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:
“A two-year-old can be taught to curb his aggressions completely if the parents employ strong enough methods, but the achievement of such control at an early age may be bought at a price which few parents today would be willing to pay. The slow education for control demands much more parental time and patience at the beginning, but the child who learns control in this way will be the child who acquires healthy self-discipline later.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)
“Because of these convictions, I made a personal decision in the 1964 Presidential campaign to make education a fundamental issue and to put it high on the nation’s agenda. I proposed to act on my belief that regardless of a family’s financial condition, education should be available to every child in the United States—as much education as he could absorb.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“Law without education is a dead letter. With education the needed law follows without effort and, of course, with power to execute itself; indeed, it seems to execute itself.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)