REMEMBERING AND COMPARING THE HISTORY AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN NEW YORK CITY
…AND ITS
PLACE IN THE LIST OF TOP UNIVERSITIES IN THE WORLD…AND MARA UNIVERSITY
OF TECHNOLOGY IN SHAHALAM.
By
Mansor bin Puteh
It was
one of the nine universities that were established before America gained its independence from Britain .
Surprisingly
in many ways, halfway around the world, Mara Institute of Technology (MIT) or
ITM) or Mara University of Technology (UiTM) as it is known today, have
similarities with Columbia that not many are aware of, in that they were meant
to serve their respective countries to create expertise in areas that were
unknown to the two respective countries in that had yet to become independent
from the same colonial powers, Britain.
Surely,
many things can be learnt from Columbia ,
for UiTM to pursue a course that could lead it to become a more internationally
prominent and recognizable university.
The
differing agendas and approaches the two universities bring dividends to the
respective communities each serves.
There
are certain issues that need to be tackled and taken advantage of, to ensure
UiTM’s future performance in the academic and professional sphere is further
enhanced.
It has
its first president, Dr. Samuel Johnson, who was also its only instructor!
Whereas
UiTM started as RIDA Training Center or ‘Dewan Latihan RIDA’ started in 1956 (Two
hundred and two years after Columbia was established) with only fifty students
and a handful of instructors until 1965 when it was renamed, Mara College to
1967 when it was again renamed to Mara Institute of Technology till 1999 when
it was given the status of a university and named Mara University of Technology
that we know of today.
UiTM now
has around 170,000 students at its thirteen states and twenty-one autonomous
satellite campuses throughout the country, with 17,000 academic and
non-academic staff, whereas Columbia
has around 30,000 students and four thousand instructors.
In the
1960s, Columbia students seized the
administration building in protest against the involvement of their country in
the protracted Vietnam War that had killed scores of thousands of American
forces that aroused and created the Anti-War movement amongst students of other
universities throughout the country that in the end forced their government to
withdraw their forces in Vietnam .
And in
I was in
my first semester at ITM when this happened.
Thirty
years later, in 1784, it got a new name of Columbia
College ; and in 1896 it became known
as Columbia University ,
named after the alternative name for the country, after America !
And what
a coincidence! Former American President Barack Hussein Obama too was there
when I was in my last semester, as an undergraduate student. A photo of him is
proudly hung in the Columbia
bookstore as it to dispel any notion by some of his distracters that he had
never been to the university and it was a lie he had created!
There is
no university in Malaysia
that had started this small and insignificant with no fanfare whatsoever, much
less to later become one of the most prestigious universities in America and the
world.
Even
UiTM formerly known as Mara Institute of Technology - MIT or ITM – as it was
fondly described as then, and emblazoned proudly on many early designs of the
university tee-shirts, where I would later enroll to study in the School of
Mass Communications majoring in Advertising, was designed for some purpose and
schemes for future development and lofty goals which was to provide education,
mostly free to Melayu and Bumiputera students who could not make it to the
universities the country had then, so they may enter the private sector.
King’s
College or Columbia University did not have such goals; only to give the best
education to students without expecting them to do no more than what they
wanted to achieve as their personal goals and not become part of the national
one in America, which no-one knew what it was as the American government then
had not been around yet, until a dozen years after it was first established.
It did
not aspire to any higher aspirations, but success came in stages and in almost
incomprehensible ways, without any plan to trust itself higher than the only
ideals that its founders had then when it was first established which was to
give the students the best education they deserved and environment that would
allow them to pursue their individual aspirations and dreams.
This,
however, is not a unique role and goal that Columbia had; all the other
universities that were established in America earlier, too, had similar
aspirations and goals at developing the talents of its people who were facing
uncertainties as the country embarks on their independence campaign from
Britain.
Columbia stands unique in that of the eight Ivy League universities, it is located in the largest city in America, and today its campus can be considered to be one of the best, if not the most beautiful university campus not only in the country, but also in the world.
I am not
saying this because I was a student of the university; I knew about it long
before that happened, as described by some people who had visited the
university and the many others so they could make comparison, which I found out
later to be not too far-fetched.
But it
grew up in size and moved to a permanent campus after the Second World War with
money donated by some characters who were involved in some shady businesses
then. But this is hardly ever mentioned in its glorious history and
development.
The Columbia campus however, because of its location in Manhattan , is small but
it has still remained very much as it was when it was first developed.
But it
did not stop the university from adding new buildings from some old ones, which
I couldn’t help not to notice each time I return to the campus, when I found
myself back in the city for whatever reason or no reason at all.
It was
one of the first universities to be established in America and before the independence
of the country and soon became one of the eight to be described as Ivy League
universities, a name that conjures a lot of fantastical allegories and
illusions.
As
someone who had the opportunity and good fortune to be admitted into one of
their graduate programs, I can vouch and make comparisons on how this
particular universities could become what it is today, that most of the
universities in Malaysia could never achieve, despite it (Columbia) not having
done on purpose or deliberately to trust itself to the level that it is at
today.
However,
as of 2011, Columbia
had 125 Pulitzer winners and 39 Oscar winners. This is something that UiTM or
any university in Malaysia
extremely difficult to beat.
But UiTM
still has some accolades in the form of personalities and successful graduates
or alumni who have benefited the society in their own special way with no-one
who had managed to gain any measure of international success or recognition.
And this is what matters the most with the university.
Comments