Higher Education
There are twenty institutions of higher education in Rwanda, six of them public and fourteen private. The first university in Rwanda, the National University of Rwanda (NUR), was opened by the government in 1963, with 49 students. By the 1999-2000 academic year, this had risen to 4,550. In 1997-8 Rwanda had a total of 5,571 students enrolled in higher education. Today this stands at 26,796, 39% of them female.
Throughout the higher education system some 100 PhDs are held, the bulk of them at NUR. Areas of research include agriculture, livestock, and the training of farm managers. A system of 'universités du soir' (night school universities) has been established to widen access to university. However, there has been some debate over the quality of the courses offered.
Rwanda's higher education sector has some way to go in developing the internal efficiency. In 2000-1, final year students were graduating with a success rate of between 11 and 50%. Across all years, this success rate is 53 to 76%.
Other schools in Rwanda: Kigali Institute of Science and Technology
Read more about this topic: Education In Rwanda
Famous quotes by higher education:
“I know that I will always be expected to have extra insight into black texts—especially texts by black women. A working-class Jewish woman from Brooklyn could become an expert on Shakespeare or Baudelaire, my students seemed to believe, if she mastered the language, the texts, and the critical literature. But they would not grant that a middle-class white man could ever be a trusted authority on Toni Morrison.”
—Claire Oberon Garcia, African American scholar and educator. Chronicle of Higher Education, p. B2 (July 27, 1994)
“The lesson learned here is a costly one: If you stand up for your principles, follow the law, and win massively, you lose totally.”
—Linda J. Carpenter, U.S. educator. As quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, p. A38 (July 15, 1992)