Why our universities should be protected: the activist and student fees

My own alma mater lies thousands of miles away and is currently caught in the throes of celebration after winning an intensive campaign against the suppression of human rights and house arrest. It is also the alma mater of Aung San Suu Kyi , the Burmese Nobel Peace Prize winner pro activist who has been fighting for democracy and who was placed under house arrest for the last 15 years. Our educational experiences were separated by over a decade and half yawning between us yet there is comfort in the fact that the classrooms of my university might have fostered some of the greatness in the Burmese leader’s psyche. Indeed my university inspired me to rise to new heights and gave me the courage to seek new lands to accomplish my doctorate studies. My teachers were young, enthusiastic and so cool- they were perfect mentors. I am proud of belonging to the alumni of institutions such as Lady Shri Ram College (LSR), Delhi University (where Aung studied in 1964) and Delhi School of Economics and later on the University of Exeter. Yet it is memories of Lady Shri Ram College which stay with me; as a young undergraduate filled with trepidation and wide-eyed at the prospect of higher education. Little did I realise at that time that my life time would be steeped in the pursuit of higher education, the seeds of which were sown in LSR