Thank you for this opportunity to speak to your association so soon after my appointment to the University of Guyana. I was interested to note that your association dates its birth to the same year as the founding of the University and I assume that it was born out of the same spirit of independence and faith in the promise of Guyana which characterized that period.
Your letter of invitation assigned me as my theme: The development of the University of Guyana to serve the business community. I was struck by its directness and I have wished, since receiving it, that my response could be as direct. No such luck! When approaching both development and universities, we have to take time to set the stage and deal with fundamentals before the theme can be addressed appropriately.
The University was founded when in 1963 Guyana made the decision to withdraw from the arrangements that had made it a part of the regional university system since 1948. The rationale at the time was that too few of the students who went to the University College of the West Indies were returning to Guyana after their studies. The government was convinced that the same money could be spent to create in Guyana an institution offering education that was more appropriate to the country’s developmental agenda. At its foundation, the aims of the University of Guyana were stated as follows:
“To provide a place of education, learning and research of a standard required and expected of a university of the highest standard, and to secure the advancement of knowledge and the diffusion and extension of arts, sciences and learning throughout Guyana.”
The University has struggled to fulfil that mandate. It has never benefited from the level of resources that would have allowed it to flower and deliver on its potential. The social, political and economic crises of the country have had the effect of restraining the university’s advance, sometimes to the point of paralysis.
Despite these constraints, the institution has endured and we have to ensure that its future is of even greater service to its society than it has been in the past. Its motto is Serve Guyana. When we put that motto together with the aims stated at its foundation and embedded in its statutes, we recognise a very broad remit. We must recognise that this takes us well beyond the needs of a single sector of the society and obliges the University of Guyana to meet the needs of very varied and different sectors of the country and indeed, of the population in general. It must fulfil the need for civil servants ranging from technocrats to administrators, health professionals of several descriptions, technicians and engineers in a variety of specialties, teachers at all levels of the educational system, economists and planners, to mention only a representative few. The list is hard to exhaust if we look at the range of areas in which Guyana needs trained and educated citizens. Most importantly, the university must produce thinkers, problem solvers; people accustomed to seeking and managing information and opinions, capable of creating new knowledge and able to apply it to issues that must yield to reason.
“The University has struggled to fulfil that mandate. It has never benefited from the level of resources that would have allowed it to flower and deliver on its potential. The social, political and economic crises of the country have had the effect of restraining the university’s advance, sometimes to the point of paralysis.”
The business community represented by your association spans a wide area of interests including agro-processing; textiles and sewn goods; printing and packaging; construction and engineering; chemicals and pharmaceuticals; minerals and related industries; forestry and wood products. More recently, it has grown to include the service sector as well. In many ways, the spread of your interests relates to the academic menu of our university and there can be a match made between sub-sectors of your interest and subject area offerings and competences in the university. Our teaching and research units include agriculture and forestry, health sciences, natural sciences, social sciences, technology, education and humanities, earth and environmental sciences, distance and continuing education and finally professional development. We cannot contest however, 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. Like many universities, including the UWI, we are frequently accused of focusing more on the theoretical than the practical.
The teaching done by universities, stocks the society with educated citizens. This in itself is an extremely important function. Progress in any society is enhanced by having well educated citizens. There was a time when influential international funding agencies led by the World Bank proclaimed that investment in primary and secondary education yielded the best returns in their cost benefit analyses.
This may have been true from their point of view when we were perceived as producing goods and services to satisfy their needs rather than our own. They do not hold that view anymore. Large numbers of developing countries pursued that focus and although the outcome has been beneficial, our developing nations did not achieve the transformation that we desired or were supposed to accomplish through that pathway. More recently, studies of how some developing nations have achieved transformation have led to quite different conclusions. The same agencies that supported the priority of primary and secondary education are now firmly convinced that it is investment in higher education that pays the best dividends in changing the state of development of countries. India, China, Singapore, Japan and South Korea have transformed themselves through their dedication to investment in higher education, research and enquiry. The teaching that universities do must prepare graduates who can apply what they have learnt in the real world. Our graduates must be capable of lifelong learning and using what they learned to solve problems and develop new competencies through out their working lives. Leaving the university with a number of skills is not enough.
“The university must produce thinkers, problem solvers; people accustomed to seeking and managing information and opinions, capable of creating new knowledge and able to apply it to issues that must yield to reason.”
Research and enquiry are intrinsic to universities. Indeed, without research and enquiry it is doubtful whether an institution of higher education can legitimately claim to be a university. But research does not thrive without being nurtured. The important question (or problem) is striking a balance between how we nurture it by the impulses from inside our disciplines and how we nurture it by the demand for information and knowledge from outside of our disciplines. Do we pursue research for the sake of the discipline or respond to the immediate economic and social needs of the society?
It is natural for scholars to ask themselves and others questions. So depending on our areas of interest and study it would not be strange to ask the question how come I can teach a parrot to talk but can’t get a chimpanzee to talk. But the question could just as easily be how do I get students to learn how to teach English competently. Or what is the relationship between the DNA of specific cells and the nature of viral DNA as opposed to what do I do at the level of the cells to create immunity to HIV? The point is we need both types of questions.
Driving research from outside our disciplines is of much more interest to the business sector and the general public. As I looked at the list of areas that fall under your association, I imagined one or other of you asking questions like the following:
► How can I manage my timber so that I waste less at the sawmill?
► Is there anything I can do about the packaging of my cassava bread that might increase my sales?
► Is there a different way to organise my staff structure to speed up the processing of incoming orders?
► What changes do I need to make in my manufacturing process to conform to the current import regulations of the USA?
► How can I adjust my cattle feeding regimen to increase my milk production?
► How can I use laterite to reduce my use of concrete blocks?
These are research questions, some simple, some complex but all worth putting to researchers who start with knowledge earned in fields that may at first appear to be theoretical and removed from the practical life of the businessman who is asking the question. Putting these questions to a university with a research capacity is one of the ways to get sensible answers as well as a way to build the future capacity of the institution until its research begins to propel itself in precisely the areas that are of highest interest to the sponsoring sector.
Willingness to sponsor research and to finance development work is one of the most important ways in which the business sector of your country can develop the University of Guyana to serve the needs of the sector. The resultant interaction between university and work enterprise can propel the institution into lines of research that feed back into its teaching and enrich the experience of students and faculty even beyond those who are directly concerned with the research project. It would certainly be more economical for an enterprise to finance the equipment and work time for a university department to conduct work on a specific question rather than to build and equip its own laboratory for what could easily be a one shot usage.
The initiative does not reside on one side of the relationship by any means but I have deliberately chosen to highlight the initiation from the business sector because I want to hand you an instrument to lever institutional change in practical rather then rhetorical ways. If your perception is that the University of Guyana needs to appraise and take into account the direction of developmental movement of this society, review the emphases of its curriculum and capacity to achieve a closer fit between its programmes and qualifications on the one hand and the demand for professionals and relevant research on the other – then I agree with you.
However, the University of Guyana faces an uphill task. Replenishing the stock of educated citizens is an ongoing problem because the habit of migrating after graduation leaks out of the country a frighteningly large proportion of the people that it educates, even before the ink is dry on their certificates. Stemming that outflow is a complex matter. It cannot be addressed unilaterally by either the university or the business community or for that matter any single sector of the country. We are in a chicken and egg situation. Graduates will stay at home only when living conditions improve and they can find lucrative employment. However, they must stay at home if these very conditions are to improve to their liking. Whetting the appetite of students for working within the environment of Guyana is a very real possibility for a business community to undertake.
It is not uncommon for private sector organisations to express the view that university graduates are not work-ready. I would bet that this complaint is voiced here in Guyana although everyone has politely avoided saying it to me since I got here. The complaint is not specific to Guyana. It is a very widespread criticism of the products of universities. Indeed, in some countries, businessmen will argue that the graduates of polytechnic institutes and technical schools are more work-ready than university graduates. Of course, the correctness of the view depends heavily on the kind of work that is expected and no rule of thumb will stand up to scrutiny for very long. We can recognise that it is in the interest of a university like the UG to hone its output in directions that can be more directly of service to the economically productive sectors of the country. One way in which we can enhance the fitness and readiness of UG graduates for working in the environment of Guyana, is to create working partnerships between the UG and the people who employ its graduates. The working partnerships have to go beyond the elementary stage of casual attachment of the student as an observer. They must move to real engagement of students as responsible participants in the work of our productive sector and the feeding of our curriculum with elements that are part of the reality of the business sector’s activities. For example, the summer job type employment that many enterprises offer in fulfilment of their social benefaction can be converted into rigorous internships that are curriculum requirements.
“It would certainly be more economical for an enterprise to finance the equipment and work time for a university department to conduct work on a specific question rather than to build and equip its own laboratory for what could easily be a one shot usage.”
Associated with these partnerships are some considerations of attitude that need to be addressed. For instance, some employers may feel that an employee who needs time away from work or adjustment of work hours to attend classes at the university is a humbug, a loss of productivity. Instead, this should be seen as an opportunity for enhancing the quality of your work force and creating bridges between the enterprise and the university, bridges that can be exploited for the development of the very enterprise to which the student belongs. What I would really like to see is your company giving that ambitious student a grant to help him or her through the course.
“The low carbon economy initiative opens up the possibility for new enterprises and for expansion of existing business into high yield areas related to their current scope. It also calls for significant thought and research on how the details of the policy can be executed. There is profit lying within the propositions but that profit can only be fully realised if it is led and guided by new knowledge that research in a national university can provide. “
Guyana needs to pay attention to the evidence that there is a strong correlation between development and investment in higher education. It is the investment in higher education generally, in research, science and technology that propelled the countries I mentioned earlier (India, China, Singapore, Korea and Japan) into their roles as leaders in the contemporary knowledge economy. The business community can lead the process by unstinting structured investment in higher education, research and enquiry. I consider that we have a golden opportunity right now to embark on a solid collaboration between the business sector and the University of Guyana. Your government is articulating a bold new direction for Guyana’s economy. The low carbon economy initiative opens up the possibility for new enterprises and for expansion of existing business into high yield areas related to their current scope. It also calls for significant thought and research on how the details of the policy can be executed. There is profit lying within the propositions but that profit can only be fully realised if it is led and guided by new knowledge that research in a national university can provide.
So ladies and gentlemen, let us mull over these ideas and forge a relationship between the GMSA and the UG that will produce profit for you and for the UG, growth, stability and sustainability.
