Education
Since the 1950s, Kisangani has been a Congolese center of higher education and research with several universities that are in the city proper or in the immediate environs. Kisangani has the third largest campus of the National University of Congo. Much of the scientific research in the city is done in medicine and the life sciences. The Medicine Faculty at the Université de Kisangani was made infamous by Polio Vaccine conspiracy theorists.
In 2007, there were 381 academic and research staff, most of them (215) active in the humanities and social sciences – but the recent history of the institution overshadows its current realities.
Currently, the university’s income is derived from student fees (49 percent) and government subsidies (51 percent), but university management reports that the current income level is insufficient for effective operation. In addition, there is a serious need for infrastructure rehabilitation and additions, as well as for the acquisition of research literature. Although the university does not have a strategic plan to develop additional income sources, it is taking steps to increase academic fees to improve the daily operation of the institution.
The main challenges facing the university include serious weaknesses in the university’s information and communication technology (ICT) capabilities; and then the lack of qualified staff, of financial means, of premises and equipment, and of literature and laboratories. Clearly, the university’s physical infrastructure has not been rebuilt since the troubles. This is one reason why only 20% of the institutional focus of the Université de Kisangani is reckoned for research.
Kisangani is the seat of the Université de Kisangani (1963) and other institutions of Higher Technical Education (such as Technical Institute Maikazo and the Kisangani Hellenic Center). The Kisangani Public Library, which has the largest collection of any public library system in the Kisangani, serves Makiso, Tshopo, Mangobo, Kabondo, Kisangani, Lubunga, Lubuya and Bera. The city's public school system is managed by the Kisangani Department of Education. The primary and secondary schools are public and privately run by secular and religious groups in the city.
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Famous quotes containing the word education:
“I doubt whether classical education ever has been or can be successfully carried out without corporal punishment.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)
“In the years of the Roman Republic, before the Christian era, Roman education was meant to produce those character traits that would make the ideal family man. Children were taught primarily to be good to their families. To revere gods, one’s parents, and the laws of the state were the primary lessons for Roman boys. Cicero described the goal of their child rearing as “self- control, combined with dutiful affection to parents, and kindliness to kindred.””
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“I envy neither the heart nor the head of any legislator who has been born to an inheritance of privileges, who has behind him ages of education, dominion, civilization, and Christianity, if he stands opposed to the passage of a national education bill, whose purpose is to secure education to the children of those who were born under the shadow of institutions which made it a crime to read.”
—Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825–1911)