Alternative Ways of Financing Tertiary Education in Botswana

Abstract

In developing countries, education is regarded as a public good that must be publicly provided. Due to the perceived positive correlation between education and development in development-hungry Africa, the education sector has, over the years, been receiving very generous budgetary allocations. Today, however, particularly post-2008, there are moves to re-define education as a private good, consequently, not deserving of public provision. As a result, there are persistent calls for alternative ways of providing education, particularly at tertiary levels. Similarly, in Botswana, there are developments that unmistakably suggest that the time is ripe for alternative ways of providing tertiary education, mainly, cost-sharing. To be sure, the Ministry of Education and Skills Development drastically cut sponsorships during the 2016/17 academic year. The general lesson from the Botswana case is that there is a need to continually interrogate the architecture of public expenditure. If...