Newly appointed Vice-Chancellor of the University of Guyana Professor Lawrence Carrington’s address at a recent luncheon hosted by the Guyana Manufacturers and Services Association (GMSA) deserved a far larger audience with a much wider variety of interests than the captains of industry whose interest in how the university and the private sector can better work together will, hopefully, lead to qualitative improvements in the performances of both sides.
As an aside, it has to be said that by extending an invitation to the vice-chancellor to speak at its luncheon the private sector is providing further evidence of what appears to be an inclination to embrace a much broader agenda than it has in the past.
Had our development planners been there to hear what Professor Carrington had to say they would have come to understand that our failure to recognise the real worth of the University of Guyana has denied them access to a critical tool with which to pursue their own assignments. Had the university’s own lecturers and students been there they would have come to a clearer understanding of the mission of the university, a mission which the vice-chancellor correctly said transcends the mere certification and eventual graduation of students.
Had our political leaders been there they may (or perhaps not) have been rendered more than a little uncomfortable by the view expressed by the vice-chancellor that the gross underfunding of the University of Guyana over the years coupled with its seemingly inevitable entanglement in the fallout from our counterproductive political culture has stymied its growth to the point of “paralysis.”
And though the vice-chancellor sought to strike a bearable balance between diplomacy and bluntness, what his presentation said, in essence, is that over time Guyana has indulged in an unpardonable squandering of “the knowledge economy”, which is embraced by other countries – like India, China, Japan and Korea – that have beneftted richly from their insightfulness.
What the vice-chancellor did not say – though it was ridiculously easy to deduce this from what he did say – was that our prevailing condition of underdevelopment can be accounted for to a considerable extent by our failure to properly infuse the university into the development process. And, moreover, unless we stop short changing the university, we will continue to short change Guyana as a whole in the process.
Ironically, perhaps, deliberately, Vice-Chancellor Carrington’s far too brief address offered, in effect, some compelling insights into the magnitude of his own undertaking, the burden of which he clearly hopes the private sector will help him carry. Not that the vice-chancellor is seeking a free dinner for the university. What he is offering is an opportunity for the private sector to make a simultaneous investment in its own development and in building the capacity of the university to come into its own as a the fulcrum of the research and enquiry pursuits that can add inestimable value to the development of both the public and private sectors.
Nor is it a matter of choice on the part of the university, since, as Professor Carrington points out, research and enquiry are the bread and butter of any university worth its salt. He went further, bluntly asserting that where there is an absence of research and enquiry an institution can lay no legitimate claim to being a university. That, surely, places UG in a worrying dilemma.
All, perhaps, is not lost. As Professor Carrington points out, it is possible to make a match between the subject area offerings of the University of Guyana and sub-sectors of private sector interests though he is quick to add that “the depth of our coverage of these areas is inconsistent and adversely affected by the difficulty of retaining good staff at uncompetitive reward levels.” In so indicating, the vice-chancellor is dropping an unmistakeable hint that what is required if the university is to come anywhere near to meeting the needs of the private sector – and the public sector, for that matter – what is required is a major investment in building the physical and intellectual fabric of the University. Such a pursuit must of necessity include significantly improving the levels of compensation afforded UG’s lecturers.
The challenge that inheres in Professor Carrington’s assignment is located in much more than the pursuit of what will have to be the literal restoration of UG. Indeed, the greater challenge may well lie in the extent to which we are prepared to embrace what the vice-chancellor has had to say about the real role of the university. Of course, this will mean that we are going to have to undergo an enormous change in a prevailing mindset that perceives the university, mostly, either as a place where you spend time trying to secure some form of certification or else, as an arena for political cat sparring.
Hopefully, what Professor Carrington had to say will encourage both the private sector and the university to believe that, over time, the two can build a mutually rewarding relationship. Hopefully too, under the new vice-chancellor’s watch the university will be allowed to begin its belated journey towards the accomplishment of its objectives, free of the kind of political intrusion that has hamstrung its progress over the years.
