I visited the Public University today. I don’t mean to be offensive when I say this but it was a horrifying experience. I cannot believe young adults are expected to seriously learn in that kind of environment. The most shocking thing is that students have somehow kept themselves motivated and try to learn under absolutely appalling conditions. I mean these buildings haven’t been renovated or even taken care of for at least 30 years. They are dirty and falling apart. There are about 50,000 students at the university and it is smaller than where I went to school that had a population of about 3,000 undergrad students. All of the classes have about 1,000 students enrolled when the classrooms can only fit about half of them. Students are forced to try and listen from the hallway or even outside and peer in through the window.
From talking with the students it seems the teachers and the government has zero commitment to education. Many times teachers will go on strike right before students are supposed to take their final exams so they can move onto the next year. So what happens? They can’t take the exam and just sit around waiting to take it for months. They can’t move into the next year without it. This happens a lot. Many of the students are in year 2007 because of the strike – 2 years behind. Also a teacher will often just get another job, leave and are never replaced.
The living conditions are also terrifying. I walked around the public student residences and they look like prisons. I don’t even know how to begin to describe. I mean aside from being just completely depressing looking, these buildings are dirty, smell terrible, are loud, and have no places for studying. They are cement blocks with students crammed into tiny rooms not even big enough for one person. My roommate’s closet is the size of these rooms, if not slightly bigger. Many times the electricity will be off for days in these residences. Forget about being able to study here. No way can you fit desks in these rooms, and they don’t have a common study area like most dorms in the US – not even close. It’s a bizarre scene. There are families living there too with little children running around. Some students just never move out because it is cheap to live there and no one makes them leave.
I sort of barged in to one room where I met a girl by the name of Christie. She was kind enough to tolerate me and speak with me for awhile. She told me how it was hard to study because a lot of times you don’t even have books to work with. Teachers aren’t available for outside help or questions. I shuddered at the thought of this – I told Christie I would absolutely have failed some of my Economics classes if I wasn’t able to stalk my teachers during their office hours. Christie also told me that in one class her professor became sick so they only had 2 classes for the whole semester and had to teach themselves the entire course. Apparently substitute teachers do not exist in Cote d’Ivoire. There is clearly not an environment conducive to learning here.
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