Message from the Director-General of the Higher Education Authority, Professor Kazhila C. Chinsembu, on the Occasion of the 96th Agriculture and Commercial Show
Greetings!
We welcome you all to the Higher Education Authority (HEA) stand in the Showgrounds.
At the present-day HEA, our aim is to create a new paradigm in the provision of higher education in Zambia. We want to forge a new path for our higher education system.
We would like to redefine and re-conceptualise the purpose of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) within the context of our country’s socioeconomic challenges.
We would like to become the inflection point for change, the nexus for transformation, and the catalyst for the reform of our higher education architecture.
We have not come here with modest ideas. As a matter of fact, we would like to pitch the next big idea for our universities and other tertiary education institutions.
In doing so, we would like to point our higher education landscape to a new order and value system of professorial promotions.
Since taking up the office of Director-General on 22nd April, 2024, we have been agonising over the quality of professors, especially in private universities. We have to be frank about this blight on our system of higher education.
We have now arrived at the conclusion that the sacred duty to protect the integrity of our professorial ranks from masquerades can no longer be postponed.
Nothing should come in the way of protecting the integrity and honesty of our higher education architecture, and this includes our personal ambitions to be called professor.
Our role now is to defend the erudition, scholarship and merit that define the due process of promotion to the prestigious rank of professor, and to speak against those who want to falsify their way into these prestigious ranks that are hallmarks of academic rigour and excellence.
Professorship is a revered academic rank. It is the preserve of high-grade academics who have distinguished themselves through teaching, research and publications.
Professorship is not granted on compassionate grounds.
Our country shall improve when bold thinking is directed at our toughest problems. This will not happen unless we stand on the shoulders of rarely skilled academics who are genuine professors.
At the present-day HEA, our role is to refocus the attention of our institutions of higher education to the pursuit of relevant knowledge for national development, knowledge that is viable, and knowledge that is convertible into novel goods and services, to help double our economy by the year 2031.
Professor Kazhila Chinsembu
DIRECTOR-GENERAL
HIGHER EDUCATION AUTHORITY (HEA)
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Pass through the HEA Stand at the 96th Agriculture and Commercial Show and get a tour of the Stand to see how the Authority is “Creating a Competitive Future through Ensuring Quality in Higher Education.” We are found at stand F7 near the ZNBC Stand.
