Acta Universitatis Danubius. Communicatio, Vol 7, No 2 (2013)

Abstract

The university was created in Yaounde, the political capital city of Cameroon, in 1961, after the independence. For the young Federal State it therefore became necessarily urgent to put in place a training institution that would cover the needs in local senior staffs, after the departure of French and English colonial administrators. It was also to endow the young nation with an instrument of quality training that would boost local economic and social development. At its opening, the university had 213 students (Sup Infos, 2011, pp. 10-11) who were systematically absorbed by the labor market; it will accommodate 37,215 students in 1992, on the same campus. But with the economic crises, it witnessed a severe employment crisis. Due to the implementation of structural adjustment programs driven by the Bretton Woods institutions, the economic crisis was coupled with a political crisis: the Ngoa-Ekelle campus where the University of Yaounde was found rapidly became a vast experimental field of socio-political demands for an integral multiparty system, a general amnesty and liberal democracy in Cameroon. Faced with these crises, the State could not remain indifferent. Thus, a “university reform” will be launched in January 1993 by presidential decree (Ministry of Higher Education, 1993, p. 9).