Open and Distance Learning in Africa

The article linked below is based on an address given by Prof. David Mosoma (UNISA) in which he states that the only way the region will overcome the glaring deficits in educational opportunity is to promote open and distance learning.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200503160188.html
I know that I have a tendency to be a bit melodramatic around these issues but I'd like to point out that for many, many people this issue rises to the life or death level of importance. It also explains why degree mills are so eager to move into these markets.
Jack

 

Not necessarily melodramatic. The better education, the less incidence of AIDS.

 

The last time I checked, the infant mortality rate in the USA was about 6/1000. In South Africa it is about 65/1000. This correlates with income, prenatal care, nutrition, etc. all of which correlate with education. I might be a bit melodramatic, but only a bit.
Jack

 

Commerical / Cultural Impact

It's nearly impossible to calculate, but how big an impact does DE have for Africa (South Africa in particular) in promoting global interaction, both cultural and commercial??

Other than raw materials (diamonds, etc.), Africa continues to struggle toward the "Renaissance" dreamed of.

Surely, Africa's growing place in global DE is helping (albeit slowly) to improve African self-image and global perceptions of the continent.

 

Unc,

Do you really mean to say that possession of a good DL degree from a good African university is going to prevent men from sleeping around with prostitutes? I think that, even after the completion of a DL degree, people will probably continue in whatever types of sexual habits (be they good, bad, or indifferent) they engaged in before earning the degree.

 

Oh. My. Gawd.

You. Are. Kiddin'. Me. Right?

[sigh]

In the first place, having sexual contact with prostitutes accounts for comparatively little HIV acquisition, generally... and especially in places like Africa. Health workers there will tell you that endemic HIV and AIDS in that country has little or nothing to do with anyone "sleeping with prostitutes;" that it's passed from boyfriend to girlfriend, or husband to wife, or, in either case, vice versa; or from mother to child through exposure in the birth canal or, more likely, from an HIV-infected mother breast feeding her HIV-free -- at least until the breast feeding -- child; and that there are vast numbers of adults in that country who don't grasp how it's caused or spread; or that proper and appropriate prevention methodologies could prevent it; and can't read the brochures, pamplets and posters that tell them so, in any case.

In the second place, Janko wasn't suggesting that a good education will dissuade a person from having sexual contact with prostitutes -- or anyone else, for that matter -- if they're of a mind to do so in the first place (although, perhaps for some that might, indeed, be the case). Rather, he was, I believe, suggesting that no matter what kind of sexual contact they have, or with whom, educated people are more likely to be smart about it; and will be more likely to practice safe sex, or to refrain from breast feeding if they're HIV positive, than will those with no education.

Education teaches those sorts of things; or, if not, then it teaches and conditions the kind of critical thinking skills that will make people more likely to learn about it; or to be in the right places and at the right times to be exposed to opportunities to so learn; and, if so, to know how to recognize what they're seeing and to properly and appropriately process the information to their benefit... and to share it with others. For some of them, getting an education will simply mean that they can finally read the flyers, pamphlets and posters warning them of the dangers of HIV and AIDS, and the various means by which they could either avoid it, or keep from passing it on if they've already got it.

Depends on how life-transforming said education actually is for them. I'm guessing that in certain parts of Africa, any education at all would be life transforming. People like you and me, on the other hand, might take it for granted; treat it like any other "stuff we gotta' do; and wouldn't necessarily be all that different from it when we came out than we were when we went in. Being spoiled and jaded and American and empowered can do that sort of thing to a person.

[Sheesh!]

 

Yeah. What he said.

 

Re: Oh. My. Gawd.

 

Sex with zebras?

Gregg, give up. Ted has an IQ of 165 and is lots smarter than you. And me.

 

I have a small confession to make. At least I hope it's small. You see, I've fallen out of love with Philosophy. Oh, don't get me wrong, I can still become engrossed in the swapping of logical reparte and the infinite abstract arguments. My (current) problem with Philosophy is that it is too disconnected from the real world. Philosophers argue and argue and it makes no diference to anyone (except whoever makes money from the publication of their journals). So, you see, I'm more interested in how ideas change people and then the world. And so we come to education. Education is training and it is information and it is ideas. In my own opinion, the expectation is that a person becomes educated and as a result their life changes. Their fund of knowledge increases and so they become more aware. Their depth of understanding increases and so their grasp of implications increases. They learn about other lands and other peoples and they learn, hopefully, that there are very, very many ways to be a human being and that most of these have not a lot to do with living in Oak Harbor, Ohio.
Ted doesn't seem to believe that education affects behavior. That's OK with me, Ted can think whatever he likes. My own belief, however, is that the entire purpose of education is to affect behavior and that my own behavior has been affected substantially and significantly by my education. I also believe that if Ted has gotten through school to the point where he's earned a grad degree, and he doesn't believe that his behavior has been affected by his education then this either says something generally negative about Ted or it says something generally negative about his education. Or perhaps I'm altogether mistaken.
Jack

 

1. I'm not sure that anything describing the situation in Africa is melodramatic. My friends who live in various places throughout the continent consistently report that things are desperate. The AIDS situation is making a bad situation worse.

2. I agree that distance and open learning is perhaps the best educational option for most of Africa. However, ODL presupposes a level of infrastructure -- internet access, mail service, and reliable transportation. At this point most of Africa is lacking in what we in the West would consider essential and basic services. So, even if ODL is the best option it is still a difficult option. Nothing comes easy in Africa.

 

Ha! Ohgod... that was a good. I just read it aloud to someone and it made her laugh, too.

I'd say you're not... but that's just me.

 

You are not alone in being disillusioned. I have often argued that the value of philosophy historically lies not so much in the questions it answers but in the questions it asks.

Of course, my colleagues who are philosophers in the academy don't agree with this at all!



marilynd

 

I haven't seen much evidence that the mills have any interest in serving Africans. I mean, all of these things seem to be internet based, and how many people in Africa have computers and internet access? If these "schools" were interested in serving Africans, they would probably be offering paper based correspondence programs. (I expect that many African locales don't have reliable mail service either. But it's probably more widely accessable than the internet.)

The reason that mills take an interest in Africa is because they hope that African approvals represent a back door into "GAAP". And claims of "RA-equivalence" help them market to their intended clientele outside Africa, in the United States or perhaps in Asia.

But this might help explain what motivates some of these African governments (besides bribes of course) to grant their "accreditation" so quickly. Some of these countries probably intend the accreditation to represent government permission for these schools to offer programs to their own citizens.

Some of these countries apparently use the word 'accreditation' as in 'accreditation of school teachers', while they use the word 'charter' to refer to formation of domestic universities. So when they 'accredit' a foreign university, they may understand that to simply mean that they have granted the school permission to teach domestic students.

I imagine that these schools approach education ministries with all kinds of wonderful plans to offer low-cost open and distance learning to Africans. It won't cost the host country anything! All they need to do is say 'yes'!

But then the websites go up offering 'RA-equivalent' degrees to worldwide students and the African locals are ignored.

As for your 'melodramatic' 'life and death' point, I just don't see it. If the issue here is AIDS, it's true that education might have some value in reducing risky behavior. (But AIDS has spread in some pretty highly educated groups here at home, so education isn't a panacea.)

But even if education is key, I don't think that the kind of education required to avoid contracting and spreading HIV is a university degree. It's public outreach at a much more basic and elementary level.

Of course, extending opportunities for university-level education has different kinds of benefits for national development.

India is an extremely poor country that has put a lot of effort into expanding higher education, and now they are reaping the fruits of that with all of the outsourcing that they are attracting.

 

Crow for dinner . . . again?!

While the HIV/AIDS example was not my own I clearly did not disagree with it. The story linked below sheds a bit of light.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200503211527.html
My apologies to Ted for my uncalled for remarks.
Jack

 

Re: Crow for dinner . . . again?!

Jack,

I do not hold anything you said in your post against you. I realize that I often have a tendency to overstate my case and end up appearing to be an arrogant, heartless MBA. My only point was that I wasn't sure that education necessarily prevents AIDS and I was really trying to find out if there were any statistics to that effect. There are, of course, certain forms of education - like character education and moral education - that do indeed effect behavior, or at least ought to. I wish I could remember the name, but I think that there is some Catholic theologian who once said something like, "Give me a child for his first five years (or seven years?) and I will shape him for life." Hence, the education that will have the greatest effect on their decision to try to be moral or immoral occuirs long before we take an adult and try to pour a bunch of technically correct facts about history or business or whatever into a person's head.

 

Let's review, shall we?

Well, let's check again, shall we?

First, at least as far as the U.S. is concerned, let's eliminate an easy one: Blood Transfusions. According to the CDC, in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, and western European countries, the risk of transfusion-associated HIV infection has been virtually eliminated through required testing of all donated blood for antibody to HIV. In the United States, donations of blood and plasma must be screened for HIV-1 and HIV-2 antibodies and HIV-1 p24 antigen.

As for other methods:

• Cumulative U.S. AIDS Cases by Exposure Category
  
  U.S. NATIONWIDE
• Men Who Have Sex With Men (MSM) 46%
• Injection Drug Use 25%
• MSM and Injection Drug Use 6%
• Hemophilia/Coagulation Disorder 1%
• Heterosexual Contact 11%
• Blood/Tissue Transfusion 1%
• Risk Not Reported or Identified 10%
  
  OHIO
• Men Who Have Sex With Men (MSM) 62%
• Injection Drug Use 11%
• MSM and Injection Drug Use 6%
• Hemophilia/Coagulation Disorder 2%
• Heterosexual Contact 8%
• Blood/Tissue Transfusion 1%
• Risk Not Reported or Identified 11%
  
  NOTE: All prostitution-related sexual contact would be categorized in the "Heterosexual Contact" or "Risk Not Reported or Identified" groups... or both, combined.
  
  SOURCE: The State Health Facts Web Site (linked-to from the CDC web site)

Whoa! Seems that Ohio's 16% above the national average in the "men having sex with men" category. Perhaps acquiring HIV from contact with prostitutes is the least of what Ted's state should be worrying about.


Let's continue...

• "Sex workers have been shown to be no more likely to become HIV-positive than the general population. Comparatively higher rates of infection, where they exist, may not be due to the fact that sex workers have multiple partners but, rather, due to a combination of factors that put them at risk... including demographics, drug use, knowledge of HIV/AIDS, access to healthcare services, and condom use, just to name a few. A mid-'90s study of six cities in the United States revealed that injection drug use was the primary factor contributing to HIV risk for female sex workers, and not their relatively higher numbers of sexual partners and contacts"
  
  SOURCE: DeCarlo, P., Alexander, P., and Hsu, H. "What are sex workers’ HIV prevention needs?" San Francisco: Center for AIDS Prevention Studies, University of California at San Francisco, 1996.
  
  
  "Unfortunately the HIV/AIDS epidemic has singled out people-in-prostitution and sexwork as 'carriers and vectors of spread of HIV.' Apart from the stigma already attached to their work, society has further marginalised them as core transmitters of HIV infection. It fails to recognise that they are but links in the broad networks of heterosexual transmission of HIV. Women-in-prostitution and sex work constitute a community that bears and will continue to bear the greatest impact of the HIV epidemic ... suffering high levels of infection and re-infection. Propagating the myth that women-in-prostitution and sex work are 'core transmitters' of HIV serves the purpose of 'prostitution bashers' imbued with the moral and judgmental attitude that reinforces the prejudice that AIDS is an 'impure' disease that afflicts immoral and evil persons. The net result is to further target the women which:
  
  a. increases public and police violence against them; and,
  
  b. decreases their ability to assert themselves; and,
  
  c. allows customers to demand and force unsafe sex upon them; and,
  
  d. increases the rate of HIV among women, customers and the families of the customers; and
  
  e. denies them access to health care services.
  
  The role of women in prostitution and sex-work in HIV/AIDS prevention is little recognised. In fact, it is now well recognised that women-in-prostitution are the best educators of their male clients."
  
  SOURCE: "Sex Work and HIV/AIDS: The Violence of Stigmatization" by Meena Saraswathi Seshu; supporting document at the UNAIDS Global Reference Group on HIV/AIDS and Human Rights, Second Meeting, Geneva, 25-27 August 2003

Through 1993 the U.S. Department of Health consistently reported that only 3% to 5% of the sexually transmitted disease in this country was related to prostitution (compared with some 30-35% of it being related to teenagers, generally). There was no statistical indication in the U.S. that prostitutes were vectors of HIV -- at least not any more than any other women in heterosexual sexual contact situations. In its 1993 HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report (PDF), only 0.04% (that's 4/100ths of 1%) of adult and adolescent males who had been diagnosed with AIDS since 1981 confirmed having had unprotected sex with female prostitutes.

Ten years later, little, in that particular regard, had changed... except that we began to realize that maybe it's men who are the vectors of HIV/AIDS to women, and not the other way around, as Ted suggests. From 1999 through 2003, the estimated number of AIDS cases increased 15% among females and only 1% among males. Women -- regardless whether they are prostituted -- remain at highest risk.

Well, then... assuming that all men are created equal; and that race is not a factor; and that purely economic factors cannot be considered for our purposes, here...

... then how do we explain what would at least appear to be a potentially relevant, loose statisitcal inverse corollary between the 2000 U.S. census bureau's figures (PDF) for highest educational levels attained, by race; and the CDC's 2003 rates of AIDS cases per 100,000 U.S. population, by race?

In 2003, rates of AIDS cases were 58.2 per 100,000 in the black population; 20.0 per 100,000 in the Hispanic population; 8.1 per 100,000 in the American Indian/Alaska Native population; 6.1 in the white population; and 4.0 per 100,000 in the Asian/Pacific Islander population.

In 2000, from among the 35,327,000 of those 15 years old and older who were counted and who have a bachelors degree, 2,676,000 (7.6%) were attained by those in the black (alone) population; 1,884,000 (5.3%) were attained by those in the hispanic (alone) population; 29,557,000 (83.7%) were attained by those in the white (alone) population; and 2,574,000 (7.3%) were attained by those in the Asian (alone) population (with no regard, for our purposes, here, of statistics for the "Non-Hispanic White alone" or "White alone or in combination" or "Non-Hispanic White alone or in combination" or "Black alone or in combination" or "Asian alone or in combination" groups). (NOTE: No census statistics were shown for what the CDC calls the "American Indian/Alaska Native" population, which is what the census bureau calls the "American Indian, Eskimo or Aleut" population). Ergo:

• Blacks account for 7.6% of the bachelors degree holders in 2000, and .0582% of AIDS cases in 2003 (i.e., blacks account for the lowest number of bachelors degrees, and the highest number of AIDS cases).
  
• Hispanics account for 5.3% of the bachelors degree holders in 2000, and .0081% of AIDS cases in 2003 (i.e., hispanics account for the second-lowest number of bachelors degrees, and the second-highest numbers of AIDS cases).
  
• Whites account for 83.7% of the bachelors degree holders in 2000, and .0061% of AIDS cases in 2003 (i.e., whites account the highest number of bachelors degrees, and the second-lowest number of AIDS cases).

The significance, here, being not so much how the percentages within each racial group relate to one another but, rather, how they rank the ascending order of bachelors degree holders (white, hispanic black) versus the ascending order of AIDS cases (black, hispanic, white).

Your MBA, I dare say, has nothing to do with it.

A perfect subject for your doctoral dissertation. You can start with my statistics, above.

Why do we bother, then, with post-secondary philosophy or ethics programs (just to name two which tend to shape one's morals)?

[A rhetorical question... I'm not sure I could stand the answer.]

 

Re: Let's review, shall we?

 

Nice dodge.