The piece, “WILL UNIVERSITIES BE NECESSARY IN THE NEXT 15 YEARS?” By Femi Mimiko, mni
The piece, “WILL UNIVERSITIES BE NECESSARY IN THE NEXT 15 YEARS?” flying around on social media, is not signed; i.e. it is anonymously written. That, ordinarily should discourage any serious attention to it; but the nature of the fresh doubts it raises in an age in which education in particular, and knowledge generally, are under systematic and sustained attack, warrants this short intervention on same.
The said piece is quite pathetic in the ignorance it trades in! First, whoever told the writer(s) that those life skills they celebrate, and appropriately so too, are not available in Nigeria’s universities now! They need to go beyond assumptions and find out, to know that the curriculum in Nigeria’s universities is not generally inferior to what obtains across the world. The challenge lies in the mode of delivery, and with what resources.
Secondly, hundreds of Nigeria-trained university graduates are performing wonders all over the world, including in all the industries most celebrated today. It is uncharitable; indeed smacks of ignorance to suggest that the universities here are no good at all, in spite of this fact. The (positive) faces of Nigeria in the global system today – Okonjo-Iweala, Akinwumi Adesina, Amina Mohammed, Dr Olutoye, and even some of the folks serving in US President Biden’s cabinet – were, virtually all of them, trained in Nigeria!
The starting point in getting Nigeria’s universities to function better is to acknowledge that which they have done well, in spite of the gargantuan challenges of resourcing facing them; and recognize where they need to improve. Mere trafficking in ignorance vis a vis the state and status of Nigerian universities won’t help.
If the author(s) want their children to skip university, so be it. If they themselves had attended one – and that also passed through them – they would have known that what university education offers is far broader than narrow technical skills that the best of a Google academy may offer. They need to know too that a biological daughter of Bill Gates is reportedly in a UNIVERSITY – not on Microsoft campus – studying medicine!
Universities will always be needed, here in Nigeria and globally, because the deep and broader knowledge necessary to get society ahead is only available in the universities. Indeed, the production and dissemination of such knowledge is the raison d’etre, the very basis for existence, of university! This does not suggest, however, that the other layers of education, especially vocational and technical education, are not important. They surely are. It does not also suggest that universities, especially the ones in our clime, are executing this mandate of theirs perfectly. Certainly not. Indeed, as the title of my recent book suggests, we still face the challenge of “Getting Our Universities Back on Track.” And that challenge is collective.
@FemiMimiko mni
