African Entrepreneurship Record

Chapter 1058: Chapter 67: Education

The significant reason for East Africa’s thriving development in cutting-edge research fields like nuclear physics lies in the sustained efforts in higher education. Although East Africa lacks top-tier figures and is temporarily unable to compare with Europe and America, it possesses the greatest number of university students and young scientific workers in the world. Take the East Africa Nuclear Physics Research Institute, for example, where all members are young people, with the oldest being no more than forty-five years old.

In 1905 alone, East Africa had 370,000 university students enrolled, while at that time, the United Kingdom had only over 7,000 students nationwide. In European countries, Germany had the most students, around 40,000 to 50,000, and the United States had quite a number as well, exceeding 150,000.

Moreover, although the United States boasts many universities, there are numerous business schools within them, reflecting the commercial atmosphere prevalent in American society, where most families aspire to replicate the entrepreneurial legends of American tycoons.

Currently, the United States indeed has many grassroots billionaires rising up, so the ”intellectuals” within American society naturally comply with public sentiment by building business schools to charge tuition. Simultaneously, high-income groups like lawyers and doctors are thriving in the U.S., thus a large portion of the American university education encompasses non-STEM fields.

The investment in education in East Africa has naturally yielded substantial returns, particularly during the First Five-Year Plan period, where local talent played an absolute major role, unthinkable in the previous seventy or eighty years.

East Africa currently trains more medium and high-end talent annually than the total of European countries combined, allowing East Africa to witness a major explosion in scientific research.

It is foreseeable that when the Second Five-Year Plan is completed, accompanied by a more favorable industrial foundation, East Africa’s industry and society will accelerate their development once again.

...

The expansion of universities in the 1990s significantly enhanced the scale of East African higher education, and the weight of the Ministry of Education increased as well.

Minister of Education Murici reported to Ernst: ”By the time the First Five-Year Plan is completed, our nation will have 217 universities. Although we cannot compare with the over a thousand in the United States, our universities are large in scale with centralized development, so the number of university students is substantial.”

Universities in East Africa are predominantly public, hence East Africa’s universities cannot afford to be as perfunctory as those in the United States even if smaller in scale.

In the United States, education can be wholly treated as a business, and the result of private investment naturally leads some to resort to opportunistic methods to establish so-called ”universities.” Some might not even have dedicated campuses, and to cut costs, they might easily rent out residential buildings for schooling, making American-style universities vastly different from East African ones.

”Currently, our country’s universities operate on a strict entry and exit mode. Individuals from middle schools or society pass the college entrance examination to qualify for university admission. These individuals are already elites of East Africa, who then further gather and screen within universities, and upon entering society, they largely remain outstanding.”

”As the Second Five-Year Plan unfolds, our nation’s industry increasingly thirsts for talent, many positions are being created requiring more specialized management and technical personnel.”

”Higher education is likewise the backbone of our nation’s research field, requiring talent supplementation across national laboratories and research institutions.”

”Simultaneously, there is a considerable demand for high-quality talent within government departments, especially under the planned economy, which necessitates the capability of government officials to fit well into executing industrial development plans and enhancing the management of rural and urban levels.”

In summarizing, East African society has a strong demand for talent, and naturally, there is no need for overly hasty investment in education now.

In terms of investment in education, it is no exaggeration to say that East Africa ranks first in the world. Considering East Africa’s population, it surpasses the United States, albeit not by a huge margin. Yet, East Africa’s higher education population is over double that of the United States, and the figures are even more exaggerated in primary and secondary education groups. East Africa, after all, is not as affluent as the United States, reflecting the substantial importance East African Government places on education.

Ernst remarked: ”We made a significant upgrade to higher education in the 1990s, and although the current cultivation of high-end talent cannot completely meet societal demand, there is no need to expand enrollment again at the scale of the 1990s. Education resources naturally occupy a large portion of our government expenditure; now, the main focus is to digest the returns of the education investment in the 1990s.”

”Certainly, once the Second Five-Year Plan is complete, adjustments according to the economic situation will be made, considering that as times progress, countries with more talent reserves hold more advantages.”

Ernst is relatively satisfied with the current scale of East African education. Although the number of East African universities cannot compare with later nations, it must be contextualized within the era. In an East Africa that has yet to complete industrialization, it cannot absorb more higher education talent, so appropriately slowing education expansion is beneficial.

Moreover, East Africa’s scale of higher education is already the first in the world, lacking the motivation to continue pouring resources into higher education.

East Africa’s investment in education is not limited to universities; it also includes primary and secondary school systems. At peak periods, East Africa’s education investment even surpassed military expenditure, and even now it remains one of the major projects in East Africa Government’s budget.

Thus, from the perspective of national capacity and fiscal pressure, current East African educational resources can basically meet the overall needs of society. As for the demand from various departments and enterprises for high-end talent, it is unapologetically stated that no era would change this.

Ernst continued: ”Regarding education, we should also timely shift our attitude. In the past, East African education emphasized quantity over quality. Now, with some development in the national economy, especially the rapid advancement in industry, optimizing existing educational resources is inevitable.”

”Including enhancing campus hardware facilities, improving teacher quality, and updating textbook knowledge, in the past, our industrial challenges made many campus infrastructures inadequate, requiring adjustments at this time.”

East Africa, as a historically young colonial nation, has never been considered a poor country; it could only be described as industrially weak, yet, overall wealthier than many countries on the Europe and Asia continent, as well as South American nations, mainly due to an initially smaller population in East Africa.

Now, East Africa’s population size is relatively moderate. Despite experiencing massive growth, surpassing most European and American countries, East Africa’s industrial growth alongside its populous increase did not impact the society adversely, instead it propelled East Africa’s industrialization construction.

If it were a traditional agricultural nation, such rapid population growth in East Africa would naturally lead to more negative effects, as land resources are finite. When land cannot sustain excessive population, social issues arise.

However, the capacity of land is not constant, and industrialization is a primary means of increasing it, and East African industrialization accommodated the surplus agricultural population.

Moreover, as a colonial-founded nation, with East African Government possessing substantial assets, even if East Africa were genuinely impoverished, its government would not be. This is a major reason East Africa can advance investment in education, primarily due to available capital, whereas social wealth in traditional agricultural nations, while abundant, remains concentrated in the hands of a few. Even if the government has surplus income, it ultimately flows into the hands of the upper echelons of society.

Of course, according to the laws, East Africa will definitely follow suit in the future, yet that is not Ernst’s concern. As East Africa’s history remains short, societal issues have not reached an explosive stage, akin to the stagnation seen in the mid to late Soviet Union; without war, endurance is possible for many years.

In summary, under the unified coordination of various factors, the current fiscal situation of the East African Government is very favorable, enabling the government to focus its energies on developing the economy and industry, while industrial growth, in turn, fosters social progress in East Africa.