Higher education: homegrown degrees or international degrees - which is better?

Graduates who understand the local context are more sought after by employers. That’s the claim of research undertaken by The African Report (July 2013, No 52) on MBA graduates (master’s in business administration) in West Africa. However, the problem—particularly in Africa—is that only a small number of higher education institutions offering MBAs are accredited to international quality standards.

Business institutions across Africa (and around the world) are trying to place themselves competitively in the market. And students, in an increasingly competitive employment market, are seeking quality degrees—degrees which give them the edge over thousands of other job candidates.  These days, companies are not merely seeking people with degrees; they want people with skills—and those skills need to match the local context. Another asset for companies, especially consultancy firms, is a workforce (and MBA graduates) that understands small and medium-sized enterprises.

The issue of local degrees is two-fold in Africa—companies want graduates with a knowledge of the local context, but local business institutions are not offering quality degrees. Even company directors would send their children overseas to gain a quality education.

The African Report survey found that of the 75 West African higher education institutions advertising MBAs or equivalent business degrees, information on their courses was not easy to acquire—they didn’t list details on their websites and they didn’t answer the telephone when the researchers sought information. Only 2 of the 75 business institutions in West Africa have international accreditation: the China Europe International Business School (through EQUIS and the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business), and the Lagos Business School at the Pan-Atlantic University (linked to IESE Business School at Spain’s University of Navarra).

Furthermore, only 13 business institutions across the whole of Africa are accredited internationally (according to research in 2013 by the African Management Initiative, a project supported by the Association of African Business Schools). Three of the 13 accredited institutions have ties with European institutions, leaving 10 African institutions with accreditation in their own right.

The question is: how can African students expect to gain local context with a degree from a local business school that provides quality education? The answer is with great difficulty, or next to no chance. It is time for African higher education institutions to step-up and offer quality education. Gaining accreditation is a time-consuming, painstakingly difficult process (I know because I have worked in Australian institutions that have gone through the same process), but reputation is the reward--and quality courses--and quality graduates.

However, higher education institutions throughout the world are grappling with quality education and how to attract both local and international students. Preparing graduates for work requires a constant process of change—technologically, philosophically, and practically, with the appropriate human and material resources. Many institutions are increasingly using practical components in their degrees, whereby students spend time in the field—locally or internationally. Institutions in Europe and America are taking an interest in Africa, and offering students the opportunity to undertake practical components of their degree in Africa. This provides both an international degree and a local context. But the cost of this education is high and prohibitive for most learners.

Another option to gaining quality education is through technological advances. But historically these have not provided the great leap forward they predicted. Television was the first technological medium that was intended to provide education to the masses, but this had little effect. Britain’s television-based Open University, now 44 years old, experimented in global education, although this did not reach many developing countries because television was not available in most households. The rise of computers led to the prediction that education could now reach everyone. But, to date, this has yet materialized, because, again, developing countries are often technologically-poor. Computers, for many, have only provided research options through surfing the web, and not the far-reaching option for universal higher education.

The new offering is e-learning and online personalized adaptive computer programs. The difference is that the current emerging technology may enable the medium of learning to reach more people—through high-speed mobile networks, tablet devices, and cheaper data downloads. Still, the uptake is slow, and institutions and lecturers may be skeptical. Moreover, the uptake is likely to occur predominantly in developed countries. Although online education may solve some inequalities in the short term, there are still doubts about the uptake for developing countries. Youth in Africa, in low-income countries, and in countries with high unemployment rates, may fall further behind—not only in entering and graduating from quality universities, but also in gaining relevant skills that companies want, and in gaining full-time employment.