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Unilag and University Missions: Past, Future and the Globe
(UNILAG Press, 2011-01-13) Alao, N.O.
This lecture is designed to serve three purposes. The first is to advocate a more balance reflection on the achievement of this great institution by urging a new focus upon its mission and a placement in appropriate international institutional cohorts. The second is to argue that the current administration's concern with the institution's global ranking is well-placed and to suggest useful internal assessment schemes that may be helpful. Those who think that our first generation universities are mere local champions need to be reminded that today's global champions were themselves local champions for a long time and that being a local champion in a competitive situation involving more than one hundred higher institutions is no mean achievement. The third is hopefully to stimulate university-wide 'conversations' about subtler aspects of our mission by raising questions but giving only tantalizingly incomplete answers and by describing possible future paths. I am not asking for debates. I am rather asking for conversations. Rhetoricians and polemicists can win debates even while they fail to win the truth.