From the Desk of Michael Spence:
Which are the real universities?
Published: Friday | September 18, 2009,The Gleaner
READ Carolyn Cooper's piece in The Sunday Gleaner of September 13, 'University fi stone dog', and also a letter to the editor from Gillian Fraser (September 15) suggesting that Cooper was afflicted with a severe case of 'red yeye and bad mine'.
The establishment of a university cannot be judged or lauded from a view as to whether establishment demon-strates successful entrepreneurship in education or a daring to offer a service. I, too, have been concerned about the rapid proliferation of universities advertising degrees of all sorts and wondered if they were anything more than education supermarkets or wholesales.
What's the difference?
It is not good for any society to have only "one real university" for too long for fear it develops into what one talk-show hosts call an 'intellectual ghetto' lacking in intellectual rigour, research, functionality and relevance.What few seem to know is the difference between a basic school, a college and a university. It is, therefore, not inconceivable such signs to be replaced with the word university in front of school or college.
If people are willing to pay their money to attend, this would be brilliant entrepreneurship, but would it stand up to scrutiny? A university should be designed to encourage research, innovation, intellectual rigour, with unlimited universality of thought, original scholarship, the production and transmission of new knowledge, thinking and ways of making the world/country a better place.
Readers, including Fraser, might have misunderstood Carolyn's implied definition of a university at the outset so was not able to come on board with her to determine authenticity. Her main concern was definitely not with Hyacinth Bennett or Hydel but with mediocrity, the production and transmission of quality knowledge, the maintenance of vibrant graduate research programmes and not just with quantity.
The University of the West Indies, Mona, or 'intellectual ghetto' for others, has maintained a reasonable track record, but has not contributed enough to the opening up of the Jamaican mind, has been guilty of complacency and may even be stuck in the era of 1970s thought though still relevant.
The University Council needs to have a clearly publicised definition of what is a university or questions one should have answered before one hands over their fees in a quest to have degree papers.
I am, etc.,
MICHAEL SPENCE
