The average lecturer-to-student ratio is 1:500, and in some cases 1:900. They do part-time jobs in an attempt to meet the teacher shortage. Up to 50% of the staff at public universities in Kenya teach at more than one university. Even if the country were to find the finance, infrastructure, and other resources to build these new institutions and equip its classrooms, laboratories and libraries, where will it find the 3.3 million teachers? The current faculty shortage in the country’s premier institutions is 38%, with vacancies in leading management institutes as high as 74%.Įvery part of the world faces such shortage to varying extents. To achieve this target, the government has decided to add 35 million new seats in Higher Education Institutions and hire 3.3 million more teachers, a 235% increase from the current availability of 1.4 million. The Indian government aims to increase the national Gross Enrolment Ratio from the current 27% to 50% by 2035. Where will global society find the facilities and financial resources to achieve such phenomenal growth? How will we reduce, rather than further widen, the gap in quality of instruction, while keeping pace with the ever-accelerating pace of new knowledge acquisition? How will we find all the qualified instructors who will be needed? If this demand for higher education is to be met through the currently prevailing approach, it will require the founding of four new universities each with 40,000 students every week for the next 15 years. Global tertiary enrolment is projected to rise from 216 million in 2016 to 380 million by 2030 and nearly 600 million by 2040 *, and this will still leave hundreds of millions of youth without access to higher education. The gap between supply and demand is even greater in colleges and universities in many other parts of the world, such as Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria and India, where the acceptance rate can be as low as 2%. Such acceptance rates of less than 5% are common among the Ivy League universities in the US. Of the nearly 60,000 students who applied to Harvard University this year, the University accepted less than 2,000 to the Class of 2025. The current education system and existing infrastructure combined with the growing college-age population and rising demand for tertiary education result in an ever-increasing quantitative gap between educational aspirations in society and the capacity of the current system to meet the demand. Quantitative Gap between Educational Aspirations and Capacity Such a new paradigm in global education will make it a powerful catalyst for social transformation and fulfilment of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.ġ. Today the world needs a comprehensive global strategy that makes far better use of the existing resources, utilizes the potential of Information and Communications Technology, applies innovative, learner-centred pedagogy to provide affordable, interactive, personalized, relevant, quality education for all. The current model of education was designed at a time when knowledge was scarce, sources of knowledge were limited, classrooms were essential for knowledge dissemination, and higher education was limited to a privileged few. At the same time, the global education system itself is in need of radical transformation to upgrade capacity, quality, reach, and relevance. Such a paradigm can make an immense contribution to addressing global problems, implementing the UN Sustainable Development Goals and promoting greater human security for all.Įducation is an essential instrument and catalyst for social transformation. That will require a new kind of leadership that thinks and acts globally. This paper briefly outlines the nature and magnitude of the challenges in higher education today, and identifies promising signs of a new paradigm waiting to emerge. A new paradigm needs to be clearly formulated, designed and implemented. The enormous challenges we face in education today can best be solved only by including system-wide action at the global level. But no one is thinking globally for solutions that will be optimal from the perspective of humanity as a whole. Every institution of higher education and every government is trying to overcome the problems it faces and improve the reach, relevance, financial viability and effectivity of education.
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