The world is flat, and all the best universities are at the top edge
“The recognition of institutions of higher learning in the global South as equally desirable as those in the North would be a positive first step in redressing imbalances”
The world is flat, and all the best universities are at the top edge. Between virtually every university prospectus promising to prepare students for a “globalised, interconnected” world, and any recent international league tables, this – intentionally or not – is the message being produced in many quarters of higher education.
As a Canadian who went to Tanzania for a Masters degree, I can happily report that neither of these is the case. The world we live in today is not inevitably converging into a single reality whose ways can be learned at any one institution, and some of the very best educational experiences are to be had at the universities of the global South.
As a Canadian who went to Tanzania for a Masters degree, I can happily report that neither of these is the case. The world we live in today is not inevitably converging into a single reality whose ways can be learned at any one institution, and some of the very best educational experiences are to be had at the universities of the global South.
Of the 7000 languages, give or take, spoken at the beginning of this century, nearly half are in danger of disappearance by its end. As a linguist, this clearly represents a crisis in the field: linguists’ ability to understand human language in all its complexity and diversity (and thus human cognition, human history, and human culture) is contingent on understanding the full range of languages and the differences and similarities between them.
This crisis is, however, more than simply academic: UNESCO, in declaring 2019 its International Year of Indigenous Languages recognises that, when a language becomes extinct, the culture, knowledge system, and values of the language community are also jeopardised.
Simply put, if we as a human species are to proceed into the next millennium, rife with its challenges both foreseen and unforeseen, would it not be better to do so with more than one way of making sense of the world, solving problems, and imagining a future?
Much language endangerment today is a result of the legacy of colonialism and the pressures of globalisation: speakers of indigenous languages feel as though their languages are inferior, speakers of small languages must give up their languages in favour of larger ones in which they can study or conduct trade, language communities are dispossessed of their land by large companies or violent conflict.
“Speakers of indigenous languages feel as though their languages are inferior”
All of these dynamics are at play in East Africa and, as a result, this part of the world is at risk of losing a large number of its languages in a short period of time. This area, therefore, needs the urgent attention of qualified linguists working in concert with local communities to study these languages before they disappear, create recordings of these languages for future generations of linguists, as well as develop cultural archives for descendants of people who spoke these languages.
As mentioned above, however, the world is not flat: the reality of doing linguistic research in East Africa is quite different from doing so in Canada. Because of this, not all the best universities are to be found in the global North.
Between 2011 and 2013, a Queen Elizabeth Commonwealth Scholarship allowed me to study at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. At graduation, I came away with a new African language perspective on the theoretical material I had originally learned through the lens of European languages; a growing fluency in the national lingua franca – Swahili; and a nascent understanding of how people live and interact on a daily basis – in short, how to get work done in a country very different from my own.
“The world is not flat: the reality of doing linguistic research in East Africa is quite different from doing so in Canada”
As specific as my personal trajectory is, I would hope that the generalisations are easy to draw from it. It is not simply linguists, Africanists, or students of the humanities who stand to benefit from undertaking international studies in the global South.
Indeed, I would hope that one day, full-degree programmes like mine are as commonplace as Tanzanian students taking up degree programmes in London, Toronto, or elsewhere in the North. The recognition of institutions of higher learning in the global South as equally desirable as those in the North would be a positive first step in redressing imbalances that exist between the two. The benefit to individuals navigating a decidedly un-flat world, full of hills and valleys, is inestimable.
About the author: Andrew Harvey is a linguist whose interests include the languages of the Tanzanian Rift, their documentation and description, their formal morphosyntax, and the histories and cultures of their speaker communities, especially as evinced through linguistic arts and language contact.
Great article! Different people have different goals, and that means different educational approaches are called for. The question shouldn’t be “Which is the best university?” but rather “Which is the best university for me?”