Taking
you three decades back, the autocratic Malawi Congress Party (MCP) regime sat
down and hatched a divisive scheme that was aimed at isolating, marginalizing
and suffocating Southern and Northern regions in terms of education
opportunities in favor of Central region.
This evil strategy started immediately after the Mwanza murders and it came
into effect towards the end of that decade.
That unpopular strategy saw the introduction of Quota System of selecting
students to University as well as the forced transfers of teachers who hailed
from the North, removing them from South and Center.
No proper reason was given for this unpopular move, a situation that made many
people believe that MCP did this out of jealousy and paranoia, given that many
people from the North were progressive academically.
Sadly
it negatively affected the progress of education in the two regions as it got
rid of qualified, experienced and dedicated teachers.
Fast forward to the Bingu Regime
After the introduction of Free Primary education in 1994 the country saw many
children making it to secondary schools, eventually a higher demand for
tertiary education was suddenly created.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government saw the need to expand the annual Public University intake.
This
would mean expanding the capacity of these universities through expansion of
physical infrastructures as well as establishing complete new
universities.
In any practical world, these initiatives could not be implemented within a
year or two.
However,
the need was urgent but spaces in public Universities were limited.
This is when the government thought of re-introducing the Quota System but with
some modifications to suit the prevailing circumstances and was called
Equitable Access to Higher Education.
This was and still remains a temporary measure so that at least 10 students from each of the 28 districts in the country should have an opportunity of attaining University education.
Out of approximately 5000 students who are selected annually to public universities, only 280 are selected via EAHE (Quota),the rest are selected based on their points aggregates.
It is however relieving to note that the government has embarked on expanding the existing institutions in terms of infrastructure, curriculum and ODLs besides building new Universities.
So far during the DPP regime Malawian have seen the opening of Malawi University of Science and Technology (MUST) and the construction of Mombera University in Mzimba which is registering progress.
Soon the University of Bangula will take off and eventually we shall no longer need Quota.