By Enyeribe Ejiogu
Former Vice President, Federal Republic of Nigeria and Founder, American University of Nigeria (AUN) Yola, Adamawa State has charged AUN and other universities to buckle up and develop strategies that would enable them deploy and beneficially utilise emerging technologies that are fundamentally disrupting and changing the educational landscape.
He warned that universities that fail to recognise the growing evolutionary Darwinian process unleashed by information technology to upend teaching and learning would find themselves left in the dust as other nimble-footed educational institutions, empowered by emerging disruptive technology would become more attractive to prospective students eager to acquire education from non-traditional physical classroom settings.
Atiku gave advice in his address at the Founder’s Day Celebration of the American University of Nigeria, Yola, to mark the 19th anniversary of the university though students began actual studies a year later.
He urged the leadership of the university, to be led by new President, Dr DeWayne Frazier, to undertake a holistic review of the past operations of the institution and realign the same to accord with founding vision of the university.
His words: “We have to step back, take stock, ask ourselves some very important questions, and try to answer them honestly. Such questions include why are we here? What was the vision of the founders in establishing this university? To what extent have we kept faith with that vision and that promise?
“AUN was never intended to be just another university. There was a vision and purpose that set it apart and gave it true meaning and relevance. It is important that that vision is realized and that the university serves its purpose for generations to come. So, what’s that vision?
“It’s to build a development university providing American-style education, which emphasizes critical thinking and problem-solving. A development university, unlike the traditional (ivory tower notion of) university sees itself as an active partner in economic development and the process of nation-building. For instance, it would be a university that organizes teaching and research in a manner that tries to consciously meet the development needs of the country. It also uses its enrolment procedures and its shared intellectual and cultural environments to consciously promote the goal of nation-building. The goal would be the education of Africa’s future leaders.
“Are you still keeping faith with American-style education that distinguishes AUN from others? Is the university continuing to consciously engage in practices that contribute to the country’s economic development and nation building? How can you do these with limited resources? What are your strategies for doing so without a large contingent of American faculty? How can you attract American-trained faculty from across the globe? What are your strategies for training and re-training your own faculty to understand and transmit the American style of teaching and learning?
“If you carry out that self-examination, that stocktaking, you will agree with me that there is a need to return to the founding vision of the university. In its relatively young history, AUN has had a relatively high turnover of leaders, especially Presidents. Unfortunately, some of them didn’t quite understand or follow that vision. And even some who did, at some point, embraced values that were detrimental to the realization of that vision. There is, therefore, an urgent need to return to basics, to the original vision.
“As you try to return to that founding vision you are likely to face new challenges, including the intensifying competition in the private education market, deepening socio-economic crisis in the country, and emerging disruptive technologies that are likely to redefine and reshape education as we know it.
I believe that AUN is well positioned to take advantage of the deepening socio-economic crisis and the emerging disruptive technologies.
“As the economic and educational landscape are changing, you should urgently expand your offerings to include programs that prospective students actually want so as to enhance access for more students, grow your numbers and improve your finances in order to be more sustainable.
“New technologies are emerging that may completely change education as we know it, and by implication educational institutions. The direction of those changes is not entirely clear but could include greater individualized learning outside of formal educational institutions. Is AUN, as an institution, giving sufficient thought to those and their possible implications? One may also ask if Nigeria, as a country, is giving sufficient thought to their possible implications.
“These new disruptive technologies are emerging just as socio-economic crisis deepens in Nigeria, thereby limiting the financial capacity of institutions and the country to acquire those very technologies, failure of which would put us further back in the race to socio-economic advancement. How are you preparing for them, and how is Nigeria preparing for them? What about the potential impact on teaching and learning by artificial intelligence, especially Large Language Models such as ChatGPT? Are you prepared for that? These are serious questions and issues to ponder and act upon rather urgently.
“I urge you to re-examine all that you do and the strategies and tools with which you do them in order to ensure the growth and sustainability of this very important institution.
He also charged the Governing Council to look for new ways and new tools to generate more revenues and more buzz for AUN, and particularly focus on making the Atiku Institute of the major entities with AUN into a full-fledged research, teaching/training, and advocacy institute and also be become a repository of the records of our struggles, advances, and challenges, as a nation, to entrench democracy and rule of law.