Maravi

Increase funding to UNZA

Increase funding to UNZA
By Editor
Friday June 08, 2007 [04:00]

Conditions are changing all the time, and to adapt our thinking to the new conditions, we need good education, we must study. Through good education we can learn what we don't know. In our attempts to transform our poor country into a prosperous one, we are confronted with arduous tasks and our experience is far from adequate.

This means we must be good at learning. And this is much more so for our young people, our youths. This is because the world is theirs, as well as ours, but in the final analysis, it is theirs. Young people, full of vigour and vitality, are in the bloom of life, like the morning sun. Our hope is placed on them. We must help all our young people to get a good education so that they can face the future with confidence.

Education is a major factor for social change. Therefore, more resources and attention should be paid to education. We should accept the role of our universities as active agents of national integration and social justice in Zambia. And we should not forget that lack of education opportunities lies at the base of the inequalities and injustices in our country today.

The problems that the University of Zambia is experiencing are primarily a result of inadequate funding. Although our country does not have enough resources, it could do much better if education was prioritised. At the moment only less than 40 per cent of the University of Zambia's budget has finances allocated to it by the government. The University of Zambia today owes over K200 billion to suppliers and other creditors. There is no way the university will manage to settle this liability without government giving it the money to do so.

This means that the University of Zambia is not creditworthy, making it very difficult for it to get supplies on credit. There is need for the government to clear all the university's liabilities and give it a new start. These liabilities should be transferred from the university's books to the Ministry of Finance and settled there. And this should be accompanied by increased funding of not less than 100 per cent of the university's budget.

If we can find money to build or repair roads, similarly we should be able to raise enough money for the university's operations.

We shouldn't cheat ourselves that we can develop this country with poor university education in the country. We need to see qualitative and quantitative improvements in university education. We still have a lot of our young people with good grade 12 results who cannot enter university not because their grades are low. But simply because the university can only enrol a limited number of students.

We think our country should work tirelessly so that our people, especially the young people, are enriched culturally, intellectually and technically without restrictions on this process. So that if everyone wants the honour - and we mean the honour, because it would be impossible to consider it in any other way if this were the general rule - if everyone wants the honour of having a university degree, then everyone should have the chance to get one; without, of course, this implying that if everyone has a university degree, then everyone is going to have a job that corresponds to that degree.

But this is a problem that has to be solved by creating facilities for study, by improving the capacity of our universities and improving the quality of tuition, and, of course, in the knowledge that having a degree will not automatically guarantee a job that corresponds to that degree. We say this because it is important that we understand that while there was an enormous shortage of university graduates, every university graduate with that degree could immediately get the appropriate professional job.

But the day when our country has tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions with these degrees, then we won't be able to consider university studies as a way to get a job or a professional position. But we must find a solution to this contradiction and instead of saying, "so you want to study? Right, we are going to give you every opportunity to study," without this implying, as we have said, that when an enormous number of people are getting degrees, everyone will have a job that corresponds to that degree.

The time will have to come - and it will come - when jobs like that of engineer of any kind, or doctor, teacher, economist, or whatever, will be allocated on the basis of one's university record. Some way will have to be found. But we shouldn't stop this, even at the risk of becoming a nation of intellectuals. What will a nation of intellectuals be like, anyway? Nobody knows.

Now, we have not yet reached this stage, and since we still need many university graduates in many fields, technicians in many fields, let's come back down to earth to suggest that we take great care to channel this university study effort toward the basic careers in which there is greater need at the present time in Zambia, and above all toward faculties of technology.

Let's put more and more resources in our universities because the future of our country will depend on how many educated people we have and the quality of their education. We cannot wait to provide adequate resources to our universities in the future; we have to do it now because the future is built on the thresholds of today. We will not be able to build the future in the future. The decisions we take today; the priorities we make today will determine what kind of future our country will have.

The problems of the University of Zambia cannot be solved without increased financial resources. It is impossible for any administrator to run this university properly without increased funding. Even financial accountability becomes impossible without increased funding. Auditors require to be paid and for a big institution like the University of Zambia, the auditing and accounting fees can be enormous.

This may explain why this university has not had a proper and complete audit since 1997. This is not a healthy situation, especially in an institution where public funds are used. Without increased funding to the university we will continue to be hoping for the impossible; to reap where we did not sow. Strikes and other disputes will be the order of the day if funding to the university is not increased.

Labels: EDITORIAL, UNZA

posted by MrK @ 5:24 AM