التعليم العالي في السودان : مكامن الاعتلال وسبل المعالجة(دعوة للنقاش)

Quote: Sudanese academicians have over the time been condemning the government’s use of military force to suppress the political opposition initiated by the Sudanese universities. Such military interference is conceived to violate academic freedom granted by the constitution. It is quite conceivable that the government’s interference aims to discourage students’ demonstrations and Professors’ strikes. In most cases it ends up in arresting, imprisoning and even firing students and Professors from the universities. This form of “academic freedom” seems to overshadow the other sense of the same term that relates to what teachers do in the classroom. In other words, while government’s violation of academic rights has always been foregrounded in Professors’ discourse, little or nothing has been said about Professors’ use of academic freedom as a pretext to mishandle their academic duties. There are two points to be raised in this connection. First, in (2) above a number of restrictions on professors’ academic freedom have been reported . It can be argued that justification for these restrictions emanates from the general belief that Professors, as human beings, are not faultless. Second, many of the claims made by this paper are given impetus by lack of training for many Sudanese academicians. However, those who received postgraduate training overseas and graduates of colleges of education remain accountable for what is assumed to be unsatisfactory teaching practices. In the light of these two remarks, the following part will turn to the question concerning the teaching practices that this paper renders unsatisfactory. To begin with, ideas for this research were given impetus by observation and lengthy informal discussions with college teachers. Higher education institutions involved were the University of Khartoum, Al-Nilein University, Omdurman Islamic University, Sudan University of Science and Technology, University of Juba, Al-Fashir University, University of Dongla, University of Nyala and Sudan University College For Girls. Discussion involved teachers of humanities. Both discussion and observation centred upon two classroom-related activities: teaching and teachers availability. 3.1 Teaching Traditional teaching – as adopted in all the institutions involved- requires presence of teachers and students in the same place at the same time. Departments provide teachers with general guidelines (called course description) about what to be taught. In general, teachers select courses according to their own interest. Teachers are also free to select the course materials that – they assume- realize the course objective, if anything. However, this practice can turn out to be so destructive. Following the expansion of higher education in Sudan in 1990s, university teaching became a profession for people who were never trained to do it. Viz. ex-politicians and civil and military service retirees converted to academicians overnight. Of course, teaching was never part of their previous experience, and they could not, therefore, be expected to do it properly. Second, because they spent most of their service time running whole institutions, they could not understand the power mechanism in higher education institutions. Thus, precious academic time is wasted in resolving situations that are aggravated by the newcomers. All in all, college teaching styles, whether of the newcomers or those who were brought up to be college teachers, abounds in a number of drawbacks; discussion and observation have revealed the following: 1. Teachers recommend certain references for a course but base their teaching on others may be to avoid challenging questions from students who read a class topic beforehand. 2. There are no instances of departmental approval of course materials. 3. Almost no teachers present course outline to their departmental boards for approval. 4. Some teachers tend to suppress bright students who make more insightful contributions than theirs in the classroom. 5. Some teachers compile course materials that do not match the relevant course description. 6. Few teachers stay in the classroom until the end of a two-hour class. 7. Most newly-established universities and colleges hire teachers to teach a number of 30-45-hour courses on partime basis in a week’s time. 3.2 Teachers’ availability Most universities across the globe require teachers to assign office hours to their students for further discussion on a class topic, solve academic and non-academic problems, etc. This is hardly the case in the Sudanese universities. Few teachers regularly meet their students outside of the classroom. It is widely observed that the vast majority of college teachers do not show up in their offices. If they do, it is because their department or college administration call them for a serious business that has to do with late exam or result submission. Some teachers have been reported to visit their colleges once a week for an evening class with their offices remaining closed for whole semesters. They do not even attend examiners’ boards to discuss their own exam results. Recently, a number of terms, which were once connected with school teachers, have come to be associated with college teachers. They are said to have “clinics”, “drips”, etc. to connote rich financial resources that they have established outside of their institutions. Therefore, they choose to show more devotion these new resources at the expense of their original jobs. 3.3 Critique In the light of what has been mentioned in (3.1) and (3.2) above, it can be argued that students have always been put at disadvantage. Other things being equal, section (2) above revealed that “academic freedom” entails “pursue of knowledge” for the benefit of the students and the society at large. However, if teachers do not commit themselves to the time needed to complete a course, give more office hours for their students, select course materials that match the course description and objectives, base their teaching on textbooks that are available to the students etc., it is unlikely that any discourse on improvement of academic standards is relevant. Teachers’ choice to behave in the manner claimed in (3.1) and (3.2) above seems to be reinforced by a general belief among Sudanese academicians concerning what constitutes academic freedom. For instance, a teacher can start a course sometime in the middle of the term but have to compensate for all the missing classes so that all the contact hours are covered by the end of the term. Needless to say, this way of doing things do in fact detract a lot from students’ academic rights. It puts more pressure on students to study a course accumulatively while it could have been studied more intelligibly according to the college’s schedule. I would like to conclude this section by making two remarks. First, what was claimed to be misuse of academic freedom on teachers’ part applies to some of them only. Second, it is quite conceivable that what has come to be known as “the higher education revolution” in the 1990s was and still primarily responsible for the great part of the teaching malpractices in a variety of ways. It is interesting in this connection to refer to Woodward (2001). Comparing the British and Sudanese higher education, he reports that the university salary in Britain is “… amongst the lowest of any profession in Britain while workload in both teaching and research has risen repeatedly. As a result, many professors chose to cross the Atlantic for better job opportunities (p. 130-131). Where Sudan is concerned, Woodward lamented that “[N]o British academics are struggling to live in the way I know has become increasingly the case in Sudan” (p. 131). The worst part of the Sudanese higher education context is that some teachers academic load extends their institutions to include other newly established ones; for most of the latters rely entirely on partime teaching . To sum up, exercise of academic freedom by some teachers turn out in most cases to violate students’ academic rights. Needless to say, the bulk of academic activities of educational institutions target the students. Thus, the violation of their rights strikes at heart of the whole educational process. 5. Conclusion There are six considerations that have given impetus to the theme of this paper. First, the last fifteen years have witnessed acute drop in the academic standards among the Sudanese college graduates. The paper has frequently reported that the diagnosis of the dilemma mainly rendered the educational policies and the students responsible for the infringe. This paper has raised a number of malpractices on college teachers’ part. Thus, if academic standards are to be redeemed, certain institutional restrictions shall have to be placed on the latters’ role. Second, it has been observed that a number of Sudanese college teachers do not show enough dedication to their job. Some teachers have been reported to use the same time, say one and half hours, to teach two (two-hour) classes in two different institutions, spending half an hour in each class. Other college teachers have been observed to threaten to fail students if they do not buy the latest edition of handouts that they copied from textbooks. Of course, they choose to behave this way owing to the absolute freedom imparted to them by their institutions. Thus colleges and departments are recommended to impose strict follow-up system whereby teachers commit themselves to the time assigned for classes and base their teaching on textbooks that have been approved by the relevant academic boards. Third, Hawi (2006) points out that in the post-war era universities should play vital roles over and above their academic responsibilities. Unfortunately, if some university staff could not carry out their basic job properly, it is doubtful that they contribute anything to the society. Fourth, some teachers seem to have converted teaching into profitable business. Of course, they do so at the expense of research. El- Tom (2006: 100) points out that “A goal of higher education worldwide is to contribute to the creation, dissemination, evaluation, and application of new knowledge. This is normally achieved through research and advanced scholarship”. It is, therefore, recommended that teachers balance their time so that they do additional jobs to support their families and develop their own college career through research. Fifth, what has been claimed to be misuse of academic freedom on teachers part stems in part from lack of immediate supervision of academic administrations on all levels regarding what takes place in the classrooms. Assie-Lumumba (2006: 79) has gone so far as to contend that “[T]he highest administrative officers … usually appointed by the head of state, lacked autonomy and were perceived to give precedence to a political role at the expense of more efficient managerial services and leadership roles to ensure the function of the universities as academic institutions”. Whether or not Sudanese Vice-Chancellors have been appointed to achieve political agendas of the ruling elites, it is certain that examination of what happens in the classroom does not seem to be their top priority. Sixth, it seems that the Sudanese Ministry Higher Education is concerned with the horizontal development of higher education, leaving the universities and colleges to decide on matters pertaining educational quality. In the light of the claims made above about teachers’ performance, it can be argued that universities and colleges do not pay enough attention the teaching quality. The University of Khartoum has set a centre to improve teacher’s performance. However, in order for such training to be of use, higher education institutions need to establish quality departments to ensure that teachers are satisfactorily committed to their job.