Private Higher Education Provision and Addressing Social Inequalities in Senegal: Practices and Limitations

In Senegal, private higher education resulted from the Structural Adjustment Plans in the 1990s, the inability of the public sector to provide sufficient training, the weak regulation of higher education by the State, and the growing demand for higher education to enter the labour market. As a result, new local and transnational stakeholders have entered the sector, developing and diversifying private higher education. Those stakeholders have adjusted their provision of higher education to the perceived demands of the labour market and to the needs of students seeking qualifications marketable on this market at the national or sub-regional level. Their orientation leads these educational undertakings to adapt their training provision fast to the fluctuations of the labour market and to display flexibility regarding employability to avoid losing students or damaging their networks in the entrepreneurial world. The private higher education sector in Senegal is, however, highly hierarchical. The providers of low-cost, short-training courses proliferate alongside the more stable and long-lasting institutions that traditionally train the capital city’s elite. Therefore, the growing privatisation of higher education and the volatility of the education market aggravates social inequalities in access and training.