Author's note: This piece was written on 10/5/2013. It is being posted today, because I was unable to do so on the day. Please read on:
If we want Ghana to become prosperous, we must make our universities truly world-class institutions of learning.
The question then is, how do we set about turning our state universities into world-class institutions of learning?
Today's talent pool is global - and those who graduate from our
universities will compete with their peers from around the world, for
sought after jobs in the world's best companies, international
organisations and multilateral institutions.
I have often encouraged brilliant but needy young people I come across,
to approach the founder of Ashesi University, Dr. Patrick Awuah, and
try and convince him to find a way to get them enrolled in the
university he founded, which is one of the few truly world-class
tertiary institutions in Ghana.
It is instructive that Ashesi University is a private university - and
that Dr. Awuah was educated in the United States of America.
In conversations with young people, I often suggest to them that Ghana
could improve state provided tertiary education, if it adapted the
model underpinning the leading universities in the America.
On a visit to the Regent University College of Science and Technology,
to obtain an email address to which an educational consultancy in the
UK - with US connections - could send an internationalisation proposal,
I could not help but notice the positive atmosphere prevailing there.
It was literally "buzzing" - to use a word I sometimes hear some of the
young people I interact with using.
Today, I am sharing an article on the same theme, culled from the online version of the UK newspaper, the 'Daily Telegraph'.
Written by Fraser Nelson, editor of 'The Spectator’, it is entitled:
"Britain's universities should take a lesson from the land of the free".
I do hope it will be read by those in academia and amongst our ruling
elites, who are concerned about the quality of the graduates produced
by Ghana's tertiary institutions.
It is food for thought for them - and all those in our country who are
concerned about falling standards in tertiary educational institutions
in Ghana. Please read on:
"Britain's universities should take a lesson from the land of the free
Britain and the US have chosen two very different models for funding universities – and it’s clear which is winning
By Fraser Nelson
7:55PM BST 09 May 2013

If a bunch of sadistic academics were to construct a mass experiment
into mankind’s ability to resist temptation, it would look a lot like
Stanford University. First, plonk a campus in one of the world’s most
agreeable climates and make it look more like a spa hotel than a place
of study. Next, have students dress as if they have stepped off the
beach, and make sure one lies just half an hour away. Then hang hammocks
between trees on the way to lecture theatres to ensnare the
weak-willed. Finally, funnel 1,800 teenagers a year into this den of
distraction – and see if they can do any work.
Oddly, they do. Work of sufficient quality to make Stanford one of the
best universities on the planet. While famous for computing (and
begetting Silicon Valley), most of its departments are now ranked
amongst the world’s top five. Nor is it full of geeks: its athletic
record is such that, if Stanford were a country, it would have come
sixth in the Olympics – ahead of Germany and Australia. Rather than
being a Californian freak, it is just the latest example of an
extraordinary trend: the way that American universities are making
dazzling progress while most British ones are in a state of crisis.
When Teddy Roosevelt visited Stanford a century ago, he said he had not
been prepared for the sheer beauty of the place. Neither had I when I
spent last week there as a media fellow at the Hoover Institute, on one
of the many programmes which have no equivalent here. But what strikes a
British visitor most is the mix of students. Knowing Stanford’s
reputation, I had imagined it to be full of preppy, roistering Americans
with parents rich enough to afford the $40,000-a-year fees. Instead I
found students from all kinds of backgrounds, just over a third of whom
are white. A fifth are Asian and a sixth Hispanic. It is a social and
ethnic melting pot.
What makes all this possible is that Stanford is a private university.
To British ears, the very phrase suggests a selfish club for the rich.
Yet it is Stanford’s independence that allows it to run its own
controversial but effective policies to find bright pupils from poor
backgrounds. Google is, famously, a product of Stanford. But so is
Julian Castro, the 38-year-old Mayor of San Antonio and a rising star of
the Democratic Party who was offered a place in spite of mediocre
school grades. He happily supports its “affirmative action” policy
because, as he puts it, “I’ve seen it work in my own life”.
Britain and America have chosen two very different models of
universities, and it is clear which one is winning. The academic
rankings (compiled by Shanghai Jiao Tong University) show 17 American
ones in the top 20, with Britain represented only by Oxford and
Cambridge.
It might not be a surprise that the American universities do so well
academically, given their funding. What is more surprising is that they
appear to do far better on social justice, not to mention sporting
prowess and entrepreneurial zeal. Stanford has a needs-blind admissions
policy, and will subsidise whoever can’t afford it. The majority of
students receive a subsidy that covers most, if not all, of the fees.
In Britain, our universities are hurtling down the international league
tables – a fact that is partly explained by the dire levels of funding. A
study published yesterday suggested it was a minor miracle that Oxford
and Cambridge have retained their status given how cash-strapped they
are. In theory, British universities should be safe because they are
assured stable funding from the state. But, as things turned out, the
world’s governments are in a financial crisis – while global
philanthropy is booming.
If Stanford was run by the state of California, it would likely be as
broke as the state of California. As things stand, it raised a cool $1
billion last year, almost double Oxford and Cambridge put together. It
has managed to create a virtuous circle: it picks students who tend to
remain grateful for their education, so donate generously in later life –
especially if they think it helps bright, less fortunate youngsters do
well. The same is true for Harvard, Yale and many of the top American
foundations. They have collectively come up with a formula linking
independence, sound finance, academic excellence and social justice.
British universities are some of the worst-funded in Europe – a problem
that will not be remedied by the new tuition fees. Charging £9,000 a
year covers barely half the cost of putting an undergraduate through
Oxbridge. Worse, the Government’s funding formula pushes the
universities towards having papers published in academic journals,
rather than forging links with the outside world.
Last week I met IBM managers enrolled for a short course in Stanford’s
“d.School” of entrepreneurship and an Army colonel studying Libya before
his deployment to US Africa Command in Stuttgart. Such links are all
too scarce in British universities.
Even on the Times Higher Education Supplement’s rankings, just five of
them make the top 50. Our academics are notoriously underpaid, which is
more dangerous than ever in a global marketplace. Students who have been
mis-sold higher education for decades are finally waking up to the
scam.
The old sales pitch, that a degree will mean you earn £100,000 more over
a lifetime than a classmate who starts work at 18, is a sum conjured up
by mixing up doctors’ and lawyers’ degrees with the others. For a male
history graduate, it’s £35 a year more, and for others (“creative arts”
degrees) it’s £15,000 less over a lifetime.
It’s getting harder than ever for Britain to look down, intellectually,
on America. Its universities are world-class, and expanding fast. Oxford
and Cambridge may be far older, but neither can afford to be cocooned
in an archaic world of dining at high tables and mispronouncing words
like “Magdalen”. The global competition has never been fiercer, and they
are facing a future of austerity while it’s boom time for their private
rivals. The very fact that the world’s most respected university
ranking system is run from Shanghai gives an idea of how quickly the
competition is evolving.
It is Stanford’s independence that allows it to try out its social
mobility formula, with a success rate that Britain’s engineers of
equality could only dream about. If Stanford were government-run, its
star-picking would be branded “positive discrimination” and banned under
Californian state law. The University of Texas is being taken to the
Supreme Court on precisely this point, and the defence documents include
a submission from a Stanford psychologist, Greg Walton, who argues that
true meritocracy means taking account of the stronger headwinds facing
poorer students.
For all its drama, Britain’s tuition fees debacle has not secured the
future of our universities. There still isn’t enough money and the new
Office for Fair Access threatens new levels of political interference.
Once, we may have been able to dismiss the American model of independent
universities as hideously expensive, financially unstable or socially
unfair. It is impossible to do so anymore. For the British universities
who can afford it, independence will seem like an increasingly
attractive option.
Fraser Nelson is editor of 'The Spectator’ "
End of culled article from the online version of the 'Daily Telegraph'.
Tel: 027 745 3109.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment