HigHer education Financing

Abstract

This multi-country study of higher education financing includes three East African states (Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda), five countries in southern Africa (Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia and South Africa), and an Indian Ocean island state (Mauritius). The countries in this sample of case studies vary considerably in terms of their size and development status. As Table 1.1 shows, there are four extremely small countries in terms of population (Botswana, Lesotho, Mauritius and Namibia) and five medium-sized countries, with South Africa being the largest of the five with 49 million people. Table 1.1 provides information about these countries’ development status as measured using United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP’s) Human Development Index (HDI). The HDI is a composite index derived from three measures: income or GDP per capita; education (adult literacy, and the combined gross enrolment ratio for primary, secondary and tertiary education); and life expectancy. In its 2009 Human Development Report, the UNDP derived the HDI for 182 countries which were categorised as very high, high, medium or low HDI countries. The countries with the highest HDIs were Norway and Australia, and the first category included all the Western European countries, the USA, some Asian countries (Singapore and Hong Kong) and, interestingly, Barbados. Of the nine country case studies in this volume, Mauritius was ranked as a high HDI country (ranking 81). Botswana (125), Namibia (128), South Africa (129), Kenya (147), Tanzania (151), Lesotho (156) and Uganda (157) were ranked as medium HDI countries; and Mozambique (172) was ranked as a low HDI country. Table 1.1 shows the HDI values which range from 0.804 for Mauritius to 0.402 for Mozambique. Norway ranked at number one had an HDI value of 0.971 (UNDP 2009). Table 1.1 also shows the Human Poverty Index (HPI), the ranking of countries in terms of their levels of poverty, with the country being ranked number one having the least poverty. Amongst the nine countries included as case studies in this volume, Mauritius was ranked the highest at 45 out of the 135 countries on the HPI. It is clear that there is a close correlation between the value of the HDI and the extent of poverty, with Mozambique having the highest incidence of poverty at 46.8% at a HPI ranking of 127 out of 135 countries.