Where are we? Where are we going?

At the time of Uhuru, not a single doctor was being trained in Tanzania. Now, my research methods class at the Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences has 150 students.

They are pursuing their second degree. In three years, they will be specialists in a diversity of medical, dental, public health, basic science, and pharmaceutical fields.

Other universities in Tanzania also train doctors and health specialists. Yes, in the past 50 years, our nation has travelled a fair distance.

I encounter eager, diligent students. Some do a remarkable job. Some find the academic battle rather onerous. And some somehow wiggle their way through. It is all in a day’s work.

People are on the move, no matter what. Interacting with my students, I am filled with pride, joy and gratitude in having been born in this blessed land. I see in their faces a cause to celebrate, to join hands, to sing and dance, to pursue our dreams, to revel in our tranquility, to persevere, to march forward.

Not that all is well and dandy. Many, perhaps too many, growing pains and aches remain. In 1989, my class had 10 students.

I assigned weekly reading and homework. I followed the progress of each student. Each read and critiqued a published paper every week. Apart from lectures, there were discussion sessions.
That is how a postgraduate class ought to be.

With 150 students, who have a much weaker foundation, and with no teaching assistants to conduct the discussion sessions and mark weekly assignments, that approach is simply impossible.

Grading two continuous assessment tests and the final examination implies that for an equivalent of three whole weeks, one does nothing else. I cover less material than before. My students do not get as much immersion into the health literature as before.
What I teach now is not, in breadth and depth, at the level it should be. Yet, I find myself exhausted at the end of the day, unable to do more.

My dilemma reflects the situation in most of the subjects taught at my university and, in fact, at all universities across the nation. Student numbers have expanded sharply, but the number of lecturers and teaching resources have not.

Some universities have a department with 20 or so academic staff, yet none has a doctoral degree.

Quantity has overwhelmed quality. We churn out doctors and specialists whose training, skills, knowledge and aptitude leave much to be desired. No one attends to the maintenance of good academic standards, in teaching, student performance and research.

External examiners are now a facade. It is a matter of you scratch my back, I scratch yours.
Research that is designed, conducted and analysed in a markedly sub-standard fashion, and whose practical applicability is quite wanting, can still secure a masters degree.
Is it just a question of lack of resources? Last week I had to hunt around from office to office for examination booklets.

The supply had run abysmally low. Our department has no paper for photocopies.
Yet, there is abundant money for futile retreats, seminars, and celebrations. A lot of funds are poured into superficial projects.

We have just gone through a multimillion-dollar curriculum review exercise. Yet, hardly any department has changed the substance of what it teaches.

The funds went into expensive offices, modularising courses, defining competencies, travel, fat allowances, and the like.
The form has changed; the content has not. A once in 50 years type of endeavour has, I feel, gone down the drain.

Every academic has a litany of such complaints. Perhaps they are growing pains.
In time, we may learn our lessons and improve. Rome was not built in a day. On the other hand, instead of being growing pains, they may signal structural flaws in the very direction we are moving. Two things make me inclined towards that perspective:
For one, there is a re-emergence of intellectual sycophancy. Everything Western is worshipped in academia. At times, it is quite crude.

Three weeks ago, I attended an hour of a whole week’s session conducted by three professors from well regarded US universities. These education specialists had come halfway across the world to enlighten us, the teachers in the School of Public Health, on the matter of how to teach effectively.

It was an astonishing session. The lecturer treated us as freshmen undergraduates; wasted our time in play-acting, and at the same time, showed a profound ignorance of public health issues.
I raised critical comments. But I was in a minority of one. Everyone else went along with the charade. For the visitors, it was a tropical holiday. For our academics, there was good food, the chance to build contacts, secure trips abroad and get more funds.

We search for donor dollars and lose our sense of self-worth and dignity. We compromise our intellectual independence. Our research and academic priorities are set externally, not by ourselves.

Extensive reliance on financial incentives permeates academia. Hardly anything takes place without an immediate or potential financial inducement. Basic responsibilities are cast aside or poorly fulfilled. Well-paid external work and donor funded projects have supplanted effective teaching and supervision of students.

There are two key lessons we should draw from the speeches of Mwalimu Nyerere. He regularly implored us to think for ourselves, to cultivate a spirit of independent inquiry. He also urged us to stand up for our rights, and to never compromise our dignity.
If the intellectuals of our nation fall short on both, blindly succumb to the mental dependence and cheap inducements of what is but a new form of colonialism, where are we going to be 50 years hence? Our academics complain about the misdeeds of the politicians, but then turn around to replicate the same type of practices.

On this 50th anniversary of our birth, we must ask: How do we serve our nation well? Is this kind of ”progress” acceptable? Do we not need to set an example for our students to emulate?
On this joyous occasion, as I ponder on these questions, I am deeply troubled as well.


Karim F Hirji is a professor of biostatics at the Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences