We find the assertion by Dr. Ivor Mitchell that the University of Guyana ought to be more centrally involved in research pursuits that are directly relevant to the search for solutions to the country’s social and economic problems to be particularly timely in the context of the current national preoccupation with fashioning a holistic response to the challenges arising out of the current economic crisis.
Dr. Mitchell’s identification of the university as one of the institutions to which we are entitled to look in the process of fashioning a direction for both the public and private sectors is altogether in keeping with what has been part of the traditional role of universities. In the developed countries of Europe and North America, for example, governments rely heavily on the academic resources drawn from the university community to think through issues and arrive at and document positions which are tendered as options for policy action. This, of course, is not to suggest that the fashioning of public policy on a national response to the prevailing economic crisis ought to be crafted exclusively around the theoretical constructs created by university professors. The fact is, however, that countries like the United States and Britain have found the opinions of academics sufficiently worthwhile to support and pay attention to institutions like the Brookings Institute and the Royal Institute of International Affairs where university academics get paid to engage in research on issues that are considered matters of public import.
While acknowledging that the University of Guyana is far too poor and too poorly staffed to perform these duties in the extent that they are performed in the United States or Great Britain Dr. Mitchell makes the point, nonetheless, that this should not excuse what he believes is the university’s delinquency in not even attempting to “put together” s forum at which its academics can at least share their perspectives on the global and domestic economic crises and approaches that we may wish to take in seeking to solve them placed in the public domain.
Beyond economic issues, Dr. Mitchell points out that the university has been far less active than it really ought to be in giving intellectual attention to issues like crime, domestic violence, the drug problem, trafficking in persons, child abuse, truancy and, as he puts it, “a host of other issues which the people in social work and various other areas need to tackle.”
Our own observation is that the various public fora that have been organized to discuss issues of national importance have been conspicuous in the absence from them of University of Guyana representatives. Nor, as far as we are aware, is the University of Guyana represented at any national forum that may have been put together to contemplate responses to the current economic crisis.
Another point of interest made by Dr. Mitchell has to do with how little the business community uses the resources available at the University of Guyana in the planning and execution of business initiatives including the creation of business plans and other “foundation steps” in the creation of a business. He points our, for example, that some of the blatantly obvious competition-related problems associated with too few people chasing too much goods can be avoided by resort to advice from a marketing lecturer at UG. Here, Professor Mitchell makes the point that the absence of a culture of consultation between the University of Guyana and the business community has led to some businesses lacking in any real foundation. Meanwhile, he says, the university continues to exist in splendid isolation, underused “and in some senses, peripheral.”
Dr Mitchell says, and we are inclined to agree, that “it is not entirely a question of resources,” The problem, he says, also has to do with our failure to recognize that the role of the university is to do much more than continually provide academic tuition. “It is at times like this,” Dr. Mitchell says, “when we are contemplating options for the resolution of major difficulties, that the calibre of the university is really tested.”
