Business Daily (Nairobi)
Mammo Muchie
26 May 2008
opinion
Nairobi — Every poor country goes invariably for building a national airline. Rarely do the power-persons who happen to rule poor countries think in terms of establishing world-class research universities.
Very often those in power fear the research process that produces knowledge with critical thinking, open scientific inquiry, innovation and creativity and the fearless search for truth; and, conversely, those in the knowledge world find it tedious to deal with such restraining power to free scientific inquiry.
They crave for an environment of freedom to stimulate creative scientific inquiry unrestrained by any external constraint except the limits to knowing and revelation.
A research university requires a research environment to succeed. The question is whether a university that is interfered with heavily by the state, and that also serves literally as a state organ can ever truly develop into a world class research institution.
These institutions are perceived and feared to be run by people not seen as able to show independence from state power, as indeed it seems to be often the case in many African countries.
That is indeed an important question.
What is not clear is the understanding of whether a real research university can emerge with the existing political, economic, cultural and social environments as they are now. Equally important is how a first class research university can emerge? Is it by changing an existing university and re-inventing it? Is it by merging existing universities and institutes and by adding new dimension to them? Is it by creating a radically new science.
One of the key conditions for a research university is an intake of students for the development of post-graduate research training including doctoral and post-doctoral work.
If a university has large number of undergraduate students, it is more likely to be more a teaching- based rather than a research based institution.
Another critical condition for building a research university is the existence of a threshold of faculty and graduate students that can sustain an active research culture and environment.
An equally important necessary condition is securing sustainable resources that will not be subjected to changing political priorities by equally changing governments and policy choices.
Last but not least is the existence of an enhancing and conducive governance system that can stimulate autonomy, academic freedom, independent leadership vision, innovation, and creativity by fostering an environment and culture for research excellence and knowledge production.
Dr Muchie is professor at Aalborg University in Denmark.
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