The Important Role of The University in Society

How education can push forward a nation

I have a true story based on the theory of broken windows. It is about how education can make a difference in a city whose people lived a while without educational establishments.

It was a terrible period, as my father told me, when Arab countries had got recently liberated from Western colonialism. The region barely breathed until it found itself in wars with the Zionist entity in 1948 and 1967, where the new Arab forces suffered two defeats in their clash with the British-backed Israeli army. Arab society had shattered from within, and morale had been extremely low. This atmosphere later reflected in awareness in the whole society, corruption became rampant, and chaos spread in many sectors and corners of the Arab countries. The rates of crimes increased in the form of thefts and attacks until the whole scene in Syria seemed as if the law was not applied.

Poor moral situation caused more crimes in the cities of the country where the infection was spreading from one neighborhood to another. Ultimately, the biggest disaster happened when the society fell into disarray, and the authorities had no solutions. Also, Coups in the army were occurring whenever a military commander had a possible opportunity.

A government back then decided in 1965 to seriously start creating a new era. Of course, it wasn’t that easy. It took decades to build a new country.

At the time, the local council of Homs city (my city) was considering the idea of ​​coordinating with the Ministry of Higher Education to build a university in the city, where there were only some educational institutes affiliated to the ministries of commerce and industry. The consultations led to the decision of the ministry to create some of its affiliates to be the nucleus of the university.

Four institutes had already been established in the city, accommodating a group of new students with simple potentials. The story began with the city officials noticing that there had been a dramatic change over time in the area around the institutes, which later led to a reduction in crime rates and an improved employment opportunities as a result of the concentration of housing in a new area of ​​the city next to the new institutes. Also, the need for a lot of tools to meet the requirements of the institutes increased and reflected positively on the economic aspect of the region.

All this prompted officials to reopen the university file again, how not? They saw a glimmer of hope.

The intractable birth of the university in 1979 was in a large open area in a poor suburb of the city. There was a real renaissance occurring in the city at various levels and in diverse respects. At the urban level, construction companies started to build modern buildings in the university’s surrounding, and put them for rent to students from distant areas, which subsequently led to a demographic change in the population structure of the region. In the past, it was a poor area full of negatives and housing an uneducated population. But after the area was filled with university students, it became as if each student had become a beacon on its own, giving light to the residents of the neighborhood, especially the children who were watching the students go to their university in the morning, growing in their small chest future dreams to become like them one day. The university student was a role model in morals and education, and mothers referred to him/her as telling her children: “Grow to be like this student, be a good person and do not be like the reckless sons of neighbors.”.

Residents of the area gradually started to renovate to accommodate the new era, where all the buildings adjacent to the university have been rebuilt. On the other hand, the region witnessed a remarkable economic boom, which was the opening of many business events to meet the growing needs in the region, and the presence of students there attracted some venture capitalists to establish companies of various specializations, and employ a lot of new graduates to benefit from their expertise. Previously, the city did not have such expertise, which was an obstacle to the opening of any science-based company.

On the cultural level, over the years, the university administrations had contracted with many foreign cultural entities with leading experiences in the culture sector, and this resulted in the establishment of many cultural centers on campus and the city. The movement of scientific translation among students has increased as a result of the opening of these centers to identify the scientific and cultural output in other countries, and to inform the local community. This, in turn, created a scientific environment that later led to the flourishing of journalism, authorship, and the opening of presses and publishing companies. This movement also contributed significantly to the return of society to read books.

Of course, the renaissance was not only near the university area, but also in many areas of the city. Even on the level of employment, where the presence of a high-level educational entity in the city played a prominent role in the establishment of the saying “priority for the best” who were the most educated and creative.

This was in addition to the industrial renaissance that resulted in the construction of some huge factories in the 90s. The achievements of this renaissance raised the standard of living of the city’s residents by providing tens of thousands of new jobs.

The faculties of medicine and pharmacy had a great deal on my city, where thousands of doctors and pharmacists graduated from them. The spread of hospitals and medical centers in every area of ​​the city was inevitable. They contributed to the establishment of several pharmaceutical laboratories that have secured pharmaceutical needs on the local level as well as their subsequent expansion to the external market.

Life, in a nutshell, was all in the orbit of the university, and the seed of science grew a paradise on earth.

The idea was to break the ideals of ignorance in society by creating a scientific edifice. Since ignorance was the head of every calamity, its elimination was to push a piece in a series of dominoes so that events turn for the better.

The collective mind works to consolidate a principle when it carries common benefits for the people of the community. In the example I put forward, since the presence of the university resulted in many changes that have benefited the whole society, the society will spontaneously defend the entity that was the cause of its renaissance and improvement. This society will encourage science while it was once a hotbed of ignorance. The collective mind will also preserve renaissance gains from loss by supporting every movement similar to what happened.

Note: I wrote (but not published) this article in 2010. Everything has changed since that time when the revolution of the Syrian people against the authoritarian regime started. I want to make it clear that our university was not one of that regime’s achievements. It was the achievement of the people of my city, the students who work hard to realize this dream, and the investors who funded the projects that were created in parallel with the development of the university. The regime named the university “Al-Baath University” due to the name of its party “Al-Baath Party”, but we, the people of Homs, prefer to call it “Homs University” as it always should have been called.