L’appropriation du changement de politiques universitaires par les acteurs en Afrique subsaharienne, entre le local et le global : le cas de la réforme Licence-Master-Doctorat au Burkina Faso

Universities in Africa are confronted with the double challenge of training the human resources necessary for local development while adapting to an environment marked by the internationalization of higher education (Teferra & Greijn, 2010) and the transfer of educational policies (Steiner-Khamsi & Waldow, 2012). Thus, French speaking sub-Saharan African countries have decided since 2006 to align their higher education institutions on the Bologna Process, which is considered the most significant reform in higher education at the end of the 20th century, by adopting a policy called “Bachelor-Master-Doctorate (BMD) reform”. Several countries of this region, including Burkina Faso, had been subject to crises in their higher education systems that in fact called for reforms. Our research, inspired by the role of actors in the implementation of a public policy, examines the involvement of the latter in the implementation of the BMD reform in Burkina Faso by answering this main question: How do higher education actors develop ownership of the changes induced by the BMD reform? Using a theoretical framework rooted in the sociology of public action (Hassenteufel, 2011), the appropriation of the BMD reform, conceived as a three-dimensional process (interpretations, attitudes and behaviors), is analyzed as the result of contextualized interactions between four categories of actors (students, faculty members, administrators and administrative and technical staff), to answer six specific questions: how do the actors interpret the reform? What are their attitudes towards it? What are their behaviors towards the reform? Is there any relationship between the interpretations, attitudes and behaviors of the actors? How can one characterize the system of concrete action maintained by the actors around the reform? Finally, what are the actual changes perceived by the actors? Data gathering involved mainly a questionnaire survey (N = 531 students and 37 faculty members) and 27 interviews with 7 students, 4 faculty members, 11 administrators and 5 administrative and technical staff. The results of our analyses show that each category of actors has interpreted the BMD reform through the lens of their interests crystallized around a strong expectation of reforms in higher education. Globally, all actors adhere to the BMD reform and support it, despite some reservations or resistance linked to the conditions of its implementation. Actors’ behaviors are correlated positively with their interpretations and their attitudes, and are linked to the phases of their preoccupations. In addition, we found that, as far as students are concerned, the evaluation of the dimensions of appropriation is linked to gender, study program and especially cohort. Furthermore, the analysis of the concrete system of action highlights power relations between categories of actors in a context marked by zones of uncertainty and scarcity of financial and material resources. Finally, actual changes perceived by actors vary from one category to another and do not completely coincide with those that were formally expected of the reform in the official documents or according to their own interpretations.

Keyphrases: appropriation, Burkina Faso, globalization, transfer of educational policies, higher education, Bologna Process, BMD reform, sociology of public action, concrete system of action, actors, Sub-Saharan Africa