“Steering Rather than Rowing”: Internationalism, Privatization, and University Reform in Tanzania
The Development of Higher Education in Africa: Prospects and Challenges
ISBN: 978-1-78190-698-9, eISBN: 978-1-78190-699-6
Publication date: 4 October 2013
Abstract
This chapter explores how neoliberal higher education reforms in the United Republic of Tanzania (URT) during the 1990s and 2000s were shaped by the history of governance, schooling, and foreign donor involvement in the country following its independence in 1961. Against this backdrop, I examine how concepts of private versus public leadership, individualism, competition, and education’s place in the overall development scheme shifted over time, and the influence these changing conceptualizations had on the role of universities in Tanzania by the end of the first decade of the 21st century. In an international environment in which powerful funding agencies see neoliberal higher education policies and “knowledge societies” as the key to increased national competitiveness and poverty eradication in sub-Saharan Africa, this chapter shows how changes embedded in recent market-centered university reforms – in which the state is said to “steer” rather than “row” – have influenced the quest for equitable development.
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgment
This research was supported in part by a Foreign Language Area Study fellowship in Kiswahili as well as travel grants from the Department of Educational Policy Studies and Graduate School at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This work benefits from the close reading and support of Professors Adam R. Nelson (University of Wisconsin) and Amy Stambach (University of Oxford).
Citation
Benbow, R.J. (2013), "“Steering Rather than Rowing”: Internationalism, Privatization, and University Reform in Tanzania", The Development of Higher Education in Africa: Prospects and Challenges (International Perspectives on Education and Society, Vol. 21), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 127-160. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-3679(2013)0000021008
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2013 Emerald Group Publishing Limited