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

非洲各地的政策制定者和实践者普遍认为，高等教育是一项公益事业，在可持续发展目标（SDG）议程中具有重要意义。然而，对于什么是公共利益的概念，以及高等教育分布不均如何与这一概念联系起来，存在着截然不同的观点。该项目旨在通过收集一些新的数据和重新分析现有的数据集，考虑不同的群体-学生、工作人员、管理机构、雇主、政府和民间社会-对公共利益的定义及其与高等教育的联系的看法。这项研究涉及在4个非洲国家--南非、加纳、肯尼亚和尼日利亚--工作的研究人员。这四个国家的高等教育体系有一些相似之处，但在高等教育的公共和私营部门的规模和形式方面也有一些差异。然而，所有这些国家都有一个共同点，即经济增长水平分布不均，贫穷程度高，存在各种不平等现象。我们将分析我们收集的数据，以及过去的项目，并将研究现有的公开信息，了解高等教育如何与工资，态度和公共利益的观点联系起来。通过对这三大数据的回顾，我们将致力于制定一个可在各国使用的高等教育和公共利益指标。我们将参与利益相关者，因为我们的发展这一指标出现，并在项目结束时，希望能够提供给学术界，政策和从业者社区，作为一种有用的方式来了解高等教育和公共利益之间的联系。我们希望，这一指标将有助于用户解释有关学生入学和升学水平、毕业生去向、收入的数据，并在基础教育和其他中等后教育部门也需要支持时，协助审查有关为高等教育提供公共资金的论点。

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.