The lecturers crisis in Tanzania’s institutions of higher learning

Dar es Salaam. Getting a replacement for a professor -- or a person with equivalent qualifications -- who has just been removed from his university position—either due to change of career, retirement or otherwise—is not as easy.

“Producing a PhD holder takes much time and [it is] very expensive as well,” confesses Dr George Kahangwa who is the chairman of the University of Dar es Salaam Academic Staff Assembly (Udasa). “It can even take up to ten years to get one.”

The search for qualified and competent lecturers to teach in their universities can be tiring, complex and at times frustrating.

A recent report on the subject names some universities that suffer from the shortage of academic staff, some having an acute deficiency of up to the record-breaking 65 per cent while others only have as low as two per cent shortage of the much sought after cadre.

From students and parents to academic staff and their managements all share concerns that this crisis is an omen that will stall the future development of the country.

“If deliberate measures are not immediately taken,” warns Dr Kahangwa of the omen, “we will wake up when it is too late to intervene.”

Universities without professors

In a paper published in the Ahmad Dahlan Journal of English Studies (ADJES) -- Vol. 3, Issue 1 -- in March 2016, Yeni Murdani, a former assistant lecturer at the St Augustine University of Tanzania (Saut), considers untrained staff and incompetent lecturers to be among several issues challenging higher education in the country.

Murdani writes that the yearning for more lecturers with doctoral degree is as salient as trained staff. “Some universities fall under the threat of letting an assistant tutor with a bachelor degree to teach in undergraduate programmes,” she writes adding that that was the case despite the fact that “[the country’s] regulation calls for at least a master’s degree as assistant lecturer to teach an undergraduate programme.”

This is a reality of how grim the situation is in most of the country’s universities.

Data from the Tanzania Commission for Universities (TCU) put the number of academic staff currently teaching at various higher education institutions at 3,448.

Of these, 274 are professors, 376 associate professors, 783 senior lectures and 2,015 lecturers.

According to TCU, up until February 2016, Tanzania had a total of thirty three fully-fledged public and private universities, sixteen public and private university colleges and twenty two public and private university campuses, centres and institutes.

A 2017-report by the Tanzania Higher Learning Institutions Trade Union (THTU) put the shortage of academic staff in the country’s higher education institutions at 44 per cent.

The report, which was intended to document the challenges facing academic staff teaching in various higher learning institutions, reveals that 53 per cent of academic staff in senior levels who are currently teaching at these institutions have already retired and now work as contracted labour.

The report notes that the shortage is more acute among the privately-run higher education institutions but it couldn’t numerically state this shortage.

The report names Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (Muhas), for example, to have a shortage of 65 per cent of academic staff and Mbeya University of Science and Technology (Must) which has a shortage of 54 per cent.

Banning of universities, programmes

The government is aware of this biting challenge, at least according to Dr Paul Luisulie of the THTU. The chairperson of the body illustrates that the problem is terrifying and “needs an urgent intervention.”

Perhaps it was because of this awareness that the TCU in October 2017 banned 19 institutions of higher learning from admitting new students in the 2017/18 academic year over numerous shortcomings facing them. This went hand in hand with the delisting of over 75 courses from some 22 universities.

The lack of sufficient human capital also was one of the criteria that led the TCU in 2013 to ban Kampala International University (KIU), Dar es Salaam Constituent College, from offering Master’s and Doctoral degrees because the institution had not met the required criteria.

Dr Luisulie commends these interventions but he is not convinced that they can be the antidote of the mutant disease facing the institutions.

He thinks that the TCU must go beyond their current modus operandi and truly be the guardian of the universities. One best way of doing this is to advise the government to create a conducive environment so that they can develop the human resources much sought-after by the universities.

“The government can either give universities loans for that purpose or it can top up of the universities’ budgets intended for human resources development,” suggests Dr Luisulie.

A multifaceted problem

Cross-cutting interviews conducted by The Citizen among various stakeholders on the matter established various reasons why there was an acute shortage of professors and doctorate holders in the country.

One thing that was consistent with these people’s opinions is that if these factors are not looked at and dealt with accordingly then the quality of education in the country runs the risk of encountering a precipitous drop.

Dr Kahangwa, for instance, notes that the country has witnessed a mushrooming of universities and colleges whose number keep on increasing everyday but does not match with the increasing number of human resources.

The existing academicians don’t match the demand of universities something which leads the higher learning institutions to scramble for the available few.

To add salt to the injury the existing universities have kept on expanding by building more and more campuses and ultimately admitting thousands of students for various courses and programmes.

This problem, Dr Kahangwa observes, was also exacerbated by the government’s decision during the 1990s which saw employment of lecturers into various public universities coming to an unexpected halt.

“Those who existed soon retired,” he says. “[And] this caused a serious inconvenience in the academic industry to the extent that some professors were retained and discouraged from retiring.”

Dr Luisulie calls this decision by the government a “very unfortunate one.”

This is because the ten-year stoppage to hire new lecturers in universities would create another problem that haunts the country’s –most public—universities today: some professors who should have retired a long time ago still continue working as academic staffs in most of the country’s universities.

Abdul Nondo, the just retired chairman of the Tanzania Students Network Program (TSNP), says this situation leads to inefficiency caused by burn out among these lecturers. This then seriously impacts the quality of education students eventually receive.

But Nondo is also concerned with the trend of the government to appoint academic staff to go and serve in the government. He thinks this exacerbates the problem.

Dr Kahangwa backs this argument by saying: “The government perceives public universities as reservoirs for its needed expertise.”

But Prof Boniventure Rutinwa disagrees with this line of thought. The deputy vice chancellor (academic) at UDSM says that there is no problem for a university like his to contribute to the national human resources needs.

“It is part of our [university] Charter,” he says adding that even the number of professors taken from the university is not that big compared to those who remain. “The number seems bigger because those appointed serve high profile positions which are noticeable to many people.”

But the human capital crisis is caused by another problem too and this is associated with the cost that one has to incur to earn a PhD.

Dr Kahangwa admits that getting one is too expensive for a person or a private university to offer. Because a university is expected to carry the whole burden of ensuring its employee get a PhD, in most cases it is only public universities which are able to do so.

“No wonder most of the private universities would rather like to take full PhD holders so that they can escape the cost of being responsible for one’s further education,” Dr Kahangwa reveals.

This shows how Dr Luisulie’s suggestion for the government to help develop these lecturers makes more sense.

Dr Aikande Kwayu, an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Wisconsin, mentions another factor that she calls “structural” which has more to do with policy and resources allocation.

Kwayu offers that Tanzania has a long way to go till it can have sufficient number of qualified and competent academics in its universities. “For our universities to have sufficient faculty,” she suggests, echoing Dr Luisulie’s advice, “[the government] needs to allocate adequate resources and funding to research [that enables lecturers to earn PhDs],” says she.

Although Dr Kahangwa says that processes of employing new academics have resumed in recent years and some universities having been allowed to do so, getting qualified and competent ones has never been a walk in the park.

This has been a challenging reality as there are very few people with PhDs in the job market and this makes universities scratch their heads hard as one cannot be a lecturer if one doesn’t hold a PhD in an area of expertise.

When it happens there are some people who hold PhDs most of them may either be unqualified to be a lecturer (not all PhD holders qualify to be lecturers) or they may just not be interested establishing a career as an academic at all.

“Many perceive university teaching to be unattractive [career] in comparison to the other ones [like working in consultancy firms and NGOs],” says Dr Kahangwa. Working conditions are as harsh as demanding, he adds. “You need to give lectures, carry out researches and at the same time do some consultancy works, what they call public service.”

Now this gives out another problem. Nondo recalls a number of students to come to his office and complain on the restlessness nature of the lecturers and their failures to accord the students the appropriate supervision and dedication.

This is because most of the country’s universities tend to share the few available lecturers, it is common to find a lecturer teaches in more than two or more universities.

“This overburdens and burns out the lecturers whose efficiency becomes eroded,” points out Nondo. “The biggest loser, however, becomes a student.”

The danger looming ahead and what can be done

Nondo represents those saddened and irked by the indifference of the public on the shortage of academic staffs teaching at the country’s universities despite the fact that its impacts are wide clear to see.

Perhaps the best place to find the impacts of this callous situation, Nondo shares, is at the crisis facing the country’s labour market. He wonders how come people talk of the unemployability of the graduates without touching the issue of fewer lecturers in the universities.

“Guess what can happen if students are forced to take lessons from an old man of 85 years of age who should have retired almost 25 years ago,” asks Nondo. “Unless there is a thorough debate on the critical shortages of lecturers, these issues will be here to stay.”

This concern is shared by Dr Kahangwa who says should the situation stays unperturbed the quality of higher education cannot escape from the continuing deterioration. The lack of professionalism in the very industry of teaching is another problem.

Besides, Dr Kahangwa explains, because of having so many students to supervise at the universities, the chance of carrying out researches becomes so limited. This narrows down the capacity of knowledge production which is essential for the country to develop.

All problems solvable

Most of those who spoke to The Citizen showed optimism that these issues are solvable provided that there is a political will within the government to do so. (The ministry of education didn’t respond to our questions).

Dr Kahangwa says one of the steps that can be taken to return the situation to stability is the reinstatement of retention programs which used to take place in universities. With this system, best students could be retained and given a scholarship to pursue further studies so that they can come back and take up some faculty roles from the respective university.

“This is not happening now [as] there is neither scholarship given nor employment opportunity offered,” says Dr Kahangwa. “It won’t cure all the problems, but it can help to a great extent.”

Dr Kwayu, on the other hand, thinks it is important to align this issue with the current pursued national aspirations like the Vision 2025 and the industrialisation agenda. She thinks that the two should inextricably go hand in hand with funding into research for none of them can be successful without researches in their various initiatives and undertakings.

“We cannot have textile industries, for example, if we do not have constant research on the sub-sector at the same time.”

Although he shares all these recommendations, Prof Rutinwa believes that the adage that one harvests what one sows is as relevant to the country’s higher education as it is anywhere.

He is of the opinion that the recent decision by the TCU to ban the admission of new students among some universities was not motivated by the lack of appropriate infrastructures but rather the absence of qualified academic staffs.

“There is a need for an appreciation of the fact that higher learning education is expensive and at the heart of it is the issue of human resources,” points out Prof Rutinwa. “[And] there is no alternative, we have to develop them as universities.”

Speaking specifically of his institution, UDSM, Prof Rutinwa explains that although they experience the problem the situation is not as stark as it is in other institutions.

“Everyone would want more,” he notes jokingly while assuring himself that with the present academic staffs at the university they are somehow comfortable. According to him, UDSM has at present about 1,300 academic staffs with almost 40 per cent of these holding doctorates.

Reached out for comment on what they do to mitigate the crisis, TCU, being the country’s universities regulatory, supportive and advisory body, said that it has been advising universities to train their staff so as to make them qualified and competent in offering quality education.

It also said that it supports universities through special projects that aim at building capacities of academic staff.