3.3.2.4 ‘Local Ownership’
3.3.5. External Features
cited in Berdal 2011, p.72). It may be expected that societies placing high cultural value on education, for example Confucian societies (Marginson 2011), should be expected to experience more rapid HE recovery. Furthermore, aspects of culture may hinder utilising HE towards post-‐‑conflict recovery, for example, conservative academic cultures may be inclined towards restoring the status quo or pre-‐‑war HE while being resistant to innovative programmes and new modes of operation capable of transformative reconstruction.
The historical context of post-‐‑conflict societies is a major influence on post-‐‑war reconstruction and peacebuilding (Berdal 2009, p.41). It can be argued that historical trajectories of HE’s emergence in societies prior to conflict creates path-‐‑ dependencies constraining the scope of post-‐‑war policy-‐‑making. Clear historical understanding is therefore vital to inform post-‐‑war reconstruction policy. However, interpretations of historical issues related to HE are multiple and contested. For example, Ayres (1999, p.53) explains that many narratives of Cambodian HE adopt a ‘destruction discourse’ that blames all the system’s ills on the Pol Pot regime thus obscuring other long-‐‑term causes of weakness and low quality. Furthermore, historical experiences of HE and development shape national expectations about the sector’s post-‐‑war role. In particular, external intervention in rebuilding HE systems may encounter resistance from domestic actors who perceive outsiders to have no understanding of historical context and HE’s pre-‐‑war role. This influence of external actors is explored in the next section analysing external features in shaping HE recovery outcomes.
3.3.5. External Features
Various external influences upon typical post-‐‑war contexts of HE include regional context and external assistance levels. To begin, regional context is an important factor shaping the environment of post-‐‑war reconstruction (Berdal 2009, p.38). It
may be expected that HE recovery will be easier in regions marked by amiable neighbourly relations and established modes of cooperation, for example, that opportunities for HE assistance would be more forthcoming after a hypothetical civil war in a Latin American country signatory to the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas (Alba) than in the Great Lakes region in Africa marked by greater historical patterns of enmity. In the South East European nations formed from the former Yugoslavia’s violent breakup, post-‐‑conflict HE has been heavily influenced by the Bologna Process and meeting EU membership conditions. For example, rebuilding Kosovan HE was aligned with the Bologna Process to prepare for future accession to the grouping (Epp & Epp 2010).
Quality of external assistance is another influence upon HE’s contribution to post-‐‑ conflict recovery. HE tends to be a low donor priority and donor efforts are frequently uncoordinated. Cambodia offers an example of high dependence on donor financing. In 1997 recurrent expenditure-‐‑per-‐‑student was $163 from government budgets and $350 for foreign-‐‑aid. However, donor aid was volatile; in 1994 HE received approximately $2.5 million while only $280,000 in 1997. Further, due to complex governance and budgeting procedures and poor coordination many faculties lacked capacity to spend allocated funds while access to funds was high; in 1995 and 1996 the Faculty of Medicine spent only 42.7% and 52% of its approved budgets (Minxuan 1998). Furthermore, donor efforts were highly fragmented and individual donors entered bilateral agreements to provide assistance to individual colleges within the National University of Phnomh Pen conditional upon instruction in the donor country’s language. Consequently, multiple languages of instruction became an obstacle to a national language strategy (Duggan 1997). This finding suggests donors may be more attuned to pursuing organisational reputation than recipient societies’ needs.
The level of external assistance is another major dynamic shaping the post-‐‑war environment of HE. Most post-‐‑conflict countries face considerable resource constraints with many competing priorities. Consequently, mobilising resources for HE rebuilding can be difficult and donor funding is often critical. It may be
expected that where external assistance levels are high the prospects for HE recovery are more positive because of the large resource requirements for rebuilding complex HE systems and the multiple constraints on public expenditure in post-‐‑conflict environments. Rose and Greeley (2006) report very little international assistance to HE in fragile and conflict-‐‑affected states.
Furthermore, current expenditures typically account for a very high proportion of budget allocations to HE and therefore capital expenditure from domestic sources will remain low, for example, in Burundi (Finnegan 2008). This structural feature entails that donor financing of HE rebuilding, even in middle-‐‑income post-‐‑conflict countries including Iraq or Bosnia, represents a much needed income source giving donors considerable influence. For example, when Mozambique’s government planned HE expansion in the early 1990s ‘existing public higher education institutions were devoid of financial resources for consolidation and institutional expansion’ and the World Bank loaned over $50 million (Chilundo 2006). However, dependence on external assistance can undermine national ‘ownership’ over HE reform with various negative consequences.
3.3.6. Conclusion
This section provided analysis of the post-‐‑war environment in terms of its influence upon the HE-‐‑recovery relationship organised around a framework identifying structural, institutional, educational, conjunctural, and external features. While actors in post-‐‑conflict societies have little agency to change structural or external features in the short-‐‑term, there is greater opportunity to affect institutional, education, and conjunctural features. The relative weight of various features should be expected to differ between cases and will be investigated empirically in the Iraq and Libya case-‐‑studies. Furthermore, various options and opportunities presented to HE sectors in post-‐‑conflict societies offer different means of overcoming the obstacles and challenges presented above and will be considered in the next section.
3.4. Options and Opportunities
In this section options and trends available for the recovery and development of HE in post-‐‑conflict societies will be analysed in terms of private HE provision and internationalisation. The section addresses RQ5, which is re-‐‑stated below:
RQ5: What are the opportunities and challenges associated with various options for higher education recovery and reform in post-‐‑conflict societies?
While each option can be considered a dynamic affecting the HE-‐‑recovery relationship they also reveal broad critiques of conventional practice and the challenges as well as opportunities presented by each option. To begin, the section will now explore the prospects of private HE and privatisation as HE recovery-‐‑ drivers in post-‐‑conflict contexts.
3.4.1. Private Higher Education
A significant trend in contemporary post-‐‑conflict countries is considerable growth in the private HE sector. While enabling HE capacity to increase under resource constraints typical of post-‐‑conflict states, this trend entails various negative contradictions that frustrate the ability of HEIs to positively contribute to post-‐‑war recovery. With state capacity and governance structures often weakened by conflict and their role challenged by other actors including donor agencies, parallel service-‐‑ delivery structures such as NGOs, or market forces, private and foreign providers can drive post-‐‑conflict HE expansion outside of formal regulatory channels.
Proponents of private HE hold that the private sector is vital to bringing much needed investment into under-‐‑resourced HE systems. In particular in post-‐‑conflict countries where HE is of low quality and low capacity, private providers are held to ‘fill a niche’ that can increase capacity with little to no public expenditure (Hamm & Lehmann 2011). Furthermore, private providers may inject innovation and