Higher education in Afghanistan

Higher education is an optional final stage of formal learning following secondary education. Higher education is a synonym for post-secondary education, third stage, third level or tertiary education. Higher education is dispensed most commonly at universities.

Two key goals of the National Higher Education Strategic Plan: 2010–2014 devised by the Afghan Ministry of Higher Education were to improve quality and broaden access to higher education, with an emphasis on gender equity.

According to the National Higher Education Strategic Plan: 2010–2014, higher education was to represent 20% of the country’s education budget by 2015, equivalent to US$800 per student by 2014 and US$1 000 by 2015. The approved budget for 2012 for higher education was US$47.1 million, equivalent to US$471 per student. By 2014, only 15% (US$84.13 million) of the US$564 million in funding requested of donors by the Ministry of Higher Education had materialized since 2010. The main donors were the World Bank, USAid, the US State Department, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, India, France and Germany.

The Ministry of Higher Education has largely surpassed its target for raising university enrollment, which doubled between 2011 and 2014 to 153,314. The government had tabled on the number of students doubling to 115,000 by 2015. A shortfall in funding has prevented the construction of facilities from keeping pace with the rapid rise in student rolls, however. Many facilities also still need upgrading; there were no functioning laboratories for physics students at Kabul University in 2013, for instance.

According to a progress report by the Ministry of Higher Education, the number of women students tripled between 2008 and 2014 to 30,467, yet women still represented just one in five students. Girls still encounter more difficulties than boys in completing their schooling and are penalized by the lack of university dormitories for women.

Part of the growth in university student rolls can be attributed to ‘night school’, which extends access to workers and young mothers. Having a ‘night shift’ also makes use of limited space that would otherwise be vacant in the evenings. The night shift is proving increasingly popular, with 16,198 students enrolling in 2014, compared to just 6,616 two years earlier. Women represented 12% (1,952) of those attending evening classes in 2014.

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