The tertiary education reform should aim at harmonising academic and higher technical education in Mauritius. Besides other considerations, teaching is generally accepted as the core of the education process in any academic sector. It is stated that, at tertiary level, teaching is better imparted through lecturing, debate and discussions compared with primary and secondary levels where rote learning and more conventional forms of education like coursework, exercise and repetition are better applicable.

The education reform has the ambition of regulating the roles and functions of educational providers. Basically, such providers are classified as public and private. Public institutions include the University of Mauritius, the newly-created University of Technology, the Mauritius Institute of Education, the Mauritius College of the Air, the Technical School Management Trust Fund and the Industrial and Vocational Training Board. Private institutions are larger in number and include business and training institutions with courses ranging from certificates to post-gradute degrees.

Obviously, the term ?degree course? is coined more often in tertiary education. In a society where individual aspirations for higher learning are gaining priority over other considerations, tertiary education now looks essentially ?degree-focused?. The over-emphasis on degree programmes raises some concern on educational reform and teaching at tertiary level. To keep par with developing economies, Mauritius needs more qualified people. Undergraduate studies have thus substantially increased over the years because the national perspective is to increase the number of qualified people.

However, it seems that an effective tertiary educational philosophy must espouse the relevance and utmost importance of technical education. The level of economic development of Mauritius may not allow for an overly large number of graduates since job outlets are scarce in times of soaring unemployment. It is better to speak on the importance of technical education in a developing economy as ours with a gross domestic product per capita of $4 000. Mauritius cannot compare with advanced emerging economies like Singapore and Malaysia where the number of undergraduates is comparable to that of technicians.

This issue raises the vital importance of considering technical education as one of the pillars of tertiary education. Too easily, technical education is viewed as further education for dropouts and lesser able candidates. This practice is discriminatory in Mauritius and is too plausible to demarcate the technical worker from the university graduate. A feasibility study carried by the World Bank in the early 1990s shed light upon the relevance of technical and higher technical (technicien supérieur) education in the coming decade. The outcome of the survey was that Mauritius had mistaken the tertiary term by developing too many openings for university or degree programmes while overlooking technical and higher technical training.

Fortunately, the World Bank observed such a discrepancy and forwarded the idea of setting up new institutions for higher level technicians. In this context, the Swami Dayanand Institute of Management (SDIM) and the sister organisation, Institut Supérieur de Technologie (IST), were set up. The initial demand for higher technical education was illustrated with an attractive number of A-level holders eager to gain such a coveted qualificatioin in lieu of a degree where chances of rejection were very high, nearly 80% at that time.

SDIM modelled its diploma courses by strictly abiding by the quality and rigour of Singapore Polytechnic while IST focused on the ?technicien supérieur? philosophy of the Université de Limoges curricula. Obviously, tertiary education seems to have cast a blind eye on the higher technician aspect which is not the bridging gap between secondary and undergraduate programme but is rather a complementary and independent qualification comparable to a degree, but of shorter duration. University academics acknowledged that the higher technical programmes offered by SDIM and IST held their prestige owing to the quality and their administration. The endorsement of such programmes by the Mauritius Examinations Syndicate (MES) relating to the provision of the higher technical diplomas was considered as an added-value.

The case for higher technical education in the educational reform needs to be duly considered. Can the reform offer better opportunities for upgrading and sustaining the quality of such valuable education or will the reform blend both lower and higher technical education? The latter option is threatening as it undermines the Mauritian vision of higher technical education and its place in tertiary education.

<B>The vital role of lecturers</B>

Academic staff is another key issue worth consideration in the higher technical sector. The onus of having to teach A-level students in highly specialised and technical areas like Accounting, Banking, Marketing and Human Resource Management, should open the eye to the excellent work done by lecturers for nearly a decade at this level. Tracer studies from employers like Air Mauritius and Telecom Plus, among others, reveal that the success of such education depends to a very large extent on the discipline, rigour, commitment and unflinching determinatioin of lecturers in the higher technical sector.

To this end, it becomes an imperative to harmonise academic tertiary education in Mauritius and consider the equal and egalitarian role, influence and perspective of lecturers in higher technical institutions and universities. It would be most welcome if the highly respected position of lecturers across all the tertiary institutions, private or public, would be regulated in the same way as professionals like doctors, engineers and accountants, among others.

The very basic argument supporting this statement would be that lecturers are recruited in all tertiary institutions with an undergraduate degree or preferably a post-graduate degree coupled with teaching experience. Such a job description is identical and the schemes of duty do not greatly differ. Taking into consideration that lecturers have the same potential but choose different institutions and career pathways, it would be unfair to discriminate among the so-called professionals.

The tertiary education reform must duly consider the role and contribution of all lecturers in the country and avoid discriminatioin in whatever way following lobbies and upper-hand influence from some uninspired individuals. It is crucial that the reform gives consideration to these arguments and sets the pace for a more egalitarian and democratic tertiary sector. It is envisaged that academics in the tertiary respect one another and believe that accepting everybody in the teaching process as equal can only open avenues for the positioning of the country as a centre for excellence in learning. This point of view strongly holds within tertiary education where the acquisition of relevant knowledge and skills and sustaining high teaching standards in all the institutions can deservingly lead to a knowledge-based economy.

<B>Nirmal Kumar BETCHOO</B>