There is no yardstick to rate the usefulness of degrees

In the academic year 1980–81, I was the only student in the Historical and Comparative Linguistics class at the University of Nairobi. I was in Second Year and my teacher was Dr Martin Mould. He had specifically come to Kenya from the University of California Los Angeles to teach this course as well as Latin, which I took in third year – again as the only student.

My country considered these courses critical enough to justify paying a UCLA professor to teach one student. If either of us should be absent, the class would collapse. We ensured that the attendance was one hundred percent throughout. Needless to say, there was also 100 per cent pass in all examinations.