Uganda’s Post-colonial Privatisation Policy in Higher Education. An Integrative Literature Review and Case Study Analysis

Abstract Privatisation of higher education has been declining for scores of reasons to embrace publicness in the last decade. However, Uganda stands as one of the few African countries that have implemented a privatisation policy for higher education institutions. The motivation for privatising higher education and the benefits and challenges in the aftermath of the policy remain underexplored. To date, no study presents an intricate account to gauge the progress of the policy. The current study evaluates this policy’s progress by examining its main challenges and benefits using two private universities as case studies. An integrative literature analysis revealed contextual challenges regarding the privatisation policy of HEIs in Uganda. This was followed up by a qualitative approach involving sixteen (16) stakeholders (students, n = 10; parents, n = 3, and employers, n = 3) directly affected by the policy to measure the policy in terms of its impact on educational accessibility, quality, funding, and employment. Semi-structured interviews involving students, parents, and employers revealed that although the policy led to the massification of higher education, it also led to the commodification and academisation of education, whereby business principals have been imported into the country’s higher education sector, thus focusing more on profit maximisation other than quality education delivery. The study recommends the Ugandan government and policymakers such as the Ministry of Education and Sports and the National Council for Higher Education take a step to safeguard higher education from being too commercialised, commodified, and over-marketised.