Bulletin Number Two 1983

degree level, run for two or three years until the need for cooperative managers, accountants, valuation assistants or whatever was satisfied. Then new courses in different fields replaced them. In this way there was a continual adjustment to current needs. Whereas, however, in Malawi relevance was achieved by adopting a comprehensive or ‘umbrella' responsibility for post-secondary education, in Mauritius relevance was sought through strict selectivity in favour of a limited range of short-run activities. By 1970 the number of universities in those parts of the Commonwealth I have been considering had risen to thirty-two. Since then the overall trend has been one of consolidation and testing — indeed in some cases one must sadly say tribulation and recession — rather than expansion of the number of new universities (except in Malaysia and Nigeria). To sum up therefore, though this classification must not be applied too rigidly, the post-war history of higher educational development in developing countries of the Commonwealth has been one of changing priorities, purposes and patterns. The initial emphasis on small, quality, residential universities has been succeeded by an emphasis on expansion, diversification and outreach into society and later still by a commitment to radical innovation and downreach (by which I mean the acceptance of the responsibility of providing lower-level courses as a legitimate university activity in the face of national need). Major Current and Future Issues Against that background may I now turn to some current and future issues. (1) The first is the explosive growth of human learning needs due both to the accelerated pace of technological and other changes and to population factors. As most of the world's population growth is occurring in less developed countries and as their populations are younger than those of developed countries, the educational burden is falling most heavily on those countries least able to bear it. At the higher educational level, as the increasing output of school systems takes effect, the problems look formidable. Nigeria, for example, had in 1979 a university enrolment of 50,000 with an age-group participation rate of 3%. It has been estimated that enrolment may need to be as high as 300,000 or even higher in 1990 ， bearing in mind the introduction some years ago of universal primary education. With thirteen universities already, many of them struggling for staff, the implications are daunting. In many countries, moreover, the difficulties do not stop with the sheer scale of the total enrolment; a variety of disbalances in student intake have also to be corrected, as between arts and science or between the children of privileged and disadvantaged areas. (2) The second issue, the issue of sustaining costs, follows inevitably the first. Many universities in Commonwealth Africa and the West Indies have reached a stage at which buildings are stretched to capacity, equipment is obsolescent and recurrent support is imposing heavily on Government and taxpayers. Add to this the tightening economic squeeze and the exacerbations of inflation and worldwide recession, and the impact on hard-pressed universities in developing countries becomes very serious, especially if the recession also causes a reduction in the flow of international aid. Add yet again the pressures exerted by demands for increased enrolment and the question arises whether adequate funds can be found or whether sufficiently large economics can be secured through better space utilization and more cost-effective techniques or whether the quality of university education will have to suffer. These are painful facts which many Commonwealth universities will have to face if relations with government, often sensitive in the Third World, are not to deteriorate. In some cases the frustration of governments about the expense of university education is already being voiced — and pointedly so. Even Dr. Nyerere, a stalwart supporter of the university in Tanzania, has felt it necessary to express his concern, pointing out that 'the university absorbs 31% of the whole education budget' and that ‘it costs as much to educate 3,400 undergraduates as it would to educate 640,000 primary school pupils'. ‘Is that', he asked, ‘by any criteria a just allocation of resources?' 'We certainly need more universities', he added, 'but at such costs the goal would be impossible to achieve. We need to think seriously about alternative methods of providing university level education.' In selecting the issue of sustaining costs as a consequence of rising enrolments I do 20 ACADEMIC/CULTURAL EVENTS