International Linkages, Faculty Development and Governance

Recently, I returned from a Fulbright Senior Specialist Award at the Polytechnic of Namibia. While there, I had the opportunity to work collaboratively with colleagues to begin the development of a gender studies program.  I was also able to attend two workshops hosted by the Polytechnic. Both presentations centred around the issues of internationalization in higher education. The first was a presentation by Jack Bermingham, President of Highline Community College, Seattle, WA on international linkages and the second was by Professor Jita on internationalization of higher education in South Africa. In an age of globalization, linkages and internationalization between and among universities have taken various forms- from faculty and student exchanges to summer (or semester or year) abroad to some universities establishing satellite campuses abroad in order to facilitate these linkages and exchanges. These linkages have been credited in encouraging cultural and knowledge exchanges, and developing collaborative efforts in research, knowledge generation and dissemination. In the first paper, Kaguhaugire-Barifaijo and Namara discuss the problems of linkages in “International Partnerships in Educational Institutions and their Intricacies: Are Institutions getting the right “deal” in the Partnerships?” They conclude that unequal power relations remain one of the biggest challenges in international collaboration with the more powerful partners dominating the direction of the partnerships.  In the second paper, Ekanem investigated beginning teacher educators’ development and faculty workload management. Faculty workload is a critical issue for embedded in it are issues of faculty academic growth and development, student advisement and student success. Among other things, he found out “that beginning teacher educators sampled exhibited a significant high level in their professional development towards faculty workload management”. In the third paper, Onete et all study the issue of achievement motivation among university students at Cross River University of Technology. In their paper titled “Academic Performance: A Function of Achievement Motivation Among Education students of Cross river University of Technology, Calabar”, they conclude that “Education students’ achievement motivation level does not significantly influence their academic performance” In our final paper for this Issue, Adepoju and Sofowora of Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria study conflict and aggressive behaviour among the staff and students and also strategies employed by administrators to manage such conflicts. Using two sets of instruments to collect data, they found out that one of the factors responsible for staff induced conflict and aggressive behaviour in higher education was “poor conditions of service”. They concluded that there was the “need for government and institutional administrators to adopt dialogue in managing conflict and aggressive behaviour in institutions of learning”. All the papers in this Issue tackle current issues affecting higher education in Africa and to some extent, other parts of the world. For example, how do we strengthen linkages and encourage global understanding among universities especially in the Western world and the developing world? How do we ensure that workload does not diminish faculty productivity?  How do we motivate students and is there a relationship between motivation and academic achievement? Finally, why the frequent crisis in universities, especially in the developing world? These are issues not settled and the literature in this Issue extends further our discussion and some understanding