From time to time, universities roll out new and newly minted sets of professors into the academic world. From the sciences to the humanities, the professors and associate professors are, by their appointment, handed significant responsibilities that surpass the euphoria of scaling the often tough assessment standards that universities typically have in place to ensure that their crop of professors and top academics have global academic status. This, of course, is to be expected. Professorship is not just a title that one bandies about for social recognition. It carries a weight that goes beyond its honorific essence.
There is more. Being a university professor also possesses a generational responsibility. This comes with the urgent need to reach very deep into the minds of the younger generation with the educational substance of eternal value (of knowledge) that is required for them to live a good life. Condolezza Rice, the American former secretary of state, beautifully expresses the profound joy that comes with being such a professor: “I’m a very happy university professor… the best thing about being a university professor is that you see young people as they’re being shaped and molded toward their own future, and you have a chance to be a part of that.” This is a most beautiful joy that carries a very deep burden of academic mentorship. This piece, which continues the conversation we had after my inaugural lecture of the Lead City University, Ibadan on the 21st of November, 2018, is just to initiate a trajectory of discourse that I think can enable us rethink the deeper inflections of the professorship and the university.
A university, by its very stature, is a critical point of institutional reform and experimentation that ensures that ideas, insights and paradigms are mixed and fused together in dazzling and creative manners that challenges traditions and orthodoxies. A university is a laboratory of ideas and innovative thinking. Ultimately, rethinking the relevance of the university challenges the concept of a professorship. The current understanding of a professor, as a purveyor of received knowledge, has endured for many decades. From its 14th century etymology, it refers to someone who professes a particular branch of knowledge in the sciences or the humanities. The trajectory of the meaning eventually stretched to mean the highest post-doctoral academic rank that a university teacher could attain after some productive number of years. However, while this rank has persisted in this traditional form in Africa, it has had to undergo critical re-assessment in North America, for example. And this re-assessment of the tradition was facilitated by foundational reflections on the essence of the university and the responsibilities of the professors within the mission statement of a university.
Let me mention two significant features of European universities and pedagogical orientations. First, there is a clear distinction between a teaching professor and a research professor. Underlying this distinction is the attention that a university must give to quality, first, and division of labor, second. A research professor, for instance, would not be burdened by the same teaching load that will attach to the task of a teaching professor. Grading or promoting a teaching professor would not be on the same research capacity that attends a research professor. The impacts of both on the student’s intellectual formation are different and unique. American universities also feature the endowed professorship or chair. This has several advantages. One, since the chair or professorship is endowed, the salaries and emolument of the professor is paid directly from an endowment. This allows the university to redirect the salary of the professor to some other administrative issues. But more important is the fact that the endowment is awarded to an excellent faculty member who has distinguished him or herself in a specific field. An endowed professorship allows a university to attract top scholars from other universities.
The most fundamental of the professorial and pedagogical reform in the western higher education framework is the establishment of the professorship of practice. This is critically different from the tradition of an honorary professorship. In an honorary, unlike the traditional, professor is not burdened by the responsibility of teaching or research. It is essentially an award that recognizes unique individuals whose lives represent excellence and other scholarly virtues. An honorary degree holder adds his or her illustrious profile to the status of the university itself. On the contrary, a professorship of practice,as distinct from honorary professor, hinges on the urgency of unraveling the dynamics of the relationship between scholarship and existential and professional realities for the students. Curriculum and its pedagogical implications, that is, are dynamics that are meant to expose the students to the critical relationship between ideas and their practical and existential dynamics and relevance. This is entirely lost when we lock the students out of the rich experiential knowledge that the society itself provides through its industries, organizations, the civil societies, entertainment, cultural dynamics, and so many other sites of production and performances.
The recognition of this framework of interactions is what led to the emergence of the idea of professorship of practice; the idea of bringing the town into the gown; of reorienting theory with the practical. The global practice recognizes a professor of practice as a distinguished professional—in the military, civil service, entertainment, private organizations, religious organizations, etc. Such a professor is integrated into the academic community, and a particular faculty, on the strength of his or her special practical experience. A Condoleezza Rice as a former secretary of state in any university’s foreign policy programme is a significant addition. A professorship of practice is evidently evidence-based. Appointing such professors is based, in the first place, on the evidence of accomplishments in their fields of endeavors. But much more than this, such persons are expected to bring their wealth of experience as dynamics for reflecting on teaching and research. An evidence-based practice brings much more to academic learning than the narrow understanding derivable from textbooks. A professional in any field represents dynamic combinations of so many variables that textbooks may not anticipate—a time-worn and clever admixture of psychological and emotional balance, communication capacity, customer relations, practical intelligence, esprit de corps, entrepreneurialism, leadership skills, and many others.
Nigeria’s postcolonial realities places a more significant urgency on the universities to explore the relationship between theory and practice, and between scholarship and social realities. This simply means that the professorship of practice is not something that Nigerian universities can ever hope to ignore. AnOdiaOfeimun is a worthy professor of practice in an Institute of African Studies of Department of Literary Studies. A Dr. Adebayo Ogunlesi would bring an entire experience of entrepreneurship to any enterprising university that is creative enough to see the significance. A top-rated knowledge-driven permanent secretary of a ministry, governor, minister, senator, or even any past president in Nigeria represents a huge wealth of experience for any department of public administration or political science or a faculty of management. On-Air-Personalities have some unique practical experiences that would nourish a graduate programme in English language or Linguistics.
While no one may object to the necessity of this innovative institutional reform, the first obstacle that would immediately jeopardize its relevance is the craze for titles in Nigeria. In some other societies, a professor is actually held responsible for whatever he or she claims to profess, the hallowed tradition of professing is dwindling. This is the tradition that produces the likes of Dudley, Soyinka, Ola Rotimi, Bala Usman, Odia Ofeimun, and many other great names. However, if care is not taken, and if this novelty is not wrapped in a strict framework of procedures and regulations, there is the possibility of undermining its potency through the usual Nigerian penchant for nepotism and favoritism.
The appointment of such professors can become a statutory policy which the university can demand from faculties.And to escape the rampant ethnic coloration of almost everything Nigerian, the appointment must be by objective critical acclaim, followed by strict assessments that originate from the department and faculty to the relevant university committee, before eventually ending with the university senate and governing council. The multiple levels of assessment would provide the required checks on institutional corruption. A Faculty of Engineering in any Nigerian university can create a faculty position for a professor of practice in engineering. A distinguished Nigerian professional with any of the oil companies in Port Harcourt can be appointed. An even more distinguished Senior Advocate of Nigeria would enliven the law faculty of any university with the relationship between the law in theory and the law in the real courtroom. We can then begin to imagine the transformation of the academic engagement between academics, students and this professionals on business development, plant designs, process analysis and control strategies. A practicing 21st century educated Babalawo in an institute of African Studies has the professional capacity to transform our understanding of the Yoruba lifeworld! Tunde Kelani has the trajectory of professional experience to enable us reflect and rethink the framework of cinema in Nollywood studies in Nigeria.
The challenge, as I see it, is largely administrative: Can our universities extend the worthy tradition of producing brilliant professors to engaging the services of professionals who are “professors” in their own right, and who have the experience and practical competence to impact the learning experience of the students as well as the theoretical understanding of the academics?The tradition of professorship was founded on a strict understanding of who a professor is. Contemporary realities demand that there are those who are professing unique practical knowledge that we can no longer ignore if we ever hope to transform the fundamental meaning of education, and its deep impacts on the students and their future. In the final analysis, drawing the society into the teaching and research dynamics of the university is only a way of making the university deeply relevant to the context within which it is existing. There is no further justification beyond this. It is also a way of providing a deep insight for the students about the challenges they will face on graduation, and preparing them theoretically and practically to face those challenges.
Prof. Tunji Olaopa
Retired Federal Permanent Secretary &
Professor of Public Administration
Join BusinessDay whatsapp Channel, to stay up to date
Open In Whatsapp
