Higher education enrolment in Sub-Saharan Africa: determinants and policy implications

Abstract

This paper investigates the factors that determine higher education enrolment (HEE) in selected Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries over the period 1980-2015. The hypothesis of the paper is that certain factors have significant positive effects on HEE in the region. A panel auto regressive distributive lag (P-ARDL) is adopted as the estimating technique and the results suggest that there is no long- or short-run relationship between HEE and GDP per capita. Furthermore, while the impact of variables such as secondary school graduates (SSG), population growth rate (PGT) and employment rate (EMR) on HEE is positive and significant in the long run, the reverse is true for population age group (PAG). Short-run causality tests conducted to detect if pairs of independent variables would jointly affect HEE suggest that the results are reliable. The error correction model (ECM) value of −0.024202 suggests a possible 2.4% speed of adjustment in the system from the short-run deviation to the long-run equilibrium. These results imply that improvement is possible in HEE in the long run if policy makers act on the identified variables of interest.