Have university standards declined because of massive growth? We’ve now scores of universities and colleges, both public and private. To put it simply, if one throws a stone, chances are he’ll hit an institute of higher learning. Now we’ve whole universities dedicated to multimedia, information technology or even infrastructure. In the past, doctoral graduates were few and far between but now many graduates of differing diplomas and degrees are being churned out.

Another issue of concern is the power of the thinking individual. Are universities, centre of not only learning but thinking as well? Successful people often attribute success to material gains. Students take on a pragmatic role when they sign up for courses that will ensure them lucrative jobs. The general malaise is that we’re faced with students who no longer think for themselves. It’s not that they can’t think but because they refuse to do so.

This could be due to our Asian culture where students are happily digesting information and regurgitating it for examination purposes. Certainly, with the advent of the power point, the dishing out of lecture notes becomes more prevalent and students become expert scribes. The lecturer who is interacts with students and encourages them to think for they are seen as the ineffective lecturer. Students are so used to hearing what is common and acceptable that’s not surprising that they shy away from thought provoking seminars.

An overemphasis on the importance of logic spells the gradual death of creativity. A borderless world should reflect a place where the mind is not imprisoned. What then does the layman think of the intellectual? Is he the chemist in his ivory tower who occasionally spews out strange academic concoctions? Or is he just hibernating in his intellectual cocoon and waiting for metamorphosis to take place?

Many intellectuals can write but they’re not writing. How can these intellectuals write in such a way that what is written is easily understood by the public? There’s a need to translate our storehouse of knowledge into common terms devoid of the jargon of specialization. ‘The difference between a musician who plays in a pub and Elvis Presley is that the latter had left a mark in our lives.’ Higher institutions of learning need to be both inventive and scholastic in dealing with challenges of today.

Labels: brainy, present, project, quality, university