Afghan Public Universities Modernize To Attract Talent

BAGHLAN PROVINCE – Becoming a lecturer at Baghlan University was no small achievement for Nargis. She had to clear a very tough competitive examination, but getting the lectureship made it worthwhile. “I was very excited about becoming a lecturer at the university,” says Nargis.

A high performing student, she graduated from the Faculty of Biology and Chemistry only a few years earlier. In 2012, when she started as a lecturer, she had come on-board with a bachelor’s degree. “I had just a BSc degree, no experience, and I was not familiar with the new methods of teaching,” she recalls. Despite her best efforts and academic rigor, she felt herself struggling and decided she needed to upgrade her skills to do justice to her job.

Nargis, who is now 28, is pursuing a master’s degree in natural resources management at the Asian Institute of Technology in Thailand. One of 200 scholarship recipients under the Higher Education Development Project (HEDP), she believes she could not have pursued her dream without the project’s help.

“With HEDP support, I am studying in a good international university in Thailand,” Nargis says. “I have learned a lot and feel my master’s degree will improve my teaching abilities and when I come back to Afghanistan, I will be able to teach my students much more efficiently.”

HEDP aims to increase access to higher education in Afghanistan, as well as improve its quality and relevance. It has been implemented by the Ministry of Higher Education (MoHE) since July 2015, with funding support by the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ARTF). One of the ways HEDP is working to achieve this goal is through capacity building at all levels within the public university system, such as the scholarships for lecturers who want to purse postgraduate degrees to further their academic skills and qualifications.

Afghanistan has 36 public universities and institutes of higher education across the country, most of which were established or re-established only within the past decade. One of the most critical challenges they face is the lack of well-qualified lecturers—as high as around 60 percent of all lecturers in public universities hold only a bachelor’s degree. Based on the MoHE second National Higher Education Strategic Plan, 2016-2020, all university lecturers require at least a master’s degree by 2021.

HEDP is working to change the old system of higher education to a more modern one to increase its relevance and efficacy. “Through HEDP we would like to transform the old and traditional systems that are being used in public universities with a modernized and internationally recognized system, with serious attention to female participation,” says. Noor, director of MoHE.

Filling the Knowledge and Skills Gap

There is, moreover, a huge knowledge and skills deficit, says Noor. Since most lecturers are graduates of the same universities they end up teaching in, they rely on their own study notes and teaching aids and are rarely aware of new research and methods that are redefining their fields.

HEDP is playing a key role to meet fill these gaps. “The importance of this project on the higher education of our lecturers in public universities is critical,” says Elham, MoHE. “After a few years through HEDP we will have hundreds of valuable scholars and it will help our higher education system.” 

To date, HEDP has awarded scholarships to 200 lecturers, 60 of whom are women, to study in other Asian countries, such as Malaysia, India, Thailand, and Iran. They are pursuing postgraduate degrees in various fields, including engineering, environment, economy, agriculture, and medicine. The project endeavors to maintain a male-female beneficiary ratio to ensure female academics are included and will fund another 250 lecturers by 2020, says Elham.

Scholarship beneficiaries, like Mohammad, are eager to apply the new knowledge and ideas they have learnt. Mohammad, who is pursuing his master’s degree in engineering at the University of Technology in Malaysia, says, “This is a unique opportunity for me. In addition to my main lessons, I understand the value of research and networking among universities and lecturers. When I come back to Kandahar University, I will try to mainstream these ideas of research and networking.”

Mohammad holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Turkey and joined the Faculty of Engineering at Kandahar University in 2014. He says that the studies in Turkey focused on making students ready for the job market but not as academics. “When I became a lecturer, I had difficulties teaching my students because I did not know about research methods,” Mohammad says. “My master’s degree will solve this problem—now I study to become a lecturer.”

Training at All Levels

HEDP also aims to improve the university ecosystem in a more holistic manner. In the course of its support cycle, it will train 600 technical support staff members. These are typically employees who work in science laboratories, computer laboratories, and libraries, and the trainings are aimed at helping them specialize. The project has trained more than 150 staff members of various public universities.

Additionally, to ensure the quality of leadership at these universities, HEDP will train 500 chancellors and head of faculties in new methods of academic management and leadership by end of the project.