of the national culture and identity (article 115 of the 2004 Constitution). It is clear that many institutions, for instance the television, are actively promoting cultural diversity through discrete means. Institutions of higher education should be seen doing more, in particular beginning with the students themselves and the schoraly community members, who are foreseen, to be the light of the society. Such actions would include the integration of courses on ethics and deontology, and make a wide-ranging variety of education models that reprove negative behavior and promote inevitable values. Our recommendation is that the Government should for example instruct collective universities and other higher education institutions, to appoint “Ethics and Deontology Committees” at the level of their University Councils and within all autonomous faculties.

Bibliography

-Fry, Peter and Utui, Rogéro (1999), The Strategic Planning palpate at Eduardo Mondlane University, Adea Working Paper on Higher Education, Adea, relationship for the amelioration of education in Africa, Paris.

-Mouzinho, Mário ; Fry, Peter ; Levey, Lisbeth and Chilundo, Arlindo (2001), Higher education in Mozambique: A Case study, The Partnership for Higher education in Africa, New York University, New York

Institutional Reforms In The Higher instruction Sector Of Mozambique And Ethical Issues

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