Advocacy may also need to be in-house, calling for institutional change. There is much evidence to suggest that Bridging Programmes benefit from being clearly nested within Universities, rather than being provided by other organisations or kept at arm’s length. Part of this relates to the psycho-social impacts of these programmes being run by committed universities on their campuses. As Shaw (2010, cited in O’Rourke, 2011) outlines, university-based bridging programmes supports refugees to develop the ‘ontology’ of the university student through affirming to them that they belong in spaces of higher education, and through helping them to build social capital and learning the unspoken cultural rules of a campus environment. Achieving such nesting can, however, be a challenge. In our case, FFA was being run by RLP at some distance from Makerere University and was somehow disconnected from the Universities of Edinburgh or AUB as institutions. We note three key issues:

A first, more structural, reason is that the timeframe and model of the bridging programme may be more akin to civil society and private sector endeavours, at least in their pilot phases: relatively fast paced, reactive, and self-discovering. This does not tend to easily align with the slower, cautious, risk-averse, and procedure-heavy way many academic institutions operate. The accreditation of programmes, for instance, tends to be a long process. While there are valid reasons for this, particularly around ensuring academic rigour and quality of the learning experience, waiting years is not an option for bridging programmes that seek to provide a relatively rapid solution and have in their core constitution a measure of ongoing reflection and adjustment. Yet, the lack of accreditation in FFA’s case and, for many years in PADILEIA’s case, affect the career opportunities of students and devalues the work of academic staff involved in those processes.

A second, still structural, issue is that universities do not always have a natural “space” to host bridging programmes. Which faculty or department should ‘own’ it? Who should be responsible for these bridging programmes and ensure coordination amongst the range of actors involved? Who is responsible for maintaining and updating it to ensure its topicality? This problem is often compounded by the fact that pilot phases may be spearheaded by academics (as it was partly the case with FFA at the University of Edinburgh) who are well-placed for action-research but may not be the ones in the best position to offer a long-term home for a bridging programme.

Thirdly, it is useful to note that the Anglo-American model of universities that dominates the world today typically works with new programmes having to demonstrate they are financially viable while still meeting stated social goals. Bridging programmes are unlikely to be able to demonstrate such viability in the short run, and as such may then fall out of core university strategies. In the medium run, though, it is possible to think of funding strategies that do not solely rely on ‘aid’ money, for instance through cross-subsidies from fee paying students enrolled in the bridging programme.

Institutional barriers in FFA (and, in particular, accreditation) At every stage in the implementation of FFA we hit institutional and structural barriers. A key learning for the programme has been that programmes such as FFA require support from within institutions of higher education to be successful. Areas including accreditation and student registry, e-learning and development, IT and technology, scholarships and funding, online library access, plus all of the different teaching departments involved in delivering the courses must work together to ensure a coherent teaching programme that is recognised as providing access to, and preparing students for, higher education. In turn, this finding relates to the importance of involving universities in developing and advocating for improved policies on refugee education through access and bridging programs like FFA but also through becoming more inclusive institutions for refugee and other underrepresented students throughout their student journey. For various reasons, this support was not always easily accessed. The timescales over which FFA had to operate did not, for example, match the timescales over which accreditation would have been possible through the University of Edinburgh and how courses were structured and delivered to suit refugee learners in Uganda was on occasion very different to how similar initiatives would have been developed in Edinburgh. These differences in operating models, expectations and timelines translated into fewer opportunities for collaboration between FFA programme members and experienced colleagues within the University, as did the flexibility required to deliver the first pilot of FFA, which was relatively incompatible with the organisational structures and procedures of a large University bureaucracy. Future versions of FFA would likely have more lead-time for discussions about accreditation and course delivery, which would facilitate this collaboration. Nonetheless, if Universities are committed to supporting responsive educational programmes for marginalised groups, there needs to be further recognition of the flexibility and increased resources that are needed to effectively deliver these. Accreditation in the Ugandan context was also impeded by the FFA programme not meeting the quite rigid guidelines upheld by the Ugandan Business and Technical Examinations Board. Within UBTEB’s existing structure for accrediting programmes, there was limited opportunity for recognising a blended bridging programme in the form of FFA, or knowledge of how to accommodate refugee learners without Ugandan nationality or evidence of previous educational levels within existing qualification structures.

References

O’Rourke, D. (2011). Closing pathways: Refugee-background students and tertiary education. Kotuitui: New Zealand Journal of Social Sciences Online, 6(1-2), 26-36.

Shaw, A. (2010). University bridging without EFTS funding: second best options? Paper presented at the New Zealand Association of Bridging Educators, Wellington.