Prime
Varsities should seek alumni support
Kampala
Last week the Inter-university Council for East Africa (IUCEA) held a meeting in Kampala to discuss the role of higher education in the integration of East African countries. They noted that there was not enough supply of qualified staff to join the ranks of our universities. Do you see the crowds of new (especially fee-paying) students swarming our universities these days? Although there is an urgent need to widen participation in higher education, there hasn’t been corresponding investment in human resources or infrastructure.
The IUCEA meeting urged the East African universities to increase investment in postgraduate studies to fill human resource gaps and improve research capacity in East Africa. There was also mention of the role alumni can play in growing the financial endowments in our universities. A financial endowment is a transfer of money or property to an institution. The value of an institution’s investments is usually referred to as its endowment and is organised as a charity or trust.
Endowments are commonly held by schools, universities, museums, libraries, religious establishments or hospitals. A wealthy old man in his last days of life may decide to give part of his estate to his former university or the hospital where he has received generous attention and care. But there’s also another way the endowment in a university can grow. This is through the contributions that men and women who attended the university make; sometimes monthly, annually or through contributions when means are available. However, it does not always follow that alumni of a university will give back to their alma mater.
In very similar circumstances, a mother who begets and cares for ten children who later become wealthy professionals is not assured of receiving help from them in her old age. She does not in fact have a primary legal entitlement to that support. It sometimes requires sacrifice and the parent may need to ask for help. But we know that many people still care for their parents; and similarly, there are places with an advanced university endowment funding culture. Did you know that the endowment in Harvard University is bigger than that of all the top universities in the United Kingdom put together?
Nevertheless British universities also have endowments and these support scholarship programmes for developing countries with funds received from alumni.
I’m aware my own Makerere University does not receive much help from alumni. One can see car stickers and spare-tyre covers that distinguish the cars of Makerere University alumni. But I think there’s not much beyond that. What is keeping our universities back? Why don’t graduates directly give back to grow theendowments of their universities? Part of the problem lies in the fact that many young people never get involved in the life of a university in a way that brings them to acquire a sense of belonging, loyalty to a set of values and the desire to see the university grow and support other young people in the future.
There’s often hardly anything of cultural value (music, sports, student societies) to engage young people in a meaningful way so that they can remember their days at university with pride. I have not heard a vibrant university orchestra, a philosophy or history society in any of the older universities in this country. What we mostly see are small associations of students who come from the same school or district. These associations have taken the place of more worthwhile activities that can strengthen loyalty to the university. Secondly, our universities do not keep track of their alumni. My former university, University of Manchester, in England, has an office dedicated to alumni relations and sends out regular updates and newsletters to our emails every three months.
I’m more up-to-date with events in my former university four thousand miles away than people who studied and live in Kampala are. University of Manchester supports students from developing countries with funds raised by alumni every year. Because they have up-to-date contacts of their former students, they call them up every year to ask for money, and they do give. I’d gladly give back to University of Manchester because it cares to look for its former students. I have an alumni association membership card and a page on the alumni association website. Why don’t our universities look for their former students and reach out to them? I think they have the basic infrastructure -- email, websites and telephones.
It is time to work out new strategies to attract new and continuing students to get more involved in the life of their respective universities and to grow loyalty that drives them to contribute to the growth of financial endowment in these institutions. That’s ready money for postgraduate research.
The author lectures at Makerere University, E-mail: [email protected]
