Higher Education: The Endless Waiting of PhD Doctors
The endless wait of Ph.Ds
They have passed the auditions since August 2020. More than five months later, applicants for the second wave of Ph.Ds at state universities are still not sure what their fate is. Holder of a Ph. D in Spanish grammar obtained in 2020, Rodrigue Fotso applied for this recruitment for the city of Yaoundé. He remains optimistic despite everything. In the meantime, this husband and father of three children teaches in private institutes to earn his daily bread. But he has an alternative. Apart from being recruited into the civil service, he plans to « teach courses at foreign universities and consult. Rodrigue Fotso is not alone in this situation. In his offices in the Jouvence district, Pierre Nka works to satisfy his visitors. Holder of a Ph.D in political science in 2019, he is divided between consultation and training in his firm « Mittelafrika Research Ins ».Regarding their recruitment, Pierre Nka no longer knows which way to turn. We remain awaiting the results. Nothing has filtered out since the end of the hearings since August, « he said, pointing an accusing finger at the administration. The authorities know what they are doing. But they do not measure the inconvenience caused to candidates who are on stand-by on almost everything, he criticizes. According to some indiscretions, this slowness is linked to several factors, in particular the thorny principle of regional balance. At the Ministry of Higher Education, no one wants to comment on the issue. However, the day after the Head of States announcement on May 21, 2020, the Prime Minister indicated that recruitment is taking place under the coordination of the Minister responsible for higher education.After their recruitment, the 549 PhD doctors will be assigned to all eight public universities according to a known distribution key: 71 positions for the University of Yaoundé I, 56 for Yaoundé II-Soa, 72 for Bamenda, 71 for Buea, 70 for Douala, 61 for Dschang, 57 for Maroua and 71 for Ngaoundéré. To these are added the twenty other teachers recruited under the regulatory quota. As a reminder, the special recruitment of teachers with a PhD doctorate in the public service was instructed by the President of the Republic in 2018. In the first phase, 1,237 teachers were contracted.
Marcial NZEMIE
