The End of Universities

Students are back in colleges and universities but for how long? Some of them are called ‘red brick’ universities, a badge of honour that is rusty already because of the internet. It’s a university with no fees and doesn’t need royal and rich alumni to fund it.

There is a possibility these educational institutions will become warehouses in the future, worse still, just abandoned buildings like car factories growing weeds because jobs relocated off-shore.

It can happen. Just look at the things in your basement. They are there because they are useless now. You tried a garage sale on the lawn, but there were no takers, even first-year college students who like bargains did not buy them. Why should they, when they get everything from the dollar store?

Universities are exclusive. It’s a place where public knowledge is made exclusive. Yes, public knowledge, the sun for example. It has different names, depending on where you are in the world and traditional communities knew its habits, and tailored their lives around it.

The sun is exclusive when it is on a page, in a book written by an English expert. It has English and French names which the majority of people do not understand. The expert describes the sun as an isolated object with certain characteristics, too complex for people who have lived with it for millions of years.

The expert is ‘educated.’ He has exclusive knowledge that makes him revered. The internet reverses that. Knowledge is back where it was, in the public domain. Therefore, colleges and universities are dinosaurs, except for surgery.

By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.