Flood of establishments of unaccredited private universities in Somaliland and their problems
University knowledge of a country should have the applicable future oriented quality education that its young students need to move the country up wards with their knowledge. For the well being of a country, its universities and other higher education institutions must undergo accreditation process. Normally in the world the term “University” is usually used to mean a large institution with multiple departments with all 4-year Bachelor’s degrees, Master’s degrees and PhDs; and those with only Bachelorโs degrees are normally being called a “college”. But in Somaliland so many unaccredited institutions with only Bachelorโs degrees and poor academic knowledge called themselves universities.
A developing country whose the majority of its people are poor is first to have public universities in order to give higher education opportunities for all; because public universities get government grants and generating funds from donors, and offer free education for students with an admission based on merit determined on the marks or grades obtained in a competitive university entrance examination; which gives equal opportunity for both poor and rich students. But Private universities and colleges generate money from the very high fees required from the students to pay. Private universities are profit seeking entities; and are admitted only for the students whose families can afford to pay the student fees; in order to run or finance the institution and to get profit for the owners. So, in such universities there is no place for the students whose families are poor.
A country should have strategic short and long time plan based on its present and future demanding university knowledge; when it is establishing universities or allowing to be established privately. If universities are built on some vision that is detached from the reality of a countryโs demand, the plans of that country will be doomed to failure. If the government of that country has not the capability to build and run public universities, it should have the mind to introduce a strategic policy and have governing accountability to guide, monitor and supervise those which are established privately. In another words that government should prepare a proper quality assurance system to monitor the performances of the private universities. Knowing this, the governments of the countries carry out strict control, monitoring and evaluating procedures of the quality of the private universities.
Unfortunately Somaliland governments failed to establish even a single public or national university managed by the government up to now; which was the only opportunity that the students from the poor families who canโt pay private universitiesโ high fees can get university education. This means in Somaliland there is no place of university studies for the students of the poor families. The governments of Somaliland also failed to develop a national act or guideline with an appropriate requirements and conditions of establishing private universities; and failed to monitor and control the educational quality and performance of the private universities. The government even does not know whether these universities are sponsored by appropriate qualified prospective proprietors –or presidents and deans. This unfortunate situation in our higher education system is a reflection of the country’s lack of accountability in governance and the carelessness of the concerned institutions.
In Somaliland, there were no universities in its first ten years of existence. In the beginning of the next decade of independent Somaliland, Amoud University was established from zero to a working university. Then some scholars began to lay the foundation of Hargeisa University, which took many years to stand on its own legs as a working university. Both these universities are not public universities operated by the government with free education obtaining on merit; and typically are not profit seeking universities, but obviously they are private universities that take fees from the students.
The problems of the governmentโs bad governance in Somaliland, and lack of Governmentโs higher education strategic policy, Somaliland has seen in a flood of establishments of what they call private universities and colleges in the last fifteen years. There are above 40 such institutions that are registered, there are many working unregistered others, and others are under process. What they call Private universities are in every town in Somaliland, especially the capital city- Hargeisa; with no control and criteria for their establishment; not subject to government regulations and not accountable to the concerned government institutions; as if Somaliland is a land with no government. These universities have different graduation number of years, different graduation academic courses and different graduation credit hours for their similar faculties. They do not have common academic administrative records and academic disciplines monitored by the concerned institutions of the government.
University education whether Private or public is recognized as a key force for modernization and development in their countries. Really to establish a private university is a bold initiative but it must have to go a long way to make it a center with more academic and with all-round knowledge. An institution cannot tend to be called a university unless it creates the demanding knowledge and is more future-academic-needs-oriented. My knowledge of retrospective sight is that a university must always address two common goals: to have a special but moving philosophy of innovation and to know that it can produce graduates who in the knowledge and specializations they receive can compete their likes in the region or the world; a knowledge that can respond to the country needs; a knowledge that can address the demand and be built and structured accordingly.
The main problem with such Private Universities is that their aim is profit seeking and were established as commercial businesses to get much profit; not aiming to produce qualified graduates. They always commit a lot of corruption to satisfy that greed. If you make a close observation of how things are going with in these universities, you can see that there is a management of one man leadership whether financially, administratively and academically like a shop owned by one person. This authoritarian system makes most of these businesses-like-institutions not willing to take a sense of responsibility of building academically mature Universities; not caring the future of the young students but thinking only how the owners can gain more profit. And this is the main cause of their lack of quality education; and causes our higher education become the poorest in quality compared to the countries in the region. We can realize this when we evaluate the new graduates they produced and caste Judgments on a case-by-case basis.
It is a fact that the student population from secondary schools is now increasing by leaps and bounds in Somaliland, and the private universities are the only options available to satisfy such large number of students from the secondary schools. So I think the private universities are necessary in one way or another due to this sky-rocketing number of students and a corresponding lack of public universities. But this does not mean to do whatever they like just to meet their potential objective of receiving much profit. The profit-making primary motivation of private universities may not stunt the all-round knowledge and the needed university education development. It is their responsibility to create better educational and knowledge environment to produce future professionals and functional leaders.
When we are talking about establishing a private university the first compulsory thing to be available is to belong a compass suitable for a university owned by the proprietors of the proposed university. The ownership of the buildings and infrastructure facilities is a major condition of establishing a private university. Logically a rented small building would not be a sustaining long living higher education institution; and this is what is going on in Somaliland. The second most important thing to establish private universities is to find the professors and associate professors and assistant professors who will be the nucleus of that University. That’s because everything starts with people and the people runs everything. We have to keep in mind in universities we need academic staff and experts for every faculty of that university. It is not acceptable to employ persons not even have the first degree of the courses they are teaching; and that is what is going on in some of these institutions in Somaliland.
We want a Somaliland with accredited universities whose certificates are regionally and internationally recognized. We want our universities to undergo accreditationย or go through validation process in which universitiesย and other institutionsย of higher studies are evaluated on the bases of the international standards forย accreditation; and the criteria should be the same as for all universities. If the government takes its responsibility of doing this, it will compel them to develop rich full curriculum of courses or curricular material for the degree programmes of every faculty based in accordance with the international standard together with the country special demand.
If somebody or group is trying to start a Private University, it must have a clear vision about the university they want to build up. It is the responsibility of the government to have a written guideline stating the procedures, conditions and requirements of how to establish private universities; that the proprietors should meet before approval. The government should have the plan prioritizing the specializations to be focused, that are the national special thrust areas of academic knowledge. Thrust areas we mean the selected areas of specializations for the countryโs economic and social development. For example, If 90% of our youngsters from universities graduate on Business Administration what can they do for the country and how can they get jobs based on this single-item-specialization.
Faced with the failure of public higher education and lack of control, dozens of higher education institutions are appearing to merge to obtain private university label. These private institutions that labeled themselves as universities use a manipulated or fake data through continuous advertisements about the curricula, their international partnerships and about their programmes that have not received official authorization. Some of these called themselves private universities which had not yet themselves received academically evaluated accreditation; are involved in these misleading activities. However, most of them are not accredited and carry out fraudulent practices to attract student attention. To fight against the fraudulent practices phenomenon, it is necessary to invest more effort, control and evaluation system in private universities. This can improve their academic attitude and knowledge and can provide country demand of university knowledge. With such government monitoring they could also meet the standards of their like universities, at least in the region not in the world.
In order to get rid of the fraudulent practices phenomenon, in our higher education institutions, requires some curative and corrective actions; that is to carry out a rigorous policy in control and intervention within the private universities, with a guideline to evaluate which can be accredited and which is non-accredited. It is needed to conduct a regular check of the curricula and courses of the proposed degree programmes, and study in detail the specific cases of every institution called itself a university on their individual merits by qualified senior scholars โ The Higher Education commission. The Higher Education Commission should be elder scholars with an experience of over 30 or more years in university teaching and management, with a capacity to monitor universities knowing in advance what is wrong and what is right. Private universities owners and proprietors should not be members of the Higher Education Commission.
I recommend the creation of a unique platform for accreditation and validation process in higher education institutions that makes them be institutions with high academic visibility and knowledge. There should be government monitoring and inspections of how long each university meets the conditions & requirements and whether it adapts the regulatory framework needed from a university. This also opens competition between the higher education institutions; and competition brings excellence and diversification that ultimately benefits their enrolled students.
Misrepresentation of academic offerings happens in the developing world; but being uncontrolled is unique in Somaliland. This fraudulent practices problem requires firm measures as UNESCO suggested about this problem on its special focus on Africa. I can say I have the same suggestion that our private universities require such firm measures. These measures could include the suspension of non-accredited higher education private institutions with non-accredited programmes, the strengthening of quality control mechanisms and the use of all available tools to compel these institutions to develop their academic knowledge and discipline.
I am not tarring these higher education private institutions with a brush of stigma; but the problem is serious and I want the private higher education sector be heterogeneous and broadly be in line with the standards of their likes in the region. I am stressing that the importance of credibility and social trust are the pillars of academic practice. Administratively this business like attitude existing in our higher education system has highlighted the need for tighter regulation. There is no other problem with our private universities; but we want them create all-round-knowledge within their relative institutions; and play an important role in the nation building and contribute significantly to the emergence of Somaliland by providing graduates and scholars with specializations in demand.
Adam Ali Younis
E-mail: aayonis@hotmail.com
