To beat the best, we must separate research and teaching universities

Universities have recently received bad press. The Commission for University Education (CUE), an outfit that had been dormant for years, arose from slumber and released a report that 'suddenly' found out that a number of university courses were either unapproved or unaccredited.

In their haste, a number of media houses published what they thought were a scoop - that several programmes in our universities were 'fake'. Most of what was published in the press comprised incomplete facts. Many journalists did not bother to ask the differences between approval and accreditation. Also, many more failed to notice that CUE came into being only four years ago and that universities have been offering degrees for decades.