University gets you a seat at the table

Did you know that Uganda has about 50 universities? There is probably an office someplace, where this number gets chalked off as an achievement and evidence of progress in education – but it really isn’t.

First, let me tell you about a young man, Josephat Wefafa, an alumnus of our 2020 cohort of mentees. It was perplexing when he revealed that he had decided against enrolling in university.

His rationale was that he had discovered his passion and didn’t see why he needed to go to university, and ‘waste’ anywhere between three to five years doing some course that wouldn’t add much value to his passion.

For context, Josephat (he goes by the moniker Mister Bees) is a gardener par excellence. His knowledge of plants and animals, exotic urban gardening, landscaping, and bees/honey – and the business of it is something of a marvel. He is a master of the balcony garden,always looking to make a sale. His passion and salesmanship are such that he is in-your-face, so much that the relentlessness can in fact border on the irritating sometimes.

He also has a certain self-assuredness that is rare to find or even teach, which is why you worry that sitting in a university lecture room wouldn’t have been a good use of his time.

I believe that he is well on his way to success as an agropreneur because he puts in a lot more work than his peers and is always looking for the next opportunity and course to step up.

Yet, I find that as often as we talk, I like to prompt him about “the paper”. The premium put on a university transcript – not the education and experience itself – is such that you always worry for whoever chooses the narrow way, such as Mister Bees has. This, even when I know that it isn’t really necessary.

On the face of it, it would seem that a transcript is what matters – which might also explain the rigors involved in getting one from the Ivory Tower. This notion is also responsible for the 50 plus universities, serving a population of about 70,000 students. It certainly plays into the idea of job creation for academic and non-academic staff; creates alternative investment options for business moguls; new revenue streams for the taxman; and a little more joy and hope for families looking to celebrate – especially their first – graduation.

We love certificates because they are proof of excellence and achievement, especially in places where it isn’t in good supply. But supposing you put the paper on the side, what would it benefit one to go to university?

Well, for starters, the university is for most, the first time that you get to live on your own and take responsibility for yourself. You can make decisions on when to come in and go out, what to eat and how much to drink, what to read or watch, whom you sleep with, if at all, what circles to hang around, what mistakes to make and learn or never recover from.

If you go to Makerere, you will also get some extracurricular orientation on the dysfunctions of Uganda you will be unleashed into. This helps you start figuring out career paths like politics, civil society, academia, and an escape to Muzunguland, casual labour in the Middle East, or disguised unemployment as an entrepreneur.

University is the one (safe) place where you are likely to pick the required life and career skills that you won’t get in a classroom. Skills such as empathy, confidence, resilience, curiosity, self-initiative, emotional intelligence, deference and resistance, decision making, time management and prioritisation, restraint, negotiation, problem-solving, people relations, etc.

Of course, in more advanced and functional places, all these skills and lessons are part of the social fabric and are well-knit into the education systems. So, they don’t necessarily need universities to learn them, only to affirm them. Its purpose then moves to what Ugandans call “connections” and prestige.

In essence, a decision such as the one taken by Mister Bees is similar to the one taken by a parent who decides to homeschool their offspring because they know that the education system isn’t worth a dime. It is brazen, atypical, and kind-of-nuts. Yet, it is those kinds of decisions, those kinds of people that shift conversations from what is, to what could be – if we got our education right.

Mr Rukwengye is the founder, Boundless Minds. @Rukwengye