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In this clip, Philip Cotton explores the need for new models of African higher education that move beyond traditional frameworks. He advocates for deeper collaboration between universities, technical training, and employers, noting that many degrees are outdated or disconnected from community needs. Cotton also calls for flexible, apprenticeship-style learning that reflects how people actually gain knowledge today. Instead of investing in lecture halls, he suggests building spaces that support experiential learning and partnership across sectors.
That’s a tough one. You know, because we we often don’t have the luxury of starting from scratch. We often don’t have the luxury of pairing something right down because the system begins to wobble, you know, and that that great image of rebuilding an aircraft while it’s in flight. It’s very difficult to to conceive of that within a large heavy public institution.
I think we have to address territoriality. You know, that universities have to share that development space, the way they develop young people who would form communities. I have to share that development space with others with, TVET for example, technical and vocational training. With employers, who have a huge responsibility to continue the training and development of young people. You know, there can no longer be graduates who are fit for purpose working in a whole range of exquisitely different environments.
And so employers have to move into the space that universities have protected and universities have to extend themselves into the spaces that employers have protected for some time. And one of those ways is to have a national policy for example on internships. So, every private company operating within a region or a country become learning organizations, and that is a problem that young people get into early careers and they find that there’s absolutely no learning in the organization, there’s no peer support. There’s no reflection that their performances are evaluated in the most bizarre um ways and that are very very difficult for them to understand and fathom and the information they get back is very difficult for them to make any changes in the way they approach things.
So there’s got to be a whole ecosystem change, I think. Universities can keep doing the kind of change that they think they should do. Certainly there are some I think some some glaring issues that they need to look at, and a lot of universities tend to offer a huge number of degrees that actually look very similar, you know, and they tried to change the titles of degrees to fit in with with what they believe is the the dominant narratives.
But most of the degree content is written by people like you and me who have a limited view of the world and have a limited range within our discipline, rather than writing degrees that will prepare people for the challenges that the communities they serve will face in the future. And that will require us to work across institutions, across sectors and maybe working even outside our our own countries.
But I think we need to focus down on a smaller number of degrees. We can’t keep graduating people with the same degrees over and over again, internationally. You know, I really worry about the increasing number of MBAs. You know, does everybody really have to have an MBA to succeed? Clearly not.
But what kinds of degrees? And not just the content, and the title, and the direction of the degree, but the way in which the degrees are offered, flexibly. We talk about micro credentialing. We talk about people being able to stop and start the clock on their studies, to be able to take time out to get on with other aspects of their lives, perhaps to save some money to pay for the next stage in their education.
I believe that quite a lot of the courses that I’m engaged in in my professional life are truly apprenticeship degrees. Now I know apprenticeship degrees have a particular meaning, but the way of learning is through apprenticeship. Walking alongside, being with, being in the company of, observing.
And so we have to recognize that a lot of learning happens outside the university campuses. And yet we’re still investing in trophy buildings and infrastructure. While we shouldn’t be planning for the next lecture theater, we should be planning for the next place that people can go and be supported in their learning.