Have you ever thought about this?
I was at a meeting where university dons discussed how to improve university education in this country. There is a tendency to think that university education has gone to the dogs and there is no room for improvement. But these dons and administrators seemed not dissuaded as they banged their heads for solutions to revamp university education.
Problems with university education are known to many people. We can point to many problems and reasons. Let us start with the first one. Well, there are four public universities now; University of Malawi (Unima), Mzuzu University, The Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (Luanar) and the Malawi University of Science and Technology (Must). Government is expected to pump in lots of money into these institutions. Nobody really knows how much money government should put in, but there is no doubt that such moneys are huge. When that is done, many believe that a solution would have been reached and the quality of education would improve.
The second accusing finger goes to dilapidated infrastructure in some universities. I emphasise ‘some’ because Must cannot be classified as having dilapidated infrastructure. It is Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge which have dilapidated infrastructure, if I may tell you, compared to Must. And there is an irony with Must because no one is arguing that there should be pumping of significant resources at Must to improve numbers of young men and women to benefit from university education. Much of Must is being underutilised. Instead you hear, “Mr. Speaker Sir, why can’t government build a new university in my region to deal away with the quota system?” As long as it is Must, we have nothing to do with it, but it must be Mponela University and then I like it? What a shame?
I was wondering why it has been tradition for our National Assembly to deliberate the budget. For me, it has never made sense. What has always made sense is for the Executive to work out its budget, show us the budget if it wants to and just implement it the way it wants. Now, you are arguing that would be illegal and undemocratic. Yes, that is precisely what I am saying. You see what? Whenever the budget is discussed and passed, government goes on to implement it the way it wants. Money allocated to a department or ministry and the actual amount that ends up there are miles apart.
