ISBN 9782869782013
Pages 316
Dimensions 216 x 140 mm
Published 2007
Publisher CODESRIA, Senegal
Format Paperback

Scholars in the Marketplace

The Dilemmas of Neo-Liberal Reform at Makerere University, 1989-2005

by Mahmood Mamdani

Scholars in the Marketplace is a case study of market-based reforms at Uganda's Makerere University. With the World Bank heralding neoliberal reform at Makerere as the model for the transformation of higher education in Africa, it 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 terms of the debate toward a third alternative than explores different relations between the two. The book distinguishes 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 (financial and administrative autonomy for each faculty to design a market-responsive curriculum) inevitably leads to a market determination of priorities in a public university. The book warns against commercialisation of public universities as the subversion of public institutions for private purposes.

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About the Author

Mahmood Mamdani

Mahmood Mamdani is the Herbert Lehman Professor of Government in the Departments of Anthropology and Political Science at Columbia University in the United States. He is also the Director of Columbia's Institute of African Studies. He is the current President of the Council for Development of Social Research in Africa (CODESRIA) Dakar, Senegal.
Mamdani's reputation as an expert in African history, politics and international relations has made him an important voice in contemporary debates about Africa.

His book Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism won the 1998 Herskovits Award of the African Studies Association of the USA.
In 2001, he was one of nine scholars to present at the Nobel Peace Prize Centennial Symposium.

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