Pre- and Post-COVID-19 Exploring Issues of Access in Higher Education in Botswana and Ghana

Abstract

Against the background of the arrival of COVID 19 and its challenges, this paper explors the effect of the pandemic on access provisions in higher education in Botswana and Ghana. Relying on policy documents and secondary data, the paper examines trends in tertiary enrollment, and probes into the future of higher education in these countries. It analyzes the socio-economic backgrounds of both countries, as well as the state of higher education access pre-COVID 19, during the pandemic, and the post COVID-19 periods. While both countries differ in population and human development indices, they have high literacy rates, good technological platforms, and a growing culture of online learning. This culture, further enhanced by the growth of distance education systems, is enabled by national ICT policy platforms. The countries' commonality of colonial history, and long-held desires for educational access was noted. In the context of COVID-19, both are continually adopting online teaching and learning strategies in higher education. Overall, a gradual growth is observed in tertiary access provisions and the exploration of alternative pathways to learning. Notably, the Commonwealth of Learning and Coursera initiatives are enhancing access in higher education. The paper recommends, in line with Adarkwah (2020), that the fostering of collaborative eLearning, researching learner preferences, promoting digital literacy, and enhancing infrastructural support will go a long way into mitigating the effects of COVID-19 in the future. Similarly, removing barriers to access and increasing gross enrollment ratios are vital to promoting access in tertiary education provisions in both countries.

Introduction

Since its arrival, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought serious challenges worldwide. As of early January 2021, there were 83,715,617 confirmed cases and 1,835,901 deaths globally; and in Africa, 1,961,234 confirmed cases and 43,592 deaths were recorded (World Health Organisation [WHO] 2020). In Botswana within this period, 14,805 confirmed cases and 42 deaths were recorded; in Ghana, there were 55,064 confirmed cases and 335 deaths (WHO 2020). The pandemic led to students dropping out from schools (International Labour Organisation [ILO] 2020). Exploring the stories of Botswana and Ghana is significant in many ways. Both countries have a common colonial history and their premier tertiary education institutions were set up in line with the British system. In general, the two nations are stable democracies, with relative degrees of economic stability. Also, both countries have depended on the use of mineral resources for their development and are aiming to use human development strategies to build knowledge-based economies. Although Botswana and Ghana ranked 94 and 142 in the United Nations Human Development Index (HDI) rankings in 2017, respectively, their mean years of schooling were 9.3 (Botswana) and 7.2 (Ghana; United Nations Development Programme [UNDP] 2019). Tertiary enrollment was 25 percent for Botswana in 2017 and 16 percent for Ghana in 2018 against a global average 38 percent in 2018 (World Bank 2020).

This article examines tertiary education access and explores the future of higher education in the post-COVID-19 world. We conceptualize "access" as students' ability to gain admission to a tertiary education institution, which eventually results in the growth of a country's tertiary enrollment. We also employ this concept with the idea that access also relates to a country offering its students greater access to technology, which eventually results in an increased use of technology. The terms "tertiary education" and "higher education" are used interchangeably in this article to describe the higher education context.

Botswana

Context

With a population of 2.3 million, Botswana has been a stable democracy since independence in 1966, relying on diamond, nickel, soda ash, and tourism for its economic growth (CIA 2020). Botswana is one of the fastest growing economies in Africa, with a per capita gross domestic product (GDP) of US$7, 961.34 in 2017 (World Bank 2020). The literacy rate in 2015 was 88.5 percent and school life expectancy was thirteen years (CIA 2020). There are 6.2 fixed telephone lines per 100 people, and the percentage of households with internet access was 35.5 percent, and there were 141.4 mobile phones per 100 people in 2017 (ITU 2018).

State of Access to Higher Education Pre-COVID-19

For university education, between 1964 and 1975 Botswana citizens relied on a tripartite arrangement among Bechuanaland (now Botswana), Basutoland (now Lesotho) and Swaziland (now Eswatini). These were known as High Commission Territories, which though lacking the necessary funds, felt the need to set up a joint tertiary institution to service their territories (University of Botswana 2020). The Catholic

Table 1.

Student Enrollment by Institution Type and Gender in Botswana (2018)

Church, with an existing Roma Campus facility in Basutoland, availed its buildings and premises, while funding came from Ford Foundation and the British Government, and later, the new countries of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland. Notably, student numbers rose from 188 in 1964 to 420 in 1970 (University of Botswana, 2020). After a while, the countries went their separate ways, and in 1982, the first national university was established in Botswana (Tabulawa and Youngman 2017). Major access-enabling policies include the Revised National Policy on Education of 1994, the Tertiary Education Policy of 2008, the National Human Resource Development Strategy 2009–2025, Vision 2016, Vision 2036, and the country's National Development Plans (1–11). In 1978, there was a total of 1,047 individuals enrolled at tertiary level with this number growing to 4,960 by 1991 (Republic of Botswana 1994). By 2018, the total number had grown to 59,243 (see Table 1). Table 1 provides specific information about current tertiary education enrollment as reported by the Human Resources Development Council (HRDC; 2019).

State of Access in the Context of COVID-19

As a signatory to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Agenda 2030, Botswana is committed to ensuring equal access for all to affordable and quality technical, vocational, and tertiary education (Statistics Botswana 2016). The country's 2019 HRDC report on the state of higher education in the country reported that tertiary enrollment had grown in Botswana from 20,011 in 2003–2004 to 53,930 in 2018–2019 (HRDC 2020). Although this was the situation when COVID-19 struck, many institutions have since enacted emergency measures to enable program continuation and completion. By December 2020, almost all tertiary institutions in Botswana had their 2020 graduation ceremonies conducted virtually, having done assessment and quality assurance to mitigate the effect of the pandemic.

At Botswana Open University (BOU), there has been an increase in intake, with programs offered online. This was enabled by BOU's Strategic Plan (2019–2023), geared towards access provision, quality services, and the prioritization of technology investment (BOU 2019). In response to the pandemic, BOU has partnered with the Commonwealth of Learning to enable hundreds of disadvantaged Batswana to enroll in Coursera online programs free of charge. It has accelerated online instruction and expanded open and distance learning (ODL) to all its programs, using innovative approaches to teaching and assessment. BOU's partnership with Mascom, one of the country's largest internet service providers, led to zero rated services, thus opening access to university resources. During the lockdown imposed by Government to mitigate the effects of the COVID 19 pandemic, this arrangement allowed BOU students registered with Mascom to have free internet access to Botswana Open University e-learning services and resources. At the national level, the University has also spearheaded the development of the e-Education Policy framework in partnership with the Ministries of Basic Education and Tertiary Education, Research, Science, and Technology. This policy aims to promote cost-effective access to education and training, enhance learner access to lifelong learning, leverage technology-enabled learning, and increase enrollment and success in tertiary education (Republic of Botswana 2020). BOU proposed the establishment of a National Open Educational Resource Centre to increase access to educational resources for teacher training, e-content development, and to enhance access to databases for research and innovation.

In addition to BOU, one of the country's new public universities, the Botswana International University of Science and Technology (BIUST), has a current student enrollment of 1,881 students, which is much lower than its projected enrollment figure of 6,000 (BIUST 2020a). In May 2020, BIUST made some products available in order to mitigate the pandemic's effects. Its students and staff manufactured bars of soap and liquid hand sanitizers and distributed these items to members of the community of Palapye, where the University is situated. BIUST also created a COVID-19 data analysis tool that Batswana can use to analyze information about the pandemic. Finally, BIUST is using Blackboard for teaching and learning (BIUST 2020b). The University of Botswana also developed and donated sanitizers and related COVID-19 products to the community while adopting a blended learning approach. Some private tertiary institutions have also started exploring the use of ICTs for teaching and learning. While Botho University makes use of the Blackboard platform for its e-learning, the Gaborone Institute for Professional Studies uses Google Classroom; the Gaborone University College of Law and Professional Studies makes use of Moodle and the New Era College utilizes Zoom (Adekanmbi 2021). These community initiatives and innovative approaches should enhance educational access in the country.

Technology Use Before and After COVID-19

The use of technology at all levels of education in Botswana is a major objective of the Revised National Policy on Education. The nation is expected to promote the use of science and technology in the education system (Republic of Botswana 1994). To this end, the Maitlamo National Policy for ICT Development, which was drafted in 2005 and launched in 2007, outlines expectations about how ICTs will be used in all aspects of society (e.g., the community, government, learning, health, economy, infrastructure, and legislation; Republic of Botswana 2007). Despite these intentions, though, internet connectivity in Botswana is heavily skewed toward urban areas (Statistics Botswana 2016), because individuals who own computers and have internet connectivity are mostly located in Gaborone, the country's capital city, and other major towns and villages. This inequity has implications for access promotion in higher education.

The above discussion has illustrated the ways in which Botswana has taken some observable steps to promote access to various initiatives in its tertiary education sector with the expectations that these efforts will continue in the post-COVID-19 era. In the following section, we explore developments in Ghana and examine its tertiary education provisions in the context of COVID-19.

Ghana

Context

Ghana, the first colonial sub-Saharan country to gain independence (1957), has been a relatively stable democracy since 1992, relying on agricultural products and an emerging oil sector for its economic growth (CIA 2020). Buoyed by some twenty-five years of sound management of its economy, Ghana's estimated per capita GDP in 2019 was $4,700; the nation boasts of a 76.6 percent literacy rate for adults fifteen and above; and a school life expectancy ratio of twelve years (CIA 2020). There were 1.0 fixed telephone lines for every 100 people in 2018, and the percentage of people with internet access in the same period was 39 percent (CIA 2020). A general increase in life expectancy has been observed in Ghana, with the figures for 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020 being 63.65, 63.91, 64.17, and 64.2 years, respectively (Macrotrends 2021). The country's development plans are also in line with the United Nation's SDGs.

State of Access to Higher Education Pre-COVID-19

Tertiary education began in Ghana when the University College of Cape Coast was established in 1948. In the 1992–1993 academic session, Ghana's polytechnics had a total of 1,385 students, a figure that rose to 47,294 in the 2011–2012 session (Acquah and Budu, 2017). Likewise, in the 1992–1993 session, student enrollment in Ghana's universities was 14,278, a figure that rose to 109,278 in the 2011–2012 session (Acquah and Budu 2017). A report from Ghana's National Council for Tertiary Education (2018) on the status of public higher education institutions in the country (see Table 2), indicated that Ghana has nine universities, ten technical universities/polytechnics, forty-five colleges of education, three colleges of agriculture, and fifteen nursing training colleges (totaling ninety HEIs in the country). For private institutions, the country has seventy-four tertiary institutions, made up of universities, university colleges, and distance education institutions. It also has three private colleges of education and four private nursing training colleges, making a total of eighty-one such institutions at the private level (National Council for Tertiary Education 2018). Public universities make up nearly 60 percent of the student tertiary population, followed by the technical universities, and colleges with just about 11 percent of the

Table 2.

Types of Institutions and Students Enrolled by Gender (Ghana)

total number of students pre-COVID-19. These institutions are followed by the private tertiary institutions and the public college of education with 15 percent and 10 percent, respectively.

It should be noted that when the pandemic struck in Ghana, many of the universities and institutions of higher learning undertook initiatives aimed at addressing the effects of the pandemic and ensuring the continuity of teaching and learning. The Ghana Library Authority is said to have secured a total of 1,000 scholarships for Ghanaians to study through Coursera (Sedode, 2020). This was done in association with the Commonwealth of Learning, which has been promoting tertiary education access initiatives through Coursera and other similar routes. As reported further by Amponsah (2021), at the emergence of COVID-19, a directive was issued to the University of Ghana by its pro vice chancellor of academic and student Affairs to move all academic programs online. To further facilitate this transition, the University of Ghana arranged with Vodafone and MTN, two of the leading six internet providers in Ghana, to ensure zero-rating of all the activities going through the University's Learning Management System (Amponsah 2021). In addition, the University and others carried out virtual graduation of their students. This pattern was seen in other universities like the University of Cape Coast and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. Beyond the use of online learning, the universities also pursued community-based initiatives by developing strategies to mitigate the effect of the pandemic.

The University of Ghana made a significant contribution by sequencing the SAR-COV-2 strain from fifteen cases. In Botswana, similar sequencing of COVID-19 strains was done by the Botswana Institute for Technology Research and Innovation (BITRI; 2020). In addition, the Kwame Nkrumah University developed a tracking app known as 'COVID-19 TECHBOT' (Nkansah 2020). Okyere et al., in a joint work spearheaded by faculty from the University of Cape Coast in Ghana, carried out remote assessment sensing in coastal Ghana with the aim of helping small-scale fishermen reduce the risk of acquiring COVID-19. Also, the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology collaborated with the Ghana Tech Lab (through Incas Diagnostics) to develop a rapid COVID-19 test kit that can detect infections within twenty minutes (Mastercard n.d.)

State of Access in the Context of COVID-19

Ghana's tertiary education sector is seen as a success story due to its relatively high enrollment rates (1,370 per 100,000 inhabitants) and higher education expenditures with 13 percent of total spending on education dedicated to tertiary education (Darvas et al. 2017). Although a low-volume transition from secondary education to tertiary education has been observed (Adekanmbi 2021), Ghana is said to have "one of the most competitive telecommunications markets in the world" (ITU 2018, 67). This type of market enables access for learners through ICT. Private tertiary institutions in Ghana are said to use ICT more than the public institutions (Larkai, Ankomah-Asare, and Nsomah-Nuamah 2016). Concerning the sudden shift from face-to-face to online instruction, Agormedah et al. (2020) found that most of the 467 university students surveyed at one Ghanaian university were positive about studying online, with many using online platforms like Moodle, Allison, and Google classroom. The study noted that students could use other media platforms for online learning. Despite their knowledge, students reported not being adequately prepared through training for online learning (Agormedah et al. 2020). They were also constrained by poor connectivity and a lack of finances to pay for internet service. The students suggested that university authorities should negotiate with internet service providers for discounted rates. Agormedah et al. (2020) further recommend that university faculty consider providing instructional support to enhance students' online skills, as well as access to the internet and other resources. Although exploring the use of ICT in Ghana post-COVID-19, Adarkwah (2020) also observed challenges, such as lack of ICT access, electricity and network issues, and a reluctance by users to utilize ICTs.

A survey-based policy paper on the analysis of ICT use in Ghana notes the various ways in which the population gets internet connectivity (Frempong 2012). The survey population had multiple internet connectivity channels. The findings revealed that individuals in a household had multiple channels of internet connectivity, namely, mobile telephone (69 percent), modems 3G (65 percent), modems/SDN (23 percent), wireless broadband (19 percent), and ADSL (1 percent). In addition, the article showed that in Ghana the internet is used for distance learning, academic degree, or training (80 percent), engaging in education or learning activities (87 percent) and obtaining information for schoolwork and research (67 percent; Frempong 2012). These figures show that internet use makes education accessible to a wider population. There is, however, a digital divide with the internet being more accessible in urban areas (Krönke 2020). During the pandemic, the universities have adopted online teaching and learning. With a growth in the percentage of households with a computer (22.6%) and a corresponding growth in Internet access (35.5%) (ITU 2018), there is a bright future for online learning in Ghana.

Observations, Conclusions, and Ways Forward

Botswana and Ghana differ in populations, have varying HDIs, and have relatively high literacy rates. Both countries have policies and technological platforms for enhancing tertiary education access. Like Ghana, Botswana's use of the internet for online courses is growing and the ICT policies are geared towards improving the economy and other aspects of life. Also, they both have low fixed telephone lines per 100 people: 1 for Ghana, and 6.2 for Botswana, and both were affected by the pandemic, leaving their higher education institutions to explore ways to carry out teaching and learning. Although Ghana has been using traditional institutions and ODL in some tertiary contexts, Botswana has a university solely dedicated to the provision of ODL.

The commonality of colonial history between the two nations was also seen in their inability to provide access to all the students who needed to be in school. Although a gradual growth in access to tertiary education was common to both, their exploration of partnerships through Coursera Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCS) programs, the Commonwealth of Learning and the internet providers have been noted. Coursera is a global learning initiative in which it partners with universities and organizations to promote tertiary e-learning initiatives. For example, Botswana Open University partners with Coursera to avail free University non-credit courses to its staff while the Blue Crest University College in Ghana and the Accra Technical University utilize the Coursera opportunity availed through Coursera. The universities have also contributed to mitigating the effects of COVID-19 while opening access through online learning. Yet these developments have not been without challenges. For instance, though there is evidence that internet and ICTs can facilitate educational access, in general the price for telecommunication and internet connectivity is high in both countries (Frempong 2012; ITU 2020). Second, broadband for ensuring fast and reliable internet accessibility and connectivity also remains a problem, in particular in rural areas.

Bozkurt et al. (2020) observe that social injustice, inequity, and the digital divide have increased during the pandemic. Parents and guardians have taken on added educational roles, beyond paying fees and occasional school visits (Bozkurt 2020). The authors suggest the development of a pedagogy of care, affection, and empathy in a period of anxiety, trauma, and uncertainty. Also, openness in education, alternative assessment methods, greater surveillance, ethics, and data privacy were suggested (Bozkurt 2020). Botswana and Ghana need to consider emphasizing these things in the post-COVID-19 period.

In line with Adarkwah (2020), post-COVID-19 higher education requires fostering collaborative eLearning, researching learner preferences, promoting digital literacy, enhancing infrastructural support, providing technical support, and ensuring monitoring and evaluation. Removing barriers to access and increasing gross enrollment ratios are vital as part of the pursuit of access to tertiary education in the post-COVID-19 era in Botswana and Ghana.