Title:
Regional inequality in university attainment in seven African countries since 1960
Author:
Rebecca Simson
Wadham College, University of Oxford, United Kingdom
Published:
International Journal of Educational Development, 25 May 2021
Highlights:
• Since the 1980s regional inequality in university attainment has increased across seven sampled African countries.
• Regional inequality growth is driven by rising disparities between the main urban centres and the remaining regions.
• This is attributed to an initial slow-down in attainment growth and high rates of skills-selective urban migration.
Abstract:
Inequalities in access to university education are of concern across the world, but many countries in Africa have faced particularly pronounced regional and ethnic inequalities in educational attainment. Have such disparities increased or decreased since the 1960s? Using census data to trace the sub-national origins of university students in seven African countries (Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia) over successive birth cohorts shows that regional inequalities in access have taken a u-shaped path. In the first two decades of independence, as higher education expanded from a low base, graduates were growing more regionally and ethnically representative of the national populations. Since the 1980s regional inequalities have increased in most countries, on account of a growing attainment gap between people born in the largest cities and the remaining populations. This growing educational advantage accruing to those born in the main urban metropolises was initially driven by a slowdown in enrolment growth, coupled with high rates of skills-selective urban migration and higher educational performance in the urban regions. This new urban bias is rapidly changing the composition of the region’s educational elites.