When the university became a boarding school! Who Is actually going to campus?

University students during graduation. [File, Standard]

There was a time when being admitted to university was not merely an academic achievement; it was a declaration of adulthood. The young man or woman packed a suitcase, received a final sermon from the village elders, and disappeared into the mysterious world beyond the horizon. Parents knew neither the university timetable nor the lecturer’s telephone number. Some did not even know exactly where the lecture hall was. Yet somehow, the student arrived, registered, found accommodation, attended lectures, and survived.

Village wisdom, where truth walks barefoot, remembers those days with both nostalgia and bewilderment.

There were no smartphones, GPS locators, WhatsApp groups or Google Maps. If you missed the bus, you asked a stranger. If you got lost, you asked another stranger. If you failed an examination, you walked home with the shame. Nobody called the Dean to ask whether their son had attended class.

Today, however, the university gate has become a fascinating border crossing between childhood and adulthood, except that the adults are increasingly the parents.

The modern university entrant arrives accompanied by a convoy.

Mother carries documents. Father carries money. Auntie carries snacks. Uncle carries advice. Somebody carries bedding. Another relative carries the family WhatsApp group in the phone. The student carries what exactly? Sometimes only a backpack and an expression suggesting that university has been imposed upon them by hostile forces.

At registration, parents queue.

At accommodation, parents negotiate.

At the hostel, parents inspect mattresses.

Some even spread the bed.

Others demonstrate how to lock the door, where to keep the bucket, where to place shoes and how to switch off the lights.

Village wisdom watches quietly.

The child has come to university, but the village appears to have enrolled too.

The most astonishing part is the academic orientation. A parent may ask for the lecturer's telephone number so that attendance can be monitored.

“Professor, kindly tell me if my daughter attended class today.”

The professor, who has spent years studying the behaviour of human beings, suddenly becomes a school prefect.

“Madam, she is twenty years old.”

“Professor, I know. But please help me monitor her.”

One wonders what the professor is expected to do next.

Perhaps send a daily report:

8:00 a.m.—Present.

10:00 a.m.—Present.

12:00 p.m.—Seen leaving with a gentleman whose academic credentials remain unknown.

The transformation begins much earlier.

From kindergarten, parents increasingly become assistant teachers. They supervise homework, complete projects, purchase materials, negotiate with teachers and sometimes appear to know the syllabus better than the child.

Primary school follows.

Secondary school follows.

By university, the disease has become fully mature.

The student is no longer studying.

The parent is studying on behalf of the student.

And then we wonder why motivation has disappeared.

Our generation knew hunger as an academic counsellor. There was not enough food to permit philosophical debates about whether breakfast was necessary. If ugali appeared, you ate. If porridge appeared, you drank. Missing a meal voluntarily was considered an economic crime.

Today, some students must be called repeatedly to wake up.

“Wake up, son.”

“Mum, five minutes.”

“Class?”

“Online.”

“Is it?”

“Maybe.”

Village wisdom shakes its head.

Even the alarm clock has been outsourced to parents.

And the hostel presents another mystery. In our day, wetting the bed was not treated as a personality preference. It was a serious offence, accompanied by investigation, embarrassment and sometimes a public declaration that the bedding had seen things it should never have seen.

Today, one occasionally sees bedding quietly leaving hostels at suspicious hours.

Village wisdom refuses to investigate too deeply.

It merely raises one eyebrow and asks:

“Is that ordinary water, or has university discovered another curriculum?”

But perhaps the most worrying spectacle is the emotional escort.

Parents now accompany students deep into campus life, sometimes invoking every imaginable form of protection. Some pray passionately. Others consult elders. A few, in the desperate language of village anxiety, even invoke ancestral protection against the mysterious forces said to inhabit universities.

After all, they have spent twenty years investing in this child.

They fear the university might spend twenty days undoing the investment.

And there is reason for the fear.

Within days, the university offers a second orientation one conducted outside the official programme. The child discovers clubs, parties, relationships, nightlife and substances they previously knew only from whispered stories. Some discover responsible friendships and genuine intellectual freedom. Others discover that campus has no shortage of people willing to teach them everything except how to pass an examination.

The timetable becomes complicatedBy the time the student discovers that Senate Hall is not Seminar Room and Lecture Theatre is not Lecture Hall, an entire semester may have passed.

Some wander into the wrong classroom and receive forty minutes of advanced engineering when they were expecting educational psychology.

They sit quietly.

They take notes.

They leave with knowledge nobody requested.

Meanwhile, a new phenomenon has appeared: visiting day.

Visiting day!

At university!

Village elders are particularly puzzled when the loudest request comes from the very young man they expected to inherit the village leadership.

“Dad, when are you coming to visit me?”

The father stares at the phone.

“Visit you? At university?”

“Yes, Dad. Bring shopping.”

Village wisdom nearly falls from its stool.

The university has apparently become a boarding school with a degree attached.

Then comes graduation.

Parents travel hundreds of kilometres carrying flowers, cameras, clothes and enormous expectations.

Only to arrive and discover the graduate has already disappeared.

Sometimes the fees were consumed by betting.

Sometimes the money vanished through poor decisions.

Sometimes the student became an expert in impressing fashionable friends whose own financial philosophy deserves a doctoral thesis.

The parents remain seated, staring at an empty graduation chair.

The irony is devastating.

They escorted the child into university.

Who will escort the child into adulthood?

That is the question village wisdom keeps asking.

Because softness does not become strength merely because the child grows taller.

A generation protected from every consequence may eventually become frightened of responsibility itself.

Parents cannot forever wake their children, supervise their attendance, solve their academic problems, finance their mistakes and negotiate their futures.

One day the parents will grow old.

The hands that once packed the suitcase will tremble.

The voices that once shouted, “Wake up!” will become quieter.

Who will then wake the child?

Who will teach responsibility?

Who will monitor the future?

And who will take care of the parents when the university graduate discovers that adulthood does not come with a parent WhatsApp group?

Village wisdom is not calling for the return of hardship.

It is calling for the return of responsibility.

Universities must remain places where young people learn not only theories, but courage, independence, judgment and consequences.

Parents must love their children without becoming their permanent GPS.

And students must understand that university admission is not admission to extended childhood.

The old generation walked to university carrying little more than a suitcase, courage and uncertainty.

They found their classrooms.

They found their way.

They found themselves.

Perhaps the greatest graduation ceremony, after all, is not the one where a student receives a degree.

It is the day a parent can finally say:

“My child can find the way home without me.”

And village wisdom, where truth walks barefoot, fears that this may be the degree our universities are forgetting to teach.