The gaps between SFU and Senegal are surprisingly small
By Leah Bjornson
Photos by Eleanor Qu
If when you think of Africa, the first image that comes into your head is a rag-clad orphan from a World Vision commercial, think again.
Before my trip to Senegal in West Africa last summer, I definitely had certain misconceptions that were echoed by my friends and family: “Leah, are you going to live in a hut?” “Leah, are you sure you’ll be protected from lions?”; and “Leah, what about Kony?”
As you can probably guess, I was neither attacked by lions nor kidnapped by Kony during my stay in Senegal, a country far away from those dangers. More dangerous by far was the lack of conventional utilities, which is not a factor in Canada. Nevertheless, I lived in relative comfort, and was joined by 11 fellow Canadian students and 12 Senegalese students who were there to collaborate on Uniterra’s International Seminar.
Every summer, Uniterra (a collaborative of World University Service of Canada and the Centre for International Studies and Cooperation) offers 12 Canadian students the opportunity to participate in a field project in a developing country. The participants, in collaboration with students from the host country, conduct research on development issues that support the work of one of Uniterra’s twelve partner organizations in Africa, Asia, or Latin America. During this time, the students take part in a cultural exchange while developing their skills as field researchers.
While a great portion of our time was spent doing research on three key issues — food security, youth employability, and the social and solidarity economy — what most influenced myself and the other Canadian participants were our experiences with the Senegalese students.
After living together for six weeks, it became very clear that despite certain cultural differences, we shared many things in common: we laughed at the same jokes, played the same games, and loved to explore Dakar’s diverse nightlife. Ultimately, we were just a group of happy, engaged university students.
But what does it mean to go to university in Senegal? As a second-year student, I feel like I have a fairly solid grasp on the SFU university experience. But despite the complaints I hear about how the AQ looks like a prison, or how the radio tower is like Sauron’s Dark Tower, SFU has a certain charm in which we take pride and call our own. On the surface, university in Senegal may resemble Canadian higher education, but there’s a myriad of differences that distinguish the systems in the two countries from each other.
Senegal and Canada
The Republic of Senegal, located on the westernmost tip of Africa, covers a land area of almost 197,000 square kilometres and has an estimated population of about 13 million. To put this into perspective, the country could fit into British Columbia 4.8 times, whereas its population is three times that of BC. For more than five million people in Senegal, Wolof is their primary language. However, once a French colony, Senegal’s official language is French, which is mainly taught in school.
Students in Senegal have a “School Life Expectancy” of eight years, meaning that in the span between primary school and university, most people in Senegal only receive eight years of education.
Compare this to Canada’s school life expectancy, which is 17 years. This results in about 25 per cent of Canadians over the age of 25 holding university degrees; in Senegal, on the other hand, only 0.5 per cent of the 13 million population graduates from university (with another 6,000 enrolled in polytechnic and professional schools; however, graduation
rates are missing).
University Experience
Of course, the daily routine of a Canadian student differs by program, but
in order to earn an undergraduate arts degree at SFU—without co-op or other additional programs — students can graduate within four years, assuming they take a full-course load for two semesters of the year (usually from September to December and January to April). Universities in Senegal take on a similar two-term system, which runs from November to February and March to June.
Divergent is Senegal’s higher education system, which is organized
into three cycles: the Licence, which takes three years, is equivalent to an undergraduate; the Maitrise or master’s degree takes an additional two years to complete; and the Doctorat is completed in 3 years, but only after students study for and receive a Diplome d’Etudes Approfondies (DEA), which takes about a year.
For most typical SFU arts students, the school day begins anytime between 8:30 a.m. and 5:20 p.m. After rolling out of bed and either walking, bussing, or driving up to campus, we settle into our lectures of anywhere between 50 to
250 students. The rest of the day might be spent in tutorials (of 15–20 people),
in Mackenzie Cafe, or in the line outside of Renaissance, engaging in sports and other activities, or at work for those of us with part time jobs. Overall, students spend on average anywhere between eight and 16 hours per week in class and study as much or as little as they like.
In Senegal, students get up at seven in the morning, have breakfast, and leave for class by 7:45. Because personal cars are rare, students either walk or take a taxi to school. I’ve ridden in enough Senegalese cabs to decide that walking might be the safer course. Imagine screaming though a tunnel at 85km/h watching the road fly by through the hole in the floor while your cabbie tries to re-close the backseat, right door. Just try.
The students’ first class is held in one of the large amphitheaters, where 1,000 or more students sit in whatever space is available, even if that means in
the aisles or near the back doors. Unfortunately for latecomers, this huge room
makes hearing the lecturer extremely difficult if you’re seated near the back.
Thankfully, tutorials and labs facilitate the learning process, where only 50—60
students are in attendance. After an hour and forty-five minutes of lecture, students have a quick break before their next class. At noon, most have lunch
and rest until their last two classes of the day, which go from 2 p.m. until 6
p.m. In total, students spend anywhere between 30 and 48 hours per week in class and around 16 hours per week studying at home.
No arts student at SFU would wish for a schedule like this, and despite problems finding open classes by their enrollment date, most can avoid a ridiculous
schedule. So, why would a Senegalese student create such a timetable? The answer is they don’t. Not only are Senegalese students not allowed to create their own schedules, but also their professors, classes, and timetable are chosen by the administration. When asked if he had input in his course schedule, Ousmane Kone, a student at Universite Cheikh Anta DIOP de Dakar laughed, “J’aimerais bien mais malheureusement je n’ai pas cet honneur la. . . .” Meaning, he would have liked to, but simply never had the honor.
Another interesting complication found in all universities in Senegal concerns
exams. At SFU, exam time is a period of late-night studying, multiple coffee breaks, and intense cramming to ensure success in courses. However, failure in one course is just that: one course. In Senegal, the exams in June cover all the material you’ve learned since the beginning of that school year in November. If you don’t pass this exam, you get one more shot in October. However, if you are again unsuccessful and the course is important to your degree, you may have to spend the entirety of the next year retaking that one course before progressing to the next year in your program. Talk about pressure.
I’m not sure whether I would prefer to be a student in Senegal or a student in Canada. It’s true that flexibility seems to be lacking in Senegal’s system of
higher education. But considering that 52 per cent of SFU students have an average debt of 21k, a lack of flexibility may be a price you’re willing to pay for government-funded education.
Employment Opportunities
The typical SFU student is at school for one main purpose: to eventually get a
good job. Even still, 61 per cent of SFU students are employed while in school, and 26 per cent of these are working more than 20 hours per week. In Senegal, it is extremely rare for students to have part-time jobs. “No one has the time,” says Aminata Ba, another student at Universite Cheikh Anta Diop of Dakar. “But I do a lot of work around the house on the weekend, when I’m not doing schoolwork.”
In a country where the unemployment rate is upwards of 48 per cent, and youth unemployment — youth being defined as anyone between the ages of 18 and 35 — can reach an astounding rate of 65 per cent, it is little wonder that students hope their degrees will lead to job opportunities. Unfortunately, finding a job is not always easy.
The students we spoke with cited a recurring problem, namely a lack of connection between their education and the skills required to get a job. Sound familiar? Another issue concerned the saturation of students studying for certain careers. Imagine if a hundred students were studying to be doctors, but only one job opening existed for new doctors in all of Dakar. The only solution I envision would resemble something out of the Hunger Games. In the end, too many students are studying to be in professional careers (such as doctors, lawyers, and businessmen) and are ignoring the openings in many diverse and interesting fields.
Conclusion
The realities of university in Senegal and Canada raise valuable questions of life after graduation, some of which apply to students in both countries. If a university degree is meant to be universal and students at SFU and in Senegal are in the same place when they graduate, where do the differences lie?
Is it that employment opportunities are better in BC? While our unemployment rate is drastically lower than that of Senegal, hovering at around 7.4 per cent, I can’t count the number of times I’ve been told that an arts education only needs to teach its students how to say: “Do you want fries with that?”
That being said, even if there are more jobs available, are our universities preparing us to actually do them? Co-op and other work placement programs at SFU are trying to bridge the gap between training and application (a rift that exists in both Canadian and Senegalese higher education), but still have a hard road ahead. The commonality of such problems can be surprising, but lends hope to the idea that if a solution is found in one country, perhaps it can be applied to others.
It’s amazing what we can learn about each other by stepping outside of our
boundaries and immersing ourselves in a different world. Although we might think that we share nothing in common with youth in Africa, in reality we’re all in the same place as university students trying to find place in a struggling economy, and we’re all faced with the same pressures to succeed. The struggle now is to overcome any “World Vision” stereotypes and collaborate to make higher education work better for the students it serves.
