Scholars in the Marketplace

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The dilemmas of neo-liberal reform at Makerere University 1989-2005 Scholars in the Marketplace is a case study of market-based reforms at Uganda's Makerere University. The World Bank is heralding neoliberal reform at Makerere as the model for the transformation of higher education in Africa, which has implications for the whole continent. At the global level, the Makerere case exemplifies the fate of public universities in a market-oriented and capital-friendly era. The Makerere reform began in the 1990s and was based on the premise that higher education is more of a private than a public good. Instead of pitting the public against the private and the state against the market, this book shifts the debate towards a third alternative that explores various relations between the two. Scholars in the Marketplace distinguish between privatisation and commercialisation, two processes that drove the Makerere reform. It argues that whereas privatisation (the entry of privately sponsored students) is compatible with a public university where priorities are publicly set, commercialisation (granting each faculty financial and administrative autonomy to design a market-responsive curriculum) inevitably leads to market-determined priorities in a public university. The author warns against the commercialisation of public universities as the subversion of public institutions for private purposes.

1. The reform process: The first phase

2. Winners and losers

3. Commercialisation

4. Decentralisation

In lieu of a conclusion: Funding of a public university

Select bibliography

Index

Mahmood Mamdani is Herbert Lehman Professor of Government at Columbia University. He was previously the Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Makerere University and the founding director of the Centre for Basic Research in Kampala. He has also taught at the University of Dar es Salaam and the University of Cape Town. Mamdani is a past president of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA). His previous books include Citizen and Subject (recognised as ‘one of Africa’s 100 best books of the 20th century’ in Cape Town 2001 and awarded the Herskovitz Prize of the African Studies Association of USA for ‘the best book on Africa published in the English language in 1996’), When Victims Become Killers and Good Muslim, Bad Muslim. He lives in New York City and Kampala.