In a letter in our edition of July 7, captioned ‘UG should emphasize teaching, not research,’ Mr Sherwood Lowe said that nowadays universities tended to be either research oriented, or teaching focused. While it was true, he went on, that “universities still established their reputation through research,” there was a movement to re-establish them as “centres of teaching excellence.” No “gold standard” existed prescribing what the goals of a university should be, he wrote, and nowadays universities offered teaching-based contracts to staff, in addition to which their merit systems recognized teaching. (Mr Lowe defined the objective of ‘teaching’ as being “to educate students to be problem-solvers, creative and critical thinkers, and agents of positive change.”)
While there is a measure of truth in what Mr Lowe says, it is in need of qualification. It should perhaps be said that there is a distinction between a large country with more than one university, which allows for variations in emphasis between the different institutions, and Guyana, which has only one. If the University of Guyana does not have research as a primary goal, then exactly on which tertiary institution in this country should the onus fall? Surely it is not an option to opt out of research altogether? This is not to say that UG does not need quality teaching, it does, but there should not be any major conflict between research and teaching. As other letter-writers have pointed out, someone engaged in pioneering research will be in the best position to keep his/her students abreast of the latest work in their field.
And as far as rewards for lecturers are concerned, instituting a merit system which takes teaching into account, is not incompatible with a research orientation for the institution as a whole, and could be addressed as a separate issue. Similarly, there may be circumstances where there could be special ‘teaching’ contracts at some levels for some subjects, although it might be a difficult arrangement to implement in practice.
Where research itself is concerned, one cannot help but feel that there are obvious areas, such as the biological and environmental sciences, in which UG could specialize. Over time it could then build up a cutting edge reputation which would attract scholars in the field from elsewhere. This would also entice the best students to enrol, including some from the region, perhaps. And a reputation in one field would have spin-off effects for the university as a whole. In the end, there is no getting away from the fact, as Mr Lowe said, that universities establish their reputations through research. What he does not say is that good research in turn can lift the standard of teaching for a variety of reasons.
We are a long way from that scenario, however. It is no secret that our local university has been struggling for a very long time, and has not been benefiting the society in the way that it should. The first thing which has to be said about this is that one cannot run a university on the cheap and expect results; tertiary education is expensive, and if a government feels it cannot afford to make meaningful investment in it, then the only sensible thing to do is to close the university down and send students to the regional institutions to study.
There are ways in which UG could make major contributions to Guyana, and indirectly if not directly, make money for the nation, but to repeat, it requires adequate funding in the first instance. Even if, for the sake of argument, our highest institution of learning were to emphasize teaching, rather than research, that would still be a costly proposition. One has to be able to offer levels of remuneration that are at least close to those which the regional campuses pay, before one can attract quality staff, and if the salaries are substantially lower, there would have to be other compensations which would persuade academics it was worthwhile remaining. Furthermore, the physical appearance of the local campus would have to be more appealing than at present, and the general facilities and equipment would have to meet basic standards, which currently they do not.
In addition, no serious teacher at the university level, never mind serious researcher, would feel comfortable walking into a classroom unless s/he was au fait with the latest work in their field. We will eventually come to a point, no doubt, where most texts will be available online, but as of now, UG staff need to be able to walk into the library and read the most recent journal containing articles on new thinking in their subject area. It doesn’t matter that a lecturer is engaged in local research in the social sciences, say, s/he must still be au courant with what his/her counterparts are doing outside; all knowledge is inter-connected at some level. Of course one wants to teach students to be “problem-solvers” as Mr Lowe put it, but it will be of no help to themselves or the country if that skill is acquired in the context of outdated information. The library, therefore, is critical for both students and teachers, but it has been seriously under-funded for years. And as for anyone daring enough to teach any of the sciences, the less said about the state of the facilities and equipment in that faculty, the better.
Standards have been plummeting at UG over the years. There is no single reason for this, although one major factor is funding, which as already mentioned, affects the quality of the physical infrastructure, etc, and the kind of lecturers who can be recruited. UG, of course, has lower entry requirements than UWI, for example, and while this was not a problem for some years initially, it is something which affects it now, and which it should seek to address in the course of time.
In the early years the university attracted a significant number of mature students, who in terms of their merits, would have been admitted to universities anywhere in the world were it not for the fact they had been denied the opportunity. In addition, of course, they had emerged from an education system which provided a much better grounding than is the case now. UG, like every other institution in this country, is the victim of a malfunctioning education system at a lower level, and until this problem is addressed with more vigour – particularly where the recruitment of qualified teachers is concerned – the quality of the student intake overall will not show a dramatic improvement. (This is not to say, of course, that there are not many students, who in spite of the conditions and the odds do not meet international standards academically speaking. However, their numbers are far more modest than they used to be.)
One of the entrenched problems of the local university, which has been much written about, is the fact that from the inception the politicians have interfered in its operations. It is still as contaminated by politics as ever, but somehow the powers that be cannot seem to adjust themselves to the notion that if you do not give academics space to function according to principles unrelated to political considerations, the outcome will always be unsatisfactory both for the university and for the nation.
The new Vice-Chancellor, Professor Lawrence Carrington, has told the media of the need to overhaul the academic structure and administrative framework at UG, and one can only hope that the authorities will give him both the financial support and the leeway to effect the reforms which he has enumerated. If they do not, then the Turkeyen campus will continue to function well below par both on the research and the teaching fronts.