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Abstract
Open and distance education have enabled the expansion of higher education beyond physical university boundaries. The implementation of these learning modes in a conventional education university can, however, be challenging when the university does not have a specific open education agenda. In this paper, the challenges of opening up higher education in Rwanda within a traditional education mold are critically discussed. Despite a completed project on open and distance learning and a plethora of political rhetoric on the use of this learning mode to accelerate the transformation toward knowledge-based economy, more than 42 percent of students who were admitted in the public higher education in 2014/2015 could not register and attend undergraduate education. These students added to a huge number of those who qualify and wish to attend higher education but are not serviced. I argue that the championed transformation towards knowledge-based economy cannot be achieved without educating the majority of secondary education graduates who wish to attend higher education but are not included. Rhetorical statements on the use of open and distance education are identified in government and institutional policy documents and contrasted to prevailing practices. In the light of a framework for collaboratively opening up higher education, recommendations to address the issue are made. This article provides insights to stakeholders in higher education who are interested in the use of open and distance education to reach underprivileged learners. It is particularly relevant to those who are implementing or planning to implement opening up higher education in under-resourced settings.
Key words: Opening up higher education, student loan crisis, social disempowerment, collaborative investment, Rwanda
Background
The rise and fall of student loan in Rwanda
In 1998, the National Examination Council (NEC) was established to manage administration of national examinations for secondary education certificate. The council introduced changes that enabled the provision of student loan for undergraduate education on merit basis for a relatively few years. The national exams were anonymously graded and the results became the only pathway for secondary education certificate in Rwanda (1). The exams were open to both formal and non-formal learners and the results in the national exams were based on to award Government sponsorship and student loan that were open to all top performers (2). The results in these exams, the cut-off point for government sponsorship and student loan as well as the winners of the sponsorship and loan were openly released to the public (3). In this system, non-formal learners and formal students were treated equally based on their performance in the national exams.
Although this openness violated the privacy principles, it introduced transparency and trust in the award of secondary education certificates and student loan provision. From 1998 to 2000, students who had scored above the cut-off point were awarded student loan regardless of their socioeconomic background. The number of learners from rural and poor families who had gained access to higher education between 1998 and 2000 had remarkably increased and this access was more geographically distributed than previously. Despite this remarkable reform, those who had benefited were still the minority of secondary education graduates. Funds for student loan were limited and this hindered the accommodation of all secondary education graduates who needed the loan to attend higher education. Despite this limitation, the transparent provision of student loan on merit basis triggered engagement in self-determined open learning practices.
This transparency and merit based provision of student loan was, however, too good to stay. In 2001, all graduates from so-called professional field of secondary education (including teacher-trainees, nursing graduates and others) were denied student loan and Government sponsorship regardless of their performance. The original claim advanced was that these graduates were prepared for jobs, not for attending higher education. The proponent of this notorious fallacy claimed that awarding student loan and Government sponsorship to such graduates would be wasting limited funds because these graduates would allegedly fail academic courses due to their lack of preparation.
After attracted criticism, the fallacy was nailed down to give way to a new decision: top performers among the marginalised secondary education graduates would also be awarded the student loan and Government sponsorship after two years in job. Some graduates had already worked more than two years. They had taken national exams for the sake of being eligible for student loan and government sponsorship they had not secured in a previous system which was not equally transparent. Some of them presented employment certificates as proof of having been in job for two years or more. This was in attempt to secure student loan in 2001. However, the years they had worked prior to taking the national exams in the new transparent system were invalidated. In 2002, the cut-off point for such graduates was raised and only a few top performers from the marginalized fields could be awarded student loan.
The current crisis
The 2001 denial of student loan to secondary education graduates from selected fields of study was the beginning of a widespread student loan crisis in Rwanda. Around 2010, the possibility to cancel student loan was imminent. This threat was parallel to the drastic decline in Government funds to public higher education institutions. The difficulty in funding public higher education led to the decision to merge all public institutions into the University of Rwanda that was established in September 2013. From then on, the University of Rwanda is the only public higher education institution in Rwanda.
On its part, the student loan crisis culminated since 2013 when the Government decided to cancel student loan to many students who had been admitted in the public higher education on merit basis. This decision led to massive complaint of student and some of them were arrested to discourage complaints (Kiai, 2014, p. 8). On its part, Rwanda National Policy (2013) claimed that the students were arrested because they were holding an illegal demonstration. Students argued that they were meeting to get proof that their petitioning letter had been submitted to the Prime Minister’s Office from their delegates. According to them, they had delegated a few of them as it was not practical for all of them to go to the Prime Minister’s office to submit the letter. One week after the incident, a court in Kigali ruled in further of students and ordered an immediate release of students who were still in the custody.
The issue has not been properly addressed afterward. In June 2015, a senior official at the University of Rwanda (the only public higher education institution in the country) was cited by a local online newsletter saying that about half of 11788 students who had been admitted at the university in 2014/2015 were unable to register and attend classes due to financial difficulties (Igihe, 2015). Statistics from the University of Rwanda indicate that only 6756 students (57.3 percent of the 11788 students who had been admitted) registered in level 1 in the academic year 2014/2015 (The University of Rwanda, 2015, p. 20). In other words, 5032 students (42.7 percent of all admitted students) were unable to register and attend classes.
Social disempowerment and loss of human capital
Similar to the 2001 claim that graduates from some secondary education fields could not be successful in higher education, there have been attempt to justify why many secondary education graduates who scored high in the national exams and wish to attend higher education are denied student loan. The “higher education is not for everyone” mantra has recently been used to justify why a huge number of underprivileged students do not get student loan. While higher education is admittedly not for those who are not willing to invest effort, time, dedication and perseverance, this level of education should be for any learners who are dedicated to invest time and effort on learning regardless of their origin. Without this principle, then there is discrimination in higher education that can be socioeconomic, regional, ethnic or racial.
The use of different unsupported claims to convince underprivileged student to give up their higher education aspiration may constitute a systematic social disempowerment. According to Lane (2009 p. 9) and Lane & Van Dorp (2011, n. p.), social disempowerment occurs when learners develop the feeling and self- perception of not being good enough to be successful in higher education. While a few learners who are denied higher education opportunities may refuse to let themselves dissuaded, many of them may consent to disempowering claims. Such learners who give up are therefore socially disempowered. Both the 2001 claim that preselected learners would have failed undergraduate education in Rwanda and the current mantra that higher education is not for everyone have been used to socially disempower underprivileged learners who qualified and wished to attend higher education. Such social disempowerment may lead to the loss of potential talents and waste of human capital.
The status-quo of open and distance learning in Rwanda
The School of Open and Distance Learning was developed by a Task Force and Working Group that were appointed by the Ministry of Education in 2012. The original concept paper outlined inception thoughts on the establishment of an open university in Rwanda. Due to the plan to merge all public higher education institutions into the University of Rwanda that was going on, it was decided that the Government would not support the start of a new public university. Consequently, the project was developed as the College of Open and Distance Learning that would be under the University of Rwanda. Later on, however, the College of Open and Distance Learning was demoted to the school level for the sake of avoiding having more than six colleges under the University of Rwanda.
At least, three members of the Task Force and Working Group (including the one who produced the concept paper) had been denied student loan in 2001. All these three members had taken the 2000 national exams administered to teacher-trainees. After scoring high in the national exams, they were among secondary education graduates who were claimed unable to succeed in undergraduate education. However, they started their undergraduate education in 2002, after the claim was defeated, to graduate among top performers after four years. All of them were hired as academic staff in different higher education institutions and some of them had won international scholar awards that were provided on merit-basis. The concept paper was specifically produced in effort to ensure the experience they had gone through does not spread to many secondary education graduates as the then development in financing higher education hinted to.
Prior to the establishment of the University of Rwanda, some public higher education had attempted the provision of distance education programme. Kigali Institute of Education (currently the University of Rwanda College of Education) had the most established distance learning porogramme. Most of its provision was, however, the duplication of campus-based practices in study centres. For many years, the institution recruited about 1000 distance learning students that were taught till their graduation with undergraduate diploma before taking the following cohort. For many other institutions, distance learning was only present in rhetorical texts on institutional websites which had never matched the reality in those institutions. Many of those institutions did not have a single staff dedicated to open and distance learning, and conventional education academics were too busy to spare extra time for that. This is mainly the reason why the open and distance learning mode has not enabled the expansion of higher education in Rwanda.
Barriers to open and distance education development and expansion in Rwanda
The mismatch between political rhetoric and scholarly practices
The political rhetoric on the use of open distance learning to accelerate the transformation toward knowledge-based economy and equity in higher education have not matched real practices. At the national level, the executive summary of the Seven Year Government Plan (7YGP) indicates that the 2017 target was to provide secondary education via open, distance and eLearning at the rate of 30 percent and higher education at the rate of 50 percent (Government of Rwanda, n.d., p. 166). The Ministry of Education (2013, p. 33) advances the use of open and distance learning to achieve equitable access to quality higher education. However, these open, distance and eLearning targets narrated in these documents rarely get communicated to academics, learners and other members of the higher education community. This hints to communication gap between different categories of stakeholders in Rwandan higher education.
Shifting the cost to overloaded conventional education academics
In many former public higher education institutions in Rwanda, open and distance learning programmes did not start mainly because related units were understaffed. In many institutions, the senior management seems to have expected conventional education academics who were already overloaded to teach distance learning programmes as an extra-workload. Many of these institutions failed to hire a single employee to work on open and distance learning programmes. Where such employees were hired, only one or two academics were appointed in an isolated distance learning centre. Open and distance learning programmes and courses did not start in those institutions despite many years one or two academics were appointed to work in a “dedicated” centre in some of them. Distance learning programmes have been regarded as accessory to conventional education courses and dropping the distance learning workload to complete the heavy conventional education workload was acceptable. This perception would not be expected to be different, given the level of experience in the field of open and distance learning of those who control them as discussed below.
The hometown that gives no attention to a local prophet
The higher education industry in Rwanda appears to have grown as a hometown in which local prophets are sidelined (Owens, 2012). This is particular to open and distance learning in which those who are highly trained in the field are apparently perceived as threat and excluded in related initiatives and policy formulation. Often times, those appointed to manage open and distance learning have not received any related training and may have not even dared to take a course in this learning mode to have first-hand experience from a learner’s perspective. Slogans such as “open, online and distance education is the future of higher education” and “Rwanda is promoting information and communication technology” are usually chanted. However, the lack of digital and open scholarship (Weller, 2011 and 2014) and other related competencies needed for advancing open and distance learning initiatives marks most of those in the related management.
Moreover, collaborative leadership competencies that could enable working with those who are trained in fields related to open and distance learning are in shortage. Instead, complaisance toward seniors above tends to be more valued than working with different stakeholders to respond to the need for opening up higher education to people. Offers to contribute to related open and distance learning initiatives are tactfully repelled by requiring a formal submission of a letter through ambiguous bureaucratic circles in which no one seems to be willing to take responsibility. Recipients of the offer, one by one, claim it should not be addressed to them, till the offer maker comes back to the starting point. This is how those who are trained and want to contribute to opening up higher education get stopped in this unresponsive system. This occurs at the expense of an increasing number of secondary education graduate who qualify and wish to attend higher education but are included in the higher education system.
Resistance to innovation
Another barrier to the expansion of open and distance learning in Rwandan public higher education is resistance to innovation. To participate in or trigger discussion on open and distance learning in public higher education, those who are trained in the field are often required to write a formal letter to senior officials and submit it in the print format. Email is still rejected as a formal way of communication. Written requests, in the print format, take longer to reach the destination and get feedback. In earlier attempt in a former public higher education institution, it took more than 30 months to get a verbal response.
Distance learning student face similar challenges. Some distance learning students at the former Kigali Institute of Education could allegedly have to take a bus trip that could be up to six hours to appeal on their missing assignment paper that could have possibly been misplaced by an institutional official. This waste of time is due to the requirement of physical presence on campus for such an appeal to occur. Equally, the misconception of the print format as superior to the electronic format is reflected in the background of the issue. Distance learning students were required to submit their assignment in the print format, which place institutional official in a safe haven even when the possible loss of students’ assignment is on their side. Unlike the print format, different ways of submission of assignments in their electronic format enable instant reception of the student’s work and long-term evidence that the assignment was submitted on time.
Some pretexts advanced for the resistance to adopt electronic submission of assignment and electronic communication is that the majority of students do not have access to computers and the Internet. It is arguable, however, that it is much easier and more cost effective for students in most remote areas to submit their assignment via a cybercafé located at a provincial commercial centre/town than having them take a trip to the institution’s headquarters just to submit their appeal on a missing assignment paper. Even if the student would have to pay in the cybercafé, the cost may be reduced up to ten times or more when compared to the cost incurred to some students who take long distance trips to the main campus to appeal on a missing paper that had been submitted in a print format. Equally, students in many private institutions travel long distance every week to attend weekend campus-based courses. Adoption of innovations in education would cut down the amount of time wasted in long distance trips, and the recovered time could be invested on learning activities that contribute to learners’ competence and capability development.
Imitation and the “copy and paste” culture
The contentment in rhetorical text on open and distance education on institutional websites discussed earlier reflect the imitation and copy and paste culture. Such texts were not necessarily published with intention to make effort to advance related innovations. Instead, they seemingly were published for the sake of joining the global bandwagon on display of institutional websites. The “copy and paste” culture seems to have not disappeared yet. The Appendix 3 of the University of Rwanda’s Policy and procedures on academic staff appointments and promotions (The University of Rwanda, 2014, p. 38) gives clue on the persistence of such a practice as illustrated in this statement:
NOTE: These activities would normally be expected to lead to the production of a variety of types of published work … and/or successful strategic partnership projects with industry … which contribute towards the economic and/or civic development of Scotland …. (…) my omission
While learning from practices in other setting may help advance open and distance education, those practices have to be tailored to the local need and issues at hand. It is also worth considering the transferability of practices across setting and be aware of agendas across settings. It may be of concern if many practices in Rwandan publics higher education are copied from societies that have shifted from the open access agenda to the lifelong learning agenda (Weller 2011). While the lifelong learning agenda is needed and may help develop competencies needed for opening up higher education in Rwanda (Nkuyubwatsi, forthcoming a), more attention need to be paid on the open access agenda. Innovations within the lifelong learning agenda cannot help provide higher education to the majority of underprivileged learners in Rwanda without the open access agenda.
Ephemeral solutions
The student loan crisis discussed earlier has led to the transfer of related responsibilities to a commercial company. This practice may help in recovering loan that will be subsequently provided. However, commercial companies may not necessarily address the declining number of student loan beneficiaries due to the shortage of funds for these loans. The failure to repay student loan has partially contributed to this issue, but it is not the only to blame. Such funds have never been enough in Rwanda, and only a tiny proportion of secondary education graduated have been awarded the loan for years.
Experience from other settings has shown that the participation of commercial companies in student loan provision does not necessarily provide a sustainable solution. This is especially the case when tuition fee in higher education institution is high when compared to most citizens’ financial capability. In the USA, for instance, the unpaid student loan exceeds $ 1 trillion and constitutes the second largest source of household debts after mortgage (Dynarski, 2014, p. 1). Most of learners who need student loan in Rwanda are from underprivileged families who would not have enough mortgage to secure loan in normal conditions. The commercial company involved in student loan provision may not commit its own asset in the loan provision. Instead, it may act as a student loan service provider who gets funds for student loan from the Government. According to Dynarski (ibid, p. 11), such a service provider may not make effort to avoid defaults because the related cost is borne by fund providers and borrowers. Moreover, such service provision impose an additional transaction cost that adds to the financial burden to be borne by borrowers.
Unlike in the USA and other well-resourced societies in which any applicant get student loan, a huge number of applicants in Rwanda are denied student loan. Moreover, the majority of secondary education graduates who qualify and wish to attend higher education are not even shortlisted for submitting their application. In this way, student loan is highly rivalrous in Rwanda due to the shortage of funds. In contrast to non-rivalrous resources (Weller, 2011, p. 85) which are accessed and used without preventing others from accessing and using the same resources, access to and use of rivalrous resources often entail competition and sometime exclusion. Awarding student loan to a low performer, for instance, means the prevention of some high performers from accessing it when funds are in shortage.
The rivalrousness of student loan disappears in well-resourced countries where the loan can be awarded to any applicant who applies for it. Setting high performance as a criterion for awarding student loan in such countries does not make sense. In other words, when there is plenty of funds for student loan and any applicant can get the loan, granting the loan to a low performers does not happen at the expense of a higher performer. Therefore, student loan in well-resourced countries is non-rivalrous.
Beyond financial resources
Nkuyubwatsi (2015, pp. 45-49) identifies five categories of resources that can be invested in open education initiatives and discuss their rivalrousness in the light of Weller (2011, p. 85). These five categories of resources are discussed below and a new category is added.
The first category of resources is political resources that consist of powers vested in people, boards, commissions and institutions that shape the politics, vision, mission, policies and regulations that govern open education. Governments, institutions (leaders) and policy makers manage and control these resources. Political resources are rivalrous in that they are accessed by a limited number of people. Nevertheless, they can contribute to non-rivalrous higher education if they are invested in making policies and regulations that encourage and reward the use of non-rivalrous resources with an agenda to open up this level of education to people in need.
The second category is financial resources which include funds from donors and investors and fees paid for educational services. Financial resources may also include tuition fee in countries where higher education is not provided free of charge. These resources are managed and controlled by governments, the private sector, funding organisations, experts in the management of such resources and students. Financial resources are rivalrous and an over-reliance on them exacerbates the rivalrousness of higher education.
The third category of resources consists of technological resources. They include information and communication technology (ICT) physical infrastructures, different technological devices, software and applications and consumables such as electricity needed for technological devices to function. These resources are managed by investors and experts in related fields. They have different degrees of rivalrousness but they can be invested to move beyond challenges linked to other rivalrous resources. These resources can, for instance, be used to leverage limitations of infrastructural resources discussed later in this section (Nkuyubwatsi et al., forthcoming b).
The fourth category, pedagogical resources, consists of expertise in programme, course, learning design, content development, learning assessment and learning technologies. These resources also include a diversity of content used for learning as well as expertise in learning support. In the higher education sector, pedagogical resources are mainly managed and controlled by academics, but they sometime lose control and management of some of these resources such as content when they give away the copyright to other players. Some pedagogical resources such as openly licensed content are non-rivalrous, but others such as tutorial support are rivalrous. Pedagogical resources in terms of content, in electronic format or otherwise, also becomes rivalrous when they are not openly licensed. This is often the consequence of attachment of rivalrous resources to the content. Content is often not openly licensed because financial resources (when the agenda is to sell the content) or political resources (when the agenda is to control and maintain monopoly on access to the content) are attached.
The final category discussed in Nkuyubwatsi (2015) is heutagogical resources. These resources consist of students’ practices and attitudes (also discussed in Nkuyubwatsi, 2015 and Nkuyubwatsi, forthcoming) that trigger their engagement with learning as well as time and effort spent on learning. Heutagogical practices include students decisions making about own learning, setting learning goals, planning their own learning process, focusing, managing and controlling their own learning, prioritising and continuing self-assessment. As for heutagogical attitudes, they include independence, passion, dedication, perseverance and management of failure as a learning tool that does not inhibit moving on. Heutagogical resources are non-rivalrous: dedicated learners who invest the maximal time and effort and persevere in their learning do not do so by preventing the learning of others.
The sixth category of resources that can be invested in opening up higher education, infrastructural resources, was also discussed in Nkuyubwatsi (2015), but it was not identified as a separate category. Infrastructural resources that may be needed to open up higher education may include offices, examination rooms, tutorial session rooms, laboratory rooms, computer lab rooms, etc. In public higher education, these resources are managed and controlled by institutions. Infrastructural resources are also rivalrous. However, open and distance education does not heavily rely on such resources, which enables scaling up higher education without the need for a lot of physical infrastructure.
Current investing of resources that can help open up higher education in Rwanda
In the context of open and distance learning in Rwanda, some of those resources have been invested, but others seem to have been neglected, or not exploited at the fullest potential. The integration of the School of Open and Distance Learning in the University of Rwanda was motivated by the hope to benefit from the existing infrastructural resources to scale up open higher education. In this respect, existing infrastructural resources were expected to be invested in opening up higher education, even though most of them were built for conventional education. Moving to technological infrastructure and related resources, there have been a growing upgrade and effort to scale up technological resources is remarkable.
In a similar direction, some political resources have been invested. The example of such an investment is a Task Force that was recently appointed to work on the development of a national policy on open, distance and eLearning. However, there was no engagement of different stakeholders whose contribution is critical for successfully opening up higher education. While stakeholders’ engagement may not be necessary in formulating policies that are intended to be enforced (although stakeholders’ engagement may increase the buy in), the engagement of different stakeholders is needed for a successful implementation of open and distance education. Success in open and distance learning depends more on many stakeholders’ engagement and ownership development than enforcement. Open learning practices (especially the heutagogical ones), for instance, are developed by learners who are convinced on the value of their investment. Such practices cannot be enforced. Similarly, open educational practices are more likely to develop from academics’ ownership development.
There is no evidence so far that political resources have been invested in a way that enables non-rivalrous higher education in Rwanda. Instead, higher education has recently become more rivalrous as reflected in the 42 percent of students who were admitted on merit basis but could not be included. As discussed earlier, these students were additional to the majority that is not even shortlisted for application and admission in public higher education. As for pedagogical resources, most of the ones that are key to enabling opening up higher education have been underutilised. Those who are trained in open, distance and eLearning and related fields have usually not been included in “related initiatives”, which is probably the reason why opening up higher education in Rwanda has failed.
Financial resources, which are also rivalrous, are in shortage in Rwanda. This shortage was reflected in the mergence of all public higher education institutions and student loan crisis. As discussed earlier, this crisis led to the denial of student loan to more than 42 percent of top performers who were selected and admitted in the public higher education on merit basis. These top performers who were not included in the higher education system because they are underprivileged hold heutagogical resources that are being wasted, and their potential talents are being lost.
Student loan and tuition fees are often backed by the generally shared belief that education is an investment (Dynarski, 2014) that pays of later in life. However, restriction of investment by students to financial resources is too simplistic. Beyond financial resources, students can make heutagogical investment. In some countries, students in higher education institutions are not required to invest financial resources. This is often done to avoid the loss of interest in higher education on the part of learners (Andrei, 2014) which could lead to the waste of heutagogical resources and loss of potential talents. Creating opportunities for underprivileged learners to invest alternative resources (such as heutagogical resources) would match another political rhetoric that prevails in Rwanda: the Rwandan people constitute the most valuable resources the country has. In the line with this rhetoric, it makes sense to enhance and add value to these “most valuable resources” by providing education and creating opportunities to all who want to invest their heutagogical resources.
To sum up, sustainable solution to the student loan crisis in Rwanda requires innovating beyond financial resources that are in shortage in Rwanda and creating a synergy between practices of different stakeholders. This synergy can be created by developing a space for collaboration between different stakeholders to make opening up higher education happen. A framework for such collaboration is suggested in figure 1.
A framework for collaboratively opening up higher education is available here
Conclusion
Open and distance learning practices in Rwanda and the reach of learners who need access to higher education have remained far below related political rhetoric. These rhetoric advance the use of open and distance learning to achieve inclusive education and accelerate the transformation towards knowledge-based economy. The number of learners who qualify and wish to attend higher education but are note serviced has increased in recent years due to the crisis in student loan provision in Rwanda. Expedient tactics that responded to this crisis have often been socially disempowering and failed to avoid the loss of potential talents held by those who are not included. Barriers that inhibit opening up higher education to more people in need include communication gaps between different categories of stakeholders, resistance to innovation, avoidance of experts in the fields related to open and distance education, contentment with imitation and ephemeral solutions.
Different resources available in Rwanda can be invested to open up higher education in a cost-effective manner. Those resources include political, financial, technological, pedagogical, heutagogical and infrastructural resources. For effective investment of those resources, open collaboration between different categories of stakeholders is needed. Such collaboration may help add value to the human capital that has been politically chanted as the most valuable resources available in Rwanda. Collaboration on opening up higher education may also help recover the loss of potential talents held by top performers and other learners who qualify and wish to attend higher education but are not included in the mainstream conventional education.
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