Higher Education, Inequality and the Public Good in four African countries: South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria and Ghana

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There is widespread agreement amongst policy makers and practitioners across Africa that higher education is a public good, and it has been given significance in the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) agenda. However there are sharply different views regarding what is meant by the notion of public good, and how unevenly distributed higher education connects with this notion. The project aims through the collection of some new data, and re-analysis of existing data sets, to consider what views different constituencies i -students, staff, governance bodies, employers, government, and civil society - have regarding a definition of public good and its connection with higher education. The study involves researchers working in and on 4 African countries -South Africa, Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria. These have some similarities in their higher education systems but also some differences regarding the size and shape of the public and private sector in higher education in the four countries. However, all have in common unevenly distributed levels of economic growth, and high levels of poverty and different kinds of inequalities. We will analyse the data we collect, and that from past projects and will also look at the existing publicly available information on how higher education links with wages, attitudes, and views of the public good. From our review of these 3 bodies of data, we will aim to develop an indicator of higher education and the public good that can be used across countries. We will involve stakeholders as our development of this indicator emerges, and at the end of the project hope to be able to offer this to the academic, policy and practitioner community as a useful way to understand the connection between higher education and the public good. We hope that this indicator will help users in interpreting data on levels of student enrolment and progression, graduate destinations, earnings and assist in reviewing arguments about public funding for higher education, when basic education and other sectors of post secondary provision are also in need of support.