Global Influences and local responses: The restructuring of the University of Botswana, 1990-2000

Abstract

The University of Botswana has not escaped the reform fever currently gripping higher education institutions the world-over. In the late 1980s the University initiated an administrative/management restructuring exercise whose resultant structure was implemented between 1998 and 2000. The exercise, in many respects, was a response to globalization. The emergence, in the past two decades, of a global economy, the massification of higher education, and the globalization of neo-liberal economic thinking have compelled universities to recast their social and economic missions. Consequently, universities have had to restructure within the framework of a global ideology characterized by an emphasis on effectiveness, quality and efficiency. This paper explicates the restructuring exercise at the University of Botswana by locating the exercise within its global and local contexts. It argues that while the resultant structure reflected global influences and trends, it was as much a product of local concerns.