A quiet revolution is sweeping this island as you read these lines. You saw the headlines in the newspapers during recent weeks and you are likely to read more in the forthcoming months. A team of high-powered cabinet ministers, senior government officials and representatives of the private sector is meeting on a weekly basis to revolutionise our tertiary education sector.

Their task is huge in scope: to make the Government?s vision of turning Mauritius into a knowledge hub, a reality. Facts, ideas, opinions, options and strategies are being bandied about ? the vision is indeed grandiose, the brief indeed staggering and the work indeed enormous.

Paul Berenger said it loud and clear in his Budget Speech 2003-2004 : ?Our ambition is to develop Mauritius into a knowledge hub and a centre for higher education.? For a small and rather insignificant island like Mauritius, you might think, isn?t such an ambition at best grandiose and at worst, ludicrous? Not so. According to our own Board of Investment, at least five countries in our region (Australia, India, Malaysia, Singapore and South Africa) are jockeying to become the education hub of the Southern hemisphere ? so why not us? After all we do enjoy a high reputation in the region for our British-oriented education; our University of Mauritius has an established record as a supplier of quality education and we have a burgeoning private sector education with 30 private providers that could all throw in their weight behind Government?s initiative. Yes, there is a long way to go but things can and do change.

If the vision is here and some of the capacity already exists, what about the demand? Here again, the statistics speak for themselves. Some of them are well-known : the Gross Tertiary Enrolment Rate in December 2002 was only 16,6 % - a rate that could be boosted significantly once the knowledge hub and continuous learning concepts really take off. Others are less known. For example, barely a year after its launch, the government-funded University of Technology can boast a student population of 733. Barely four years after our own entry into the private and fee-paying arena, my own institution, the DCDM Business School,

has 1400 students enrolled. And this is only here in Mauritius ? what about the potential of the overseas educational market?

This is the most exciting part. If we play our cards right and succeed in turning our island into a real knowledge hub with the provision of quality education, the recruitment of international students, the construction of state of the art campuses and so on, we would be tapping into a market that is worth, according to the Tertiary Education Commission, some US$ 2.2 trillion worldwide!

According to the World Bank statistics, as many as 150 million people throughout the world will be seeking tertiary education by 2025. It has been estimated that, for example, Thailand would have to open a university of 20 000 students every year in order to keep up with its internal demand! New Zealand is a shining and practical example of what can be achieved in this area. Empowered by the changes in 1989 to its ?Education Act?, its educational institutions set about actively recruiting full fee-paying students from overseas. The economic impact is estimated to be approximately US$ 1.7 billion to its economy ? and to rise to US$ 4 to 5 billion within the next decade. The education export industry is now in fourth place in terms of New Zealand?s export earnings!

The vision is here, the need is here and the potential is here. What is still missing is the strategy and the right action. Regarding the strategy, the Joint Economic Council has provided a splendid conceptual framework arguing rightly that if the right legal framework is in place supported by an environment favourable to investment, a reinforced Tertiary Education Commission, and the right strategies for alliance with overseas universities of repute, the knowledge industry could well become a reality on this island.

I don?t know about how you feel but to me this is ground-breaking stuff ? we could indeed be looking at the fifth pillar of our economy here.

Prof E. Charoux [email protected]