IKEA assists financial Rwandan education ventures

Kepler University started out a decade ago as the scholarship system for orphans of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. It sent a large number of extremely disadvantaged young people to nearby universities each year, while at the same time providing them with career training. But when they tried to expand, it turned out to be too expensive. Kepler was created out of the quest for a scalable and more inexpensive advanced schooling model.

The primary force powering the project is Generation Rwanda, a UK-based business helmed by some important names in the realm of business including Richard Ellis of Amiri Capital, David Ross from Bain Capital and Peter Ellis of Foley Hoag LLP. To get the venture up and running, they looked to the IKEA Foundation. The charity arm of the Swedish furniture franchise decided to finance the university by using a one-year pilot grant that has since been expanded into a four-year, $8 million commitment. Amongst other things, this support has made it feasible for Kepler’s first two classes to attend on complete scholarship grants.

In accordance with Foundation representative Jonathan Spampinato, both IKEA and Kepler "look for methods to produce much better daily lives for many people by lowering costs whilst keeping a superior level of quality."

Ensuring their education is both high-quality and affordable is a juggling act that Kepler is still perfecting. Classroom time with professors is often a pillar of conventional advanced schooling, but comes at a expensive cost. Online classes, on the other hand, are low-cost, even free, but their achievement rates are usually disappointing, often under 7%.

Kepler has yet to graduate its first group of students, so it’s too soon to tell whether the education will give way to constant employment. By most accounts however, the school has made enormous advances in its first couple of years. 49 of 50 individuals within the first class will probably earn their Associate of Arts degree this June; the sole exemption is a student whose graduation has been postponed by having a baby. Kepler has engaged a completely independent data analysis firm to trace pupil progress, therefore the design is generally nimble according to college student requirements.

The job on hand, however, is ensuring that the present Rwandan program is maintainable. This will likely mean decreasing per-pupil costs, that are still fairly substantial, so the university can make ends meet once the IKEA money ends. This is likely to need risky steps, like charging tuition, increasing enrolment and reducing the number of expensive foreigners on staff.

English proficiency has become a constant hurdle. This is often due, at least in part, to the authorities switching the official language of instruction from French to English in 2008, that left quite a few people in the country in linguistic peril. The hope is incoming students’ level of the English language will eventually strengthen. The Kepler staff estimates they presently invest as much as a one fourth of their time dealing with dialect issues.