The authorship of the recently released University of Guyana’s September 2009 – August 2012 Strategic Plan is underpinned by an uncharacteristic and refreshing frankness that breaks with a long-entrenched and thoroughly counterproductive practice of burying our heads in the sand about the cataclysmic and continuing decline of UG.
One detects behind that openness the same posture that underpinned a presentation to a private sector lunch made by Vice Chancellor Lawrence Carrington earlier this year. The Vice Chancellor understands, of course, that the world will not wait on UG to get its act together and Guyana will certainly find itself lagging badly behind the rest of the world if our only institution of higher learning continues to perform in the mediocre manner that it presently does.
In the first instance the Strategic Plan alludes to “the under-financing of the University” and the various resulting negative material, human and technological “deficiencies.” It hints too at a consequential mediocrity in the broader fabric of the University as reflected in its “inability to attract well qualified staff…insufficient learning resources…limited resources for research…inappropriate teaching methods…weak quality assurance systems…a poor public image” and an “inconsistent commitment to excellence.”
However unkind these sentiments expressed in the Strategic Plan may seem, no University confronted with such criticisms can lay legitimate claim to delivering what is expected of it. Indeed, taken together, the twenty-six specific “weaknesses” cited in the Strategic Plan point unerringly to a condition of profound underdevelopment and underachievement at the University.
The arrival of Professor Carrington at Turkeyen earlier this year coincided with the commencement of discourses between the University and the Private Sector on ways in which the two can engage in collaborative pursuits for their mutual benefit; and though the Strategic Plan does not allude directly to the role that such collaboration can play in moving the University forward it makes the point about “insufficient learning resources” and “limited resources for research,” two areas in which the private sector can directly contribute to building capacity at the University. Of course, as Professor Carrington himself has said, investment in the University by the private sector is, in effect, an investment in itself and, more critically, an investment in the economy as a whole.
Responsibility for the current state of the University rests, unquestionably, mostly at the feet of the government. The institution’s stressful environment, its uncompetitive and unattractive staff remuneration and its poor public image, all deficiencies alluded to in the Strategic Plan are all, to varying extents, to be blamed on a state approach to the management of the University that has been thoroughly insensitive to its role as a critical nation-building tool and that has sought continually to infuse the same counterproductive jousting that characterizes national politics into the very fabric of the University.
Finding the money with which to run the University effectively is, of course, only part of the problem and one suspects that it may be possible to simply pursue the option of securing much of the funding from some multilateral financing source. Indeed, if such an approach for funding can be placed in the context of the University’s role as an institution that is critical to the country’s development it may even be possible to secure a grant for the purpose. The point that should be made here of course is that if the University can rid itself of the need for funding directly from state coffers it will essentially be placing itself in a better position to rid itself of the shackles of government control though it has to be said that grants from multilateral sources are themselves subject to government’s approval.
Whatever else it is, the University’s Strategic Plan is an overwhelming repudiation of the abhorrent practices that have informed the running of the University, practices that have had to do with its politicization as much as its pauperization. The recent appointment of a Chancellor, for example, now means that the Council is headed by a serious and influential professional.
It is not at all common for state-run institutions in Guyana to offer such candid assessments of their weaknesses as are reflected in the University’s Strategic Plan and what UG has done signals that the authors of the Strategic Plan understand that the institution is at a crossroads and that whoever may choose to frown on their openness we simply need to call a spade a spade.
The protracted under-funding of UG by the state, given the presumed centrality of the institution to national development is not only short-sighted but reflective of a deeply disturbing insensitivity to the development of our intellectual resources. When one considers the vast sums that have leaked from the state coffers either through state-funded projects that have been poorly executed or through corrupt practices involving the theft of state funds, one wonders just how much of a difference those amounts would have made to the University.
We have not heard a great deal about the University’s new-found relationship with the private sector though President of the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association (GMSA) Ramesh Dookhoo told Stabroek Business that he had seen the Strategic Plan and that the private sector was supportive of its contents. We hope that some of the specific recommendations made by Professor Carrington, including the funding of University-based research initiatives by the private sector and increasing the number of scholarships granted to employees by private sector companies will materialize sooner rather than later.
If what has gone before is anything to go by, however, any initiative involving UG and the private sector to take the institution forward has to have the unambiguous blessings of the government. By this we mean that bringing UG into the 21st century must be preceded by an end to the practice of political bickering for control of the University. Part of the function of a University is to breed independent thinkers. The University itself will only properly accomplish that mission if it is able to rid itself of the dead hand of the stench of political intervention that stubbornly refuses to release its grip from around the throat of the institution.
