Director of the Berbice Campus (UGBC) Professor Daizal Samad believes that the University of Guyana can operate better with a more contemporary administrative structure and he dropped a broad hint about the possibility of autonomy for the Tain facility.
“We don’t have effective systems where we measure teaching and we measure learning. We don’t have systems where our administration is streamlined and flexible and adaptable and immediately responsive to change”. If something happens at the university or in any environment that impacts the university, he said, there should be an element of predictability that the persons in charge can see it coming. “If you don’t have a clean, streamlined administration that has a degree of predictability through measurability, you will have somebody who says, “Oops! Look, the roof fall down”, rather than seeing it caving in weeks before”.
He is very optimistic that there can be the right leadership; “I think— give us 10 years— we had 50 years, and where are we—roofs are leaking, people are dissatisfied and disgruntled, and the university is in perpetual deficit— 50 years of dilapidation…I think this whole slide started somewhere in the early 80’s and we haven’t been able to arrest that slip towards not only physical dilapidation but intellectual dilapidation”. “Nonetheless, I am optimistic that we can reverse this trend with true leadership and with allowing that leadership to motivate people. We have done it at UGBC; the scale is smaller, but the principles are the same”.
Professor Samad noted that the Berbice Campus, has been doing “really great work— and it doesn’t mean we are perfect— we need to do a lot better, but we are doing really great work and it makes no sense to me, that you take something that is working well, put an old stone around its neck and drag it to muddy depths; it doesn’t make sense to me, so Berbice will have its own university, if UG (Turkeyen) is not led by some kind of visionary; somebody who knows what he or she is doing, then we will have no choice but to move towards autonomy”.
The Professor said that he knows exactly what he wants for UGBC. “I know our systems are so cumbersome; that it’s almost inoperable. I know that we need to simplify the system— we don’t need to re invent the wheel— but to look at systems that are similar to our situation”. He talked about Malaysia’s universities (where he spent a number of years). “You don’t have to go through 5-10 people to make a decision; it’s ridiculous!” He doesn’t see why there should be 5- hour meetings daily, “to do what? At the end of which, what happens, nothing”.
ACCREDITATION
“I don’t want to call a meeting to hear myself talk; but I really think we need to be much more self- critical than we are; much more demanding of ourselves, rather than demanding for other people to do for us”. He said that it is a harsh kind of assessment; however, that is what it would take to bring UG “up to a place where it can be considered for accreditation”.
The university as a whole, he said, is not accredited; “we are nowhere close to a level where we may be considered for accreditation”. He recalled how he was involved in the accreditation process while he was at a University in Africa and the process of preparing for consideration for accreditation took years, “and that is when we saw many flaws in ourselves and in our systems, but we only saw the flaws because everybody became harshly critical of himself and herself and every department…at the end of that process, nobody was satisfied— I was Senior Professor and I was dissatisfied and we placed systems in place and tested them and measured them and so, we were prepared to be considered for accreditation”.
Accreditation is a process of validation in which colleges, universities and other institutions of higher learning are evaluated. The standards for accreditation are set by a peer review board whose members include faculty from various accredited colleges and universities. The board aids in the evaluation of each potential new school accreditation or the renewals of previously accredited colleges/ schools/universities.
In order for potential colleges to proceed with the accreditation process smoothly, they must meet the general standards set by the peer review accreditation boards.
“We need to establish ourselves on the world stage and to do that we need to think like giants and act like giants; that’s what we need. We need self- belief and self- belief will not come without self- criticism and self- analysis. True self belief comes from an understanding that we are not excellent, or something in us is not good”. He said the moment people become smug and comfortable with themselves, excellence becomes far removed. “I refuse to be smug, as an individual. I refuse to be complacent and self-satisfied”.
AUTONOMY
FOR UGBC?
Samad said that should a ‘University of Berbice in Guyana’ materialise (after autonomy from Turkeyen) and I am heading it, I will not be satisfied—- I don’t care what happens—-but I will never be satisfied, until we rank somewhere in the top- 100’s in the world, according to the German system”. From time to time, universities around the world undergo accreditation and rankings to put them in certain categories in terms of the levels and tertiary standards of education they offer.
He revealed that according to the latest information on university worldwide rankings, the University of the West Indies (UWI) ranks around 2,000 (out of 10,000 universities). Our very own UG ranks around 6,000 of a possible 10,000 “and when you have those kinds of rankings, then you know that [from] 5,000 [rank] are ‘bottom houses’”.
