Some African Nations Should Shift Money From Universities to Primary Schools, Report Suggests

April 28, 2011, 4:55 pm

A new Unesco report is urging sub-Saharan African countries to devote more government funds to primary education instead of public universities, says the news site allAfrica.com. The report says that African nations increased spending on education by more than 6 percent each year during the past decade and that enrollment has grown at almost all levels of schooling. But the report, by Unesco’s Institute for Statistics, says governments should consider shifting money away from higher education if the goal of universal primary education has not been met. It says most countries in the region are putting at least 10 times the amount of money into each university student as they do into each primary-school student.

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jffoster

And if the problem were as simple as income inequality, we could fix that. Simply decree and manipulate the tax system so that all families have equality of income.
jffoster

Sounds like you have doubts that a silk purse can be made of a sow’s ear when the sow is from a pigsty whose inhabitants do not value silk purses and resent any of their members trying to get or become one.
CS2011

I think the third proposal is definitely an important focus for closing the socio-economic gap in college. Often low-income and first generation students do not have the access to information about colleges and the best fit for them. They do not have the resources and/or the familial support system that is familiar with our college system. Our counselors are stretched thin and cannot provide the guidance and attention that these students need. We need to figure out ways identify our strong, but overlooked students and give them access to the most personal and focused assistance. Then they can truly determine whether a two or four-year school is right and make an informed decision. That will help success and ultimately reach Obama’s goals.
rwilt004

Old news in terms of research. We’ve known for a long time low SES impacts postsecondary success negatively. In practice, it is apparently easier to engage in racial profiling to develop a mish-mash of programs for the at-risk groups. Attention to correct postsecondary at-risk conditions needs to start at least in middle school. A child who can’t read in the fourth grade will be remediated and at college-level reading when s/he is 20 years old after a semester of remediation – really? Not to mention all the other social skills that are lacking.
rwilt004

Forgot to add – for every journal article or dissertation on low SES success, there must be a dozen based on race.
jsarvey

The report seems to miss an obvious proposal. Examine the research on what works for retaining and graduating low-income students and then replicate those things. The third proposal touches on the idea but assumes that it’s just TRIO and GEAR UP that work. We should look for the ”positive deviances” in variety of institutions and settings. What’s happening at those community colleges that are the very best in the nation in terms of graduation rates? Which four-year public universities have the best graduation rates and what are they doing? Same for private four-years. It’s probably not actually worthwhile looking at the very elites, like the Ivy League. Take one UC campus like UCLA or UC Berkeley and you’ll find that they enroll more low-income students than the entire Ivy League combined.
mdanieltex

Sounds like some of the same arguments used for school bussing.
rick1952

Actually, it sounds like neither you (jffoster) or tdb489 understand what Kahlenberg is recommending based on the report. Perhaps you don’t recognize the silk threads that exist in low-income communities and therefore are apt to miss the opportunity to weave many more silk purses with some careful cultivation. Your assumption (at least what I detected as an assumption) that low-income students are bereft of capacity to achieve academic success is exactly the prejudiced attitude that contributes to maintaining a system that discriminates unfairly against low-income students. Being poor or working class does not equate to being “stupid” per tdb489 nor being a sow’s ear per your comment.

As a working class, first generation college student who graduated from one of the most selective undergraduate colleges in our nation, I recognize that my educational preparation did not match that of my much more affluent classmates yet I successfully completed my BA, earned both a masters and doctorate with honors and have worked successfully for 30+ years in higher education. I am not unique or special – just lucky to have had the chance to attend a first-class undergraduate college that prepared me far better than my local community college could have done. There are many more working class and low-income students who can replicate and even surpass my academic success if given the opportunity to attend first-class undergraduate colleges. The recommendations listed above can make that opportunity more likely for other students.
jffoster

For the record, a coal miner’s daughter’s son I am. And the first person in my family to have gone to college. And my brother, who a very quick mind has, maintains the family tradition more closely than I do. Chwaraewr ydy fo. ‘A quarryman he is.’
whitakal

This post and the ensuing discussion appear to me to be rattling about in a silo. What do Mr. Kahlenberg and the commentators think about the arguments put forward by other Chronicle bloggers (such as Richard Vedder and Peter Wood), that the students who do complete college end up with a largely empty and valueless “education”? The President’s airy demand that the country achieve an arbitrary college completion rate begs the question of what value that completion brings–apart from the value to institutions hungry for more tuition dollars. Indeed, the arguments about the bubble in higher ed suggest that increasing attendance and completion through the inevitable student grants and funding for remediation will only dilute the content of higher ed further. Perhaps this time it will be different … But that seems an argument that Kahlenberg et al. must at least address, if the dreamed-of 60% completion is not to undermine its own worth. In the absence of such an engagement with the fundamental questions, their proposals sound more motivated by a desire to reengineer society than to improve education. Which I suspect is the case.
clementj

But stupid can be fixed!!!! Unfortunately it requires a special type of intervention that teachers have never been trained to do. Look at “Thinking Science” by Shayer, Adey, Yates. They improve student ability to think. Or look at the ADAPT program at U. Nebraska, Lincoln. It improved passing rates in subsequent courses dramatically. Compared to remedial algebra their program halved the failure rate in a subsequent calculus course. Then of course there is the Instrumental Enrichment program of Reuven Feuerstein. It has dramatic results with improved thinking and motivation.

The formula motivation times ability is just fluff, and no such formula can be determined. Motivation actually comes from satisfaction after mastery of a subject. You achieve self esteem by mastering something.

So targeting low performing students is a good idea, but it needs to have programs such as ADAPT which actually improve their thinking.
katisumas

Thank you for giving voice to this translator and thus this poet.

Thank you Michael McGriff for recreating these beautiful poems for an Anglophone readership.