By IPS Correspondents
BRAZZAVILLE, Jan 26 1996 (IPS)

Congo’s university students put up with cramped conditions, grapple with shortages of everything from books to scientific equipment and have to force their stipends out of the state.

But even more frustrations await them after they graduate: few manage to find jobs.

“Our students are really to be pitied,” says Jean Claude Ngakosso, a lecturer in communication science. “They live in miserable conditions. Some of them have to travel kilometres on foot to get to the university. Working conditions in the classrooms are difficult and, with a stipend that is doled out in drips and drabs, the students are just victims.”

Brazzaville’s Marien Ngouabi University is the only public university in Congo. The first private one, the Free University of Congo’, was created at the end of last year but is yet to open its doors.

Marien Ngouabi — which was built in 1964 for 5,000 students, but now has 21,000 — has had a rough time in recent years, especially in 1993.

During that year, vandals took advantage of civil disturbances in Brazzaville and plundered its faculty of science, worsening an already serious shortage of equipment, while students staged a series of strikes to force the state to pay up 16 months’ arrears on their stipends.

The entire year was lost.

“Our university system has been severely affected by a combination of political and economic woes these past few years and it will have a hard time getting back on its feet,” says Simon Blaise Tchicaya, head of the communications science department.

But even more worrisome, perhaps, is the lack of employment prospects after university.

“Look at all these students who do not know what they are going to do afterwards,” says Tchikaya. “The state is no longer able to employ them all, as it used to do, so these young people are in a delicate situation given the weakness of the private sector.”

“As a result, there is a permanent danger of social explosion,” he added.

Up to 1985, a first degree was a sure ticket into the public service. Even people who failed their final exams had little difficulty finding state jobs. All that ended when Congo was forced by the Bretton Woods institutions to reduce public sector recruitment. By 1990, more than 8,000 undergraduates had been unable to find jobs.

According to official statistics, many of the 518,000 unemployed persons registered in 1995 had degrees from the university, whose seven institutes offer bachelors and masters programmes in various arts and science subjects as well as a doctorate in medicine.

Flore Mireille Bompoutou, a second-year economics student, says she has few illusions.

In between classes, Bompoutou runs an informal catering business which earns her the equivalent of about 20 U.S. dollars a day. “I hope to continue it even after I get my first degree because I am convinced that it will be extremely difficult to get a job in this country of ours that is going through an unprecedented economic crisis,” she tells IPS.

First-year economics student Jean Gualbert Francis Kassa knows better than to expect a public sector job, but he hopes the private sector will develop so that he can find work one day.

“In spite of everything I’m still hopeful,” said Kassa. He added that his optimism stemmed from the fact that the government plans to reform higher education system.

Higher education here has been plagued by three main ills: a lack of well-defined education policies, national economic constraints and the fact that education has never been adapted to the real needs of this small developing nation.

This year the government has promised to apply reforms aimed at improving the management of the university’s seven institutes, and enhancing the job prospects of its students.

“The reforms are aimed at reducing the state’s involvement in managing the institutes,” says Education Minister Martial de Paul Ikounga. “In February, they will get boards of directors made up of representatives of the chambers of commerce, the government, parents and students.”

The government has also increased its education budget from 45 billion CFA francs (about 98.9 million U.S. dollars) in 1995 to 52.3 billion CFA (roughly 114.9 million U.S. dollars) in 1996.

But many think it will take much more to salvage Congo’s university.

“The old laws governing the university have to be reformed because they are not in line with today’s realities,” says Tchikaya, who accuses the state of a lack of political will.

“If we are not careful,” he warns, “that type of attitude will keep the Marien Ngouabi University at the bottom of the ladder, which is where it is now as a recent UNESCO survey has shown.”

The U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) study, “ranks us last among African universities”, said Tchikaya.

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