Both Altbach (1982) and Hanna (1975) have converged on educational, political,
and social configurations which make students and university staff an important ameliorative
force to reckon with, especially in developing countries. Such factors and additional
elaborations are:
First, there are no political institutions for channelling their views and
making diverse impacts. In one party-state where dissent is banned, it is
in universities, in the context of academic freedom, that both the
university community and a significant section of public help to keep the
pressure on the establishment. Political leaders cannot easily instruct the
universities to simply regurgitate political slogans. However, they urge
for constructive criticism in subjecting politics, economic structures, aid,
and development policies to debate and critical analysis. Yet this is only
possible in the more tolerant regimes since blatantly repressive and
corrupt regimes impose limits.
Second, there is no doubt that by virtue of the heavy concentration of a
highly educated elite group in one place, it constitutes a real or potential
threat to opinion leadership. Many students naturally assume that they
will be the future leaders of their country. They therefore want to
communicate their views through the mass media, books, and in student
groupings.. And yet the political systems have censored and controlled
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