Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Journal 6: Fourah Bay College, Paul Winters

Fourah Bay College is a public university in Freetown. It was founded in 1827 and is the oldest university in West Africa. It is the first western style university built in West Africa, it was formerly affiliated with Durham University in England.
It was intended as a missionary school to train teachers for the spread of christianity. In 1876 it then started to become offering degrees, that is when it started becoming affiliated with Durham University. The students there studied the same material and took the same examinations as was taken at main campus Durham. This reflects that the Bay college is very prestigious. It offers the same liberal arts as Durham such as Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, History, Science, French, German.
The graduates from there have sometimes became prominent. It attracted Elites from all over Africa and became known as the Athens of Africa. Becoming a hot spot of ideas and scholarly work.  During World War II that college was used for the war efforts and and the university had to relocate, after they the war everyone was able to return.
The institution provides higher education for 1800 students and is expected to continually increase as to 3,000 students in the next decade. The school is designed for 700 students, so expansion will be needed for the increase of enrollment. Some of the other institutes that are offered there. Faculty of Arts, Faculty of Engineering, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences, Faculty of Social Sciences and Law, Institute of Adult Education and Extra Mural Studies, Institute of African studies, Institute of Marine Biology and Oceanography, Institute of population studies. Institute of Library and Archive Studies and Mass Communications.
The college is in a reach to reduce wastage and enhance relevance and provide greater flexibility by starting to implement a smaller system in all facilities and institutes. As of 1972 The University of Sierra Leone Act was passed in Parliament this connected Njala University and a few other smaller colleges for a unitary system. The college provides facilities for Protestant, Roman Catholic and Muslim Worship.

This is the campus of Fourah Bay College. For as many things that are offered at the campus it is relatively small and to stay up with enrollment the college is going to have to expand to better the students there. This place is known as the Athens of Africa, located in Freetown.

2 comments:

  1. One of your facts that I really enjoyed was that Fourah Bay College is the oldest university in West Africa.

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  2. Reading about this was really cool. Learning about things that are offered in other countries.

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