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Namibia: Unam Must Return to an Earlier Era
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The Namibian (Windhoek)
COLUMN
16 May 2008
Posted to the web 16 May 2008
Alfredo Tjiurimo Hengari
Windhoek
I AM of the class that entered the University of Namibia in 1993 with a lot of reservations about the quality of higher education I was about to receive at this institution.
Part of my hesitation was based on the fact that Unam was in a phase of transformation, from an institution largely tailored to fit an apartheid model of higher learning for black Namibians, with whites being an exception, to becoming a truly Namibian university.
Additionally, the personal pain I felt by going there was also borne out of the fact that as a learner who got my full matriculation exemption, I felt that I deserved to get into a good university in South Africa.
After all, my grades were meant to afford me such "luxuries."
Be that as it may, I enrolled for a BA in Political Science and Sociology, with minors in History and German.
I had good lecturers: from Professor Hund in the Sociology department, Du Pisani and Winnie Wanzala in Political Science, Dorian Haarhoff in English, and of course my history professor from Zambia, whose name I now struggle to recall.
I must admit that I left Unam a very proud graduate, as it was arguably THE experience that shaped much of the excitement that I have for intellectual life and critique.
In addition to the lecture halls, with students buzzing with the excitement of freedom, and some also rooted in the very liberation tradition of critique, the lectures were probing and exciting.
Outside the lectures, in addition to an exciting social life, campus life was one of vitality and activism, filled with discussions about the direction of the student movement, the leadership of the university, and discussions about the leadership of the country to name but a few.
However, I am not too certain if I can say the same thing about the current state of the university.
I am not sure if Unam is still the same place I left well over a decade ago.
I am not sucking these assumptions out of my thumb.
The lecturers and students that I speak to during my intermittent visits home reinforce these assumptions.
When I consulted the Unam website recently, I not only got archaic information, but also saw that the majority of the faculty deans are not anywhere near to being professors.
Worse, the situation with departments made me feel as if someone was poking me in the eye with their index finger.
This quick glance at the academic leadership of faculties and departments reveals a worrying picture, which in the final analysis may compromise the quality of education of our graduates.
Ordinarily, departments in a university must be led by individuals with outstanding academic achievements (publications in refereed journals, etc).
In short, professors or associate professors.
At least, for a developing country like ours, senior lecturer should be the minimum requirement for one to be head of department, with the worst-case scenario being a PhD tout court.
We now have senior lecturers or associate professors at Unam who can't even go to teach in their status at a university like Wits or UCT in neighbouring South Africa.
This state makes me reflect about a lecturer at Unam who a while back told me sarcastically, yet painfully, that "Unam has become a place for people who had failed to get jobs elsewhere in the country".
More like a stopgap solution to one's own misfortune or bad luck.
Such an assertion may stick, in particular when we "bulldoze" ourselves into positions of academic leadership without the requisite requirements that in the academic world engenders "peer" and respect.
Yet, I sincerely feel that the adverse view must be the one that is truer.
Teaching at a university must be a source of inspiration and respect for students and the wider public.
I left Unam over a decade ago with that conception, which was consolidated at Stellenbosch University, and refined at the Sorbonne in Paris.
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Thus, I can't imagine myself in my current academic state, going back to head the department of political science at Unam, travelling to Paris to meet Monsieur le Professeur Michel Dobry to negotiate a twinning agreement with the Département de Science Politique de la Sorbonne.
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