THE IDEA OF A UNIVERSITY

Registrar, CU

The idea of a university absolutely describes the hope for societies. It was the thirst for knowledge, the desire to do things better and improve the standard of living that led to a search for knowledge, which has its apex institutional representation in universities. Beginning with the very first universities in the 15th century, it is very obvious that a university is, first and foremost, a tower of hope in terms of the discovery of knowledge, it is a place where wisdom, insight and scientific research is advanced.

The insight and new knowledge so generated lead to an improvement in the living standards of the citizens of the world because of its universal applicability or generational effect.

In the idea of a university, human beings have always been at its center and that is why today the information age, particularly emphasizes human capital development and empowerment. In fact, we are just getting back to where we started in the sense that the university started essentially to develop the human capital by which every other resources is enhances and engaged. This explains the traditional functions of a university: gathering knowledge, adding to it (research), passing it onto others and demonstrating it in community service. The object and subject of those functions had always been the good of the immediate and remote society. If anybody discovered any knowledge and thus conferred with a Doctor of Philosophy degree, he becomes a teacher in the university because the new knowledge through research had made him a master of that knowledge in the university. Now what is he teaching? He has acquired the capacity to research, to find out new knowledge, but very importantly, he has also been given responsibility to advance it and pass it to others so that there can be replenishment on the earth, so that the generations of those who find new knowledge will not dry up and that is the centrality of students in the universities.

Without students, discovered knowledge will terminate as stinking lake of static ideas. There is this dictum that I got from Oral Roberts University (ORU), Tulsa, USA, about the importance of students and I have not recovered from it. Talking about the centrality of students; research, teaching and community service revolve around the student. The teacher was first a student and then when he discovers or had mastered, he becomes a teacher and why is he teaching? To preserve the society, develop new products and upgrade the human capital. That is why we always like to say that the most important person on the campus is the student because without them there wouldn’t be any institution. Everyone who is a part of the university community must recognize their sacred responsibility to students because they are not just a cold enrollment figure, they are human beings with feelings and emotions like us and whom we must chisel until we bring out the angel of knowledge in them. We want everyone who is a teacher to know that the students are not supposed to be objects of toleration, they are really the subjects of our involvement and they represent the channel by which the university can command generational impact.

You look at universities all over the world today and observe that they do not die in impact. If you go to the US or Europe, you find companies that used to be leaders in their respective lines of businesses a few decades ago but are no longer relevant for market share today but that is not so with universities; they exist for generations and are still making impact. They don’t die because of the very sacred function of transferring knowledge. Transferring knowledge is not just in material things that are made or the new methods, technologies or new knowledge in liberal arts, but also in developing men and women who do carry knowledge to the next generation. It is therefore important also for everyone who is part of a university community to know that students are not dependent on us rather we are dependent on them. It is important for us also to know that they are not an interruption in our work but they are our real work because that is the only way a university will keep generating impact and have the relevance as well as be able to keep its head high in the comity of universities.

Today we talk about African universities that are not making it and we have in America the Ivy League universities that have maintained high standards over the centuries. What keeps them up? They celebrate their students and promote excellence and they make sure that they flow from teaching to research and remain relevant in community service. And this is what we want CU to contain and maintain. We are marching forward to becoming a world-class university and if we want to achieve that, then we must promote scholarship, encourage academic exploit and celebrate everything that is found new, getting to the frontiers of knowledge and giving the black man a new face on the earth. This is our idea of a University.