The destruction of higher education in sub-Saharan Africa

During the middle ages students were studying a broad range of academic subjects at the University of Timbuktu in what is now Mali. In the 1960s, after many African nations gained independence, there was a renewed push to elevate higher education as a means of lifting the African nations out of poverty. Now, financial pressures and an explosion in the college-age population have put tremendous pressures on higher education in Africa. These pressures threaten the very future of the continent. At Makerere University in Uganda, once known as the ''Harvard of Africa'', books and computers are in short supply, campus buildings are in disrepair, and faculty members must take second jobs as taxi drivers in order to make a respectable living.