Varsities Talk: How to choose the university to attend

“The true university these days is a collection of Books.” Thomas Carlyle, 1795-1881. (VANGUARD BOOK OF QUOTATIONS, VBQ, p258).
And on the same page of VBQ, C.P. Snow added: “I don’t believe that a man ought to be the Head of a university if he gets detested by all the students and most of the staff.”

PERHAPS those two different perspectives about the “ideal” university, added to others to be introduced later, should help prospective university students and their parents/guardians to choose the universities the kids should be aiming to attend this year.

Thomas Carlyle was only half  right for assuming that universities became a “collection of books” during the 18th and 19th centuries. Universities, since the first ever university in the world, Karaouien University, situated at Fez, Morocco, had always been, primarily, a “collection of books.” As a minimum, they cannot be anything else. The biggest collection of books in any university is what we all call the Library. But, it is not the only one.

Most top scholars in every discipline, have their own collection of books, which can sometimes include more up-to-date materials than the university library itself. On my one, and sadly only visit to Emeritus Professor Ade-Ajayi’s house at Ibadan, as the Editor (honest I was once an Editor) of the IGBOBIAN Magazine, to interview the great historian, I was confronted with more books in one house than I have seen anywhere else. I did a mental count, while waiting for Professor Ajayi to attend to us. There must be at least 10,000 books in that house alone. Some are not available in any university library in Nigeria.

Taking the university library as a starting point, any prospective student who actually intends to acquire deep knowledge in any discipline, irrespective of whether at a public or private university in Nigeria, should take the trouble to visit the university’s library first – because that is where the major store of knowledge is situated. Lecturers and Professors dispense only a fraction of what is available on every subject and even the best of them is severely limited in scope. Most of the rest of the information is in the library.

As far as libraries are concerned, one university towers above all the others, public and private, such that there is no comparison. The gap in the “collection of books” between the leader in that aspect of university education, and which ever is in second place is so wide, American University in Nigeria, AUN, Yola stands in a class by itself.

The e-library, which is regarded as one of the top 20 in the world provides the students and faculty access to all the major libraries of the world and the service is available to students 24 hours a day; anywhere they might be. Excellence cannot be better defined than that. I was also privileged to visit Elizade University, among private universities and its own e-library is also one of the top libraries in Nigeria today; where students can sit in the comfort of their rooms, at any time and read any book available in the library. My visit to Redeemers University, in July this year, was cut short before reaching the library; so was my stop over at Bells University, Ota, Madonna University, Okija and Obong University, Akwa Ibom State. But, I hope to visit them again; and as many university libraries as possible.

Public universities present a different set of problems. I have been privileged to use the services of four – University of Ibadan, University of Lagos, Ado Bayero University, Kano and Usman Dan Fodio, Sokoto at various times. The gap in the quality of library service, between the first generation universities and the second, exhibited by these four universities, is probably a reflection of the differences nationwide. One shudders to enter the libraries of the universities established by the Jonathan administration since 2011.

If libraries are very important for all universities, they are totally indispensable for students attending universities where there might be shortage of academic staff. Let me illustrate the point. I met a Professor of Medicine who graduated from a top Nigerian university in June this year. He now heads a major diagnostic unit. He confessed to me that to pass the examination in surgery, he and his classmates had to rely on diagrams in books, which they memorized for the test. None of them ever saw any of the equipment they were describing in use until he went abroad for his post-graduate studies

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