Financial reforms and governance and the crisis in research in public universities in Africa: A case of Uganda
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Date
2010
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Publisher
Journal of Educational Administration and Policy Studies
Abstract
Since the 1980s, African countries including Uganda, have been implementing financial reforms with
particular emphasis on spending on priority sectors. Higher education sector was not given priority. In
this regard, there was a shift from funding higher education to funding primary education in the 1990s, the
consequence of which was a decline in public funding for university education. The effect of this policy
shift was for universities to look for alternative funding sources. Universities have turned to privatisation
and commercialisation of academic programs so as to continue functioning. In spite of the decline in public
funding for universities, there is observation that funding from the private sponsorship scheme has
increased but there is no corresponding increase in research and publication. Instead universities have
glossily lamented over the decline in public funding as affecting their performance in areas of research and
publication. There is little regard of the increased private and donor funding which could also contribute to
research. In this paper, I argue that the financial governance and reforms rather than declining funding
account for the decline in research in public universities in Uganda. The discussion presented will show
that there is limited funding allocated to research resulting into low morale for research, and where
research is done, there is more emphasis on applied research than basic research. In the last part of the
paper I look at how universities can respond to the crisis of research by taking care of financial governance
issues.
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Keywords
Accountability, Transparency, Financial reforms, Financial governance
Citation
Kabeba, M. R. (2010). Financial reforms and governance and the crisis in research in public universities in Africa: A case of Uganda. Journal of Educational Administration and Policy Studies