Higher Education at UG?

Jul 08, 2012 Editorial

In the past year, UG has been in the news, but for all the wrong reasons, mainly ‘industrial action’ by staff. In many countries, especially in the developed world, there has been an intense debate as to the role of the university in the 21st century. Our issues have been as mundane as getting a roof repaired and painting some buildings.
But buried in the agitation by the unions of the UG the question of purpose and standards for the university has been raised, albeit peripherally. In addition to tuition, what exactly was the academic staff supposed to be doing to lift the standards and justify the designation “university”?
At independence, the cornerstone of our thrust for the development was to be achieved through education, which was made free from nursery to university. Standards in the last institution gradually plummeted and the blame was laid at the feet of ‘lack of funding’.
The multilaterals said “free education” was the problem and that once students began paying their way through UG, funds would be available for “raising the standards”. Tuition was introduced but standards continue to plummet.
We believe that most of the past promises to raise standards floundered and eventually withered on the vine because the powers-that-be put the cart before the proverbial horse. If any reclamation effort is to stand a chance of success it must start at the source of the raison d’etre for higher education – the creation of knowledge.
And this means research – especially research by faculty and graduate students. It is only when UG demonstrates that it has a product that is valued will it attract buyers for that product and funding for new research to create a virtuous circle of growth. That product is knowledge – which has the highest value in the modern world.
It would be interesting to list the result of a survey to find out the research that the present staff of UG has conducted or are conducting right now and the relevance of that research to national issues.
We are sure the result will not take up a single type-written page. This is criminal: the staff is pretty much acting like high school teachers by regurgitating texts to degree acquisitive students. But they are drawing University-level pay – albeit small by international standards but yet attractive within our local means.
Research is simply a systematic inquiry towards the creation of a body of knowledge or addition to it in any of the several fields the university purports to teach. Generally the research is broken down into three areas – pure sciences like chemistry etc, applied sciences such as engineering or agronomy and social sciences such as history etc. They each have numerous sub-branches. While the usual stereotype of “research” is one of inquiries into arcane and esoteric areas, it does not have to be this way.
This is where the relevance of research to national issues comes in. And we do not have to be cutting-edge in this effort: countries such as India, with which we have excellent academic relations and our neighbour to the south, Brazil, have led the way in harnessing research to national development and we can simply fall into line.
Take, for instance, the soil chemistry of our savannahs – whether the intermediate or interior ones. Why is it only after forty-nine years after the formation of UG that we are now looking to collaborate with Brazilian institutions for such basic information?
Then there is the vexed nature of our fractured politics. Why is it, for instance, that there has been no consistent polling of the attitudes of our voting population by our UG social studies departments rather that uninformed fulminations in the national press that do precious little to shed any light on our politics, much less creating new knowledge to explain our dilemma?
The answer is that the UG administration has not applied the maxim of “publish or perish” that is standard for all teaching staff in any reputable institution of “higher” learning. It is therefore not surprising that our standards are rather disreputable.

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