[In early 2002 the Faculty of Arts produced its 2002/2003 Prospectus. The prospectus had this slogan, which I had coined: “Skills to Navigate the Global Village.” It was the first and only prospectus during my two-term Deanship, and the second ever. The Faculty’s very first prospectus had been produced in 1980, during Dr. Micere Mugo’s tenure as Dean, and under the editorial guidance of the late Dr. George Katama Mkangi, who was a Sociologist. Patchy as that record may be – and the Faculty has produced no other prospectus since 2002 -- I wanted to reproduce, as this blog post and for the record, my “Message from the Dean” which appeared in that 2002/2003 issue (see pp. 3-5). I wanted, too, to strike a blow against shelf-dust – that great afflicter of publications and sly bringer, perhaps, of self-doubt. So, here goes:]
The Faculty of Arts, University of Nairobi, is the scholastic home to some 170 academics spread across nine departments and one sub-department, namely: Economics, French (sub-department), Geography, Government, Government, History, Philosophy, Linguistics and African Languages, Literature, Religious Studies, and Sociology. The Faculty traces its university roots back to April 1956, some forty four years ago, when the then Royal Technical College admitted its lot of “A Level” Arts students working toward their London GCE and equivalent examinations. These students were served by the Departments of Economics, English, geography, History and Mathematics.
On 25th June 1961, the then Royal Technical College was transferred, via an Act of the East African Common Services Organization (EACSO) into the second University College in East Africa – the first being the University College of Makerere. It was renamed Royal College, Nairobi, at the same time being formally affiliated to the University of London. The Faculty of Arts was thus a key feature of the Royal College from the very beginning. One could say that, even in those early days, the market, such as it was, spoke with its “demand” – and its message was that there was indeed a need for Arts-based skills even in that vice-grip of the colonial economy in which the :native” was supposed to be confined, in a caste-like fashion, to artisanal (blue collar) skills.
When, on 20th May, 1964, the Royal College, Nairobi, became the University College, Nairobi, and a constituent college of the University of East Africa, the students and staff of the Faculty of Arts became an integral part of that enlarged, regional institution – and of the processes which the change entailed.
The period from May 1964 to June 1970 witnessed considerable transformation in the Faculty. The academic year 1965/66 saw the establishment of the Department of Education and the Centre for Economics. The latter soon became the Institute for Development Studies. The Department of Political Science was established in 1966/67, and was later renamed the department of Government. In 1968/69, what had started as a sub-department within the Department of Economics was elevated to the Department of Sociology. In 1969/70, the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies was established.
Only during 1967-70 was the Department of Mathematics finally transferred from the Faculty of Arts to the Faculty of Science. During the same period, the sub-department of Linguistics and African Languages moved out of the Department of English to become itself a department; while the Department of English (still hosting the sub-department of French) assumed a new name: the Department of Literature. The Department of Education was transformed into a Faculty in 1970/71, which relocated to Kenyatta University College. In 1980/81 the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies was split into two departments (Department of Philosophy and Department of Religious Studies).
For some twenty years now, the Faculty of Arts has had exactly the same configuration of nine departments and one sub-department as it had in 1980/81. The era of further departmental expansion, which some had predicted, never materialized in the Eighties, or even Nineties. When the Department of Psychology was eventually established, it was located, not in the Faculty of arts, but rather in the Faculty of Education at the Kikuyu Campus of the University of Nairobi. Neither the Department of Theatre Arts nor that of Archaeology has seen the light of day. And when the Diplomacy Programme of the Department of Government became an independent entity, it was taken out of the Faculty of Arts to become the Institute of Diplomacy and International Studies.
Our student population has witnessed great expansion since the early days. In 1961/62, the Faculty had only 14 students. By 1981/82, this population had grown more than a hundred-fold to 1,635, which affirmed the Faculty’s ranking as the largest in the country. That number had, as of September 1999, more than doubled again to some 2,900 regular B.A students, some 230 Module II B.A. students and 180 postgraduate students (both regular and Module II) – in addition to whom there are currently 140 students pursuing Certificate, Bridging and Ordinary Diploma courses. Our Faculty thus continues to be the largest today. With a teaching staff of some 170 academics, it is likewise one of the largest in that category.
The greater part of the Eighties and Nineties now turn out to have been essentially a period of “creative drought” -- little else of a structural nature happened, many (the public was in fact made to believe all) valued academics were forced or induced by one circumstance or another to leave the Faculty and the university (often to newer local universities), and the burden of the double intakes associated with 8.4.4 wore down even the hardiest. All of this caused growing despondency and prompted further flight by both lecturers and prospective students. Confronted, furthermore, with frequent closures of local universities, parents had begun to look elsewhere in earnest for their children’s university education. The annual cost to the country of that flight to foreign universities is currently estimated to be some Kshs. 15 billion in foreign exchange (or US$ 200,000,000). Even half of that would be more than our depressed coffee industry now generates.
There was growing agitation during that period for a university curriculum relevant to the future of the country. A litany of public pronouncements declared Arts subjects an irrelevance, and, given frequent strike actions by Arts students, perhaps even dangerous. But as we lived through all that, and perhaps because of it, new thinking began imperceptibly to germinate. This germination has been, precisely, the story of the last ten years; which, in semiotic terms, can be labeled the era of 8.4.4, UASU, and Module II.
The 8.4.4 system of education reached the tertiary level in 1990/91. Having the largest intake capacity, this Faculty carried more than its fair share of the 8.4.4. burden, in terms of student-teacher ratios, lecture-room and library facilities, and other essential requirements. And when cost-sharing eventually caught up with university students, the Faculty of Arts served largely as a source for developing “more essential” faculties. In a way, it became the university’s Third World. And when, in the early Nineties, the university’s academic staff, under UASU, began forcefully to agitate for a staff union, the Faculty of Arts found itself in the very eye of the storm. More academics left the university. More parents took their children elsewhere or abroad.
Module II, an income generating strategy based on the provision of the very services which it is the university’s mission to provide, began somewhat inconspicuously at this university in 1998. There are varying accounts as to its true genesis. Some trace its inspiration back to the establishment of the mortuary facility at the university’s Chiromo Campus, some to the Makerere experiment in income generation, others simply to the final realization that neither the government nor the donor community had the means or the inclination to restore the University of Nairobi to its “old glory”, much less to reengineer it into a “top flight” global institution of the 21st century. Be that as it may, this realization that we were, in the end, on our own has proven a most energizing and empowering frame of mind.
If 8.4.4 was imposed on the university’s body politic from the outside, Module II was created internally. That essential difference explains why, compared to the former, the latter has grown so dynamically in so short a time – despite considerable initial skepticism, even from within.
Following in the footsteps of the Faculties of Commerce and Law, the Faculty of Arts admitted its first intake of Module II students in January 1999, when 87 students registered for various B.A. courses. Considerable curriculum development, which had begun in earnest in October 1998, continued even after that first intake.
Thus, when the second intake arrived in May 1999, it had a selection of over 17 market-responsive M.A. degrees and postgraduate Diplomas, 14 B.A. degrees, 2 Bridging Courses, 5 Ordinary Diplomas, and 7 Certificate courses to choose from depending on need. During the September 1999 intake, a new degree programme (B.A. in Public Administration) was offered to students by the Department of Political Science and Public Administration. There have been even more programmes in the new millennium, details of which are provided throughout this prospectus. Among these will be Mathematics, which in a way conjoins Module II with this Faculty’s roots, and a number of courses in the Department of Geography. Several departments are also revamping their M.A. programmes in readiness for the future.
The Faculty’s Curriculum Committee has its hands full with programme documents from the departments. The Faculty has become a virtual 24x7 “idea factory”, with Just-In-Time ambitions. Though we have started with astoundingly meagre resources, we are working hard to make our students an integral part of all this. Tell-tale signs of positive change have begun to appear, as one will witness any Saturday at the Main Campus: around the Great Court, near the Fountain of Knowledge, inside the Main Library – and in the corridors of Gandhi Wing, where six of the Faculty’s ten departments as well as the Dean’s Office are located.
What is absolutely pleasing in all of this is that more and more Kenyans are voting with their feet and cheque books in support of Module II. For us in the Faculty of Arts, that support means even more: it is proving that the irrelevance which Arts supposedly embodied was always, in reality, a mirage. We will do all we can to retain it. As we continue to subscribe to the call “Let the programmes be market-driven”, we are encouraged by the realization that many of our programmes are already proving to be so driven.
As we stand, one must of course ask: is that support ill-advised? We believe not, for the disciplines that make up the Faculty of Arts do permit all sorts of permutations and combinations the connecting threads of which are the abilities and frames of mind absolutely necessary for navigating, and surviving, in a 21st century which promises to be, above all, one of intense and in so many ways instant global and local communication and exchange and networking, of cultural hybridity, of unprecedented mass travel and nomadic existence – in which the most essential survival kit must surely include the ability to articulate one’s thought and to understand (and stand!) otherness.
Signed
PROF. MAURI YAMBO
DEAN, FACULTY OF ARTS.
NOTE: Data on the Faculty’s early history to 1981/82 was gleaned from the Faculty’s earlier prospectus, and from other University of Nairobi records.
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