Universities need to rediscover why they exist

The jury is out on whether Kenya’s universities play the critical roles they should play in this society. Take Nanyang Technical University, for example, in the heart of the tiny city-state of Singapore. It was established just about three decades ago. In these 30 years, it has been on the cutting edge of technological evolution in science, innovation, medicine, technology, and the environment, among other fields.

Universities like those in Singapore are more than just educational institutions. They are thought leaders, shaping the direction of their nations and beyond. What our society is today is a product of institutions of learning of years gone by.

It is not for nothing that a university was a requirement for a place to be called a city and that university cities created a culture of their own, making the environment more outward-looking and receptive to change.

Sometimes innovators who dropped out of university to set up their enterprises are cited as indicative of the overrating of universities. What may be lost in the argument is that one does not have to stay in university to gain the qualification and make a difference. Sometimes mere proximity to an institution is sufficient to stir the seed of change.

Like many other establishments in economies guided by vision, these institutions are premised on a vision of their contribution to society. In their lifetimes, they have worked to achieve this objective of being at the forefront of change and development in their communities.

Universities are about more than just training the future workforce. They are the epicentres of thought, innovation, and technology. Their reputation is not built on the training they provide but on their ability to foster new ideas and technologies that drive societal progress.

Kenya takes pride in the number of universities established. For long, the pride of the nation was the University of Nairobi. Here, minds came to duel, and the best that the country and the region offered congregated in the senior common room to explore the mysteries of the unknown.

True, academics may be obsessed with the mundane and lost in a world wondering about the mysteries of the unseen. They may take forever fascinated with the definition of a term. But these are the building blocks of discovery on which a better understanding of the future is founded. Imagination is the foundation of innovation and a better tomorrow.

But what works elsewhere is different from what is happening in our backyards. With over six dozen universities, Kenya is hostage to a cyclic debate over the welfare of university teachers and the ratio of locals hired.

The principles informing the establishment of universities in Kenya could be better. At present, they have nothing to do with the country’s future, innovation, discovery, or thought focus. We equate concrete structure with development—a poorly disguised campaign tool in the arsenal of the political leader under whose term of service the concrete structure came up.

Today, Kenyan universities teeter on the brink of collapse, weighed down by debt, mismanagement, bloated staffing, decayed infrastructure, and toxic politics, and lost to the critical purpose of their existence. Faculty are focused on primitive wealth acquisition rather than exploring mysteries unknown. Research is padded to suit the moment rather than unveil the opacities of the undetermined.

The rains started beating Kenya when politicians began thinking for the university rather than the university thinking for society. It could also be true that the institutions are packed with pretenders to the throne of knowledge rather than with genuine seekers of knowledge. Or maybe universities are mere reflections of the symptomatic degeneration of the nation’s social fabric.

– The writer is the Dean of Daystar University’s School of Communication