Archives

Address by Lakshman Kadirgamar, PC, MP, Minister of Foreign Affairs at the inauguration of the Education Lanka Institute of the Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts of India (ICFAI) at the Taj Samudra on October 27

Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar

THE opening of a new university anywhere is an appropriate occasion on which to reflect on the place of the university in society. Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that "every person has a right to an education" and that "every person must have equal access to higher education, as a function of their respective merits". The existence of the right is clear; the ongoing debate concerns its implementation.

We must recall at the outset that the concept of university, as known and applied in the modern world, is of Western origin, developed over many centuries in cultures different from ours. My own college, Balliol at the University of Oxford was founded in 1262 and has had an uninterrupted existence since then.

The distinguished universities of Asia - in China, India, Sri Lanka - about whom so much has been written, which outdated by far the oldest universities of the West, disappeared with the collapse of our ancient civilisations. During the dark period of colonial rule - nearly 500 years for many parts of Asia - there were no universities at all.

The founding of the International Association of Universities at the Nice Conference in France in 1950 may justifiably be seen as a momentous event in the long, collective history of the Western type universities.

In terms of sheer numbers, more than two thirds of the universities existing today were created during the last 50 years and the post-secondary school student population has now reached an estimated 80 million worldwide, if not much more.

Three themes require to be addressed when one discusses the future of university education. They are: constant values and changing priorities; universities and the knowledge society; university governance, funding and the takeholder society.

With regard to the first theme, as the preamble to the IAU's Constitution stated fifty years ago universities have a "high responsibility as guardians of the intellectual life", and they stand for certain fundamental principles: "The right to pursue knowledge for its own sake and to follow wherever the search for truth may lead" as well as "the tolerance of divergent opinion and freedom from political interference".

Furthermore, the preamble evokes "their obligation as social institutions to promote, through teaching and research, the principle of freedom and justice of human dignity and solidarity" and to "develop material and moral aid on an international level".

Are these abiding principles? Have the universities been effective in promoting them? Have these tasks and missions changed in the course of the past half century? How far may the universities of today claim to have fulfilled the expectations first formulated by the founding fathers of the IAU?

The forces which originally shaped the university - social demand, desire for access to knowledge, the wish to learn and the determination to broaden individual opportunity, together with enduring values - will continue to shape it in the third millennium especially in the Western world.

However the ways and means available to universities to meet them are likely to be very different in Western universities and Asian universities.

Here three points need to be considered. First the core values I referred to a moment ago are to a large extent still upheld in Western universities: especially the tolerance of divergent opinion; freedom from political interference; the promotion of the principles of freedom and justice, of human dignity and solidarity.

In most Asian universities, except perhaps in India, these principles have to a large extent been compromised. Autonomy is still a dream; the pursuit of freedom and justice tends to end at a convenient point.

In many Asian universities the agenda of the university is deeply locked into implementation of the national plan which means that the hand of government is not far away. Moreover in most Asian universities, sheer numbers militate strongly against the broadening of individual opportunity.

The second point is applicable to universities both in the West and in Asia, but more so in Asia.

Universities assert that they are engaged in educating leaders for the nation and the world. They send forth graduates with stirring rhetoric about the quality of their education. It is argued that a good education requires learning from people with many kinds of backgrounds and that university responsibilities include training people from all walks of life.

Thus students and faculty members are sought from different races, religions, geographies, economic and ethnic groups and the advantages of diversity are confidently proclaimed.

On both these fronts, rhetoric outdoes performance. The educational experience of many students gives little evidence of preparation for leadership in a democracy.

But in truth Asian campuses are well placed to take advantage of the benefits of diversity, bridge and cultural divisions that potentially undermine our political systems and prepare students from all segments of society to be leaders, if they are willing to shoulder the burdens of leadership.

The third point is that universities have a major influence on the development of the charter of students through the varied activities of their university years. The large majority of undergraduate students in many institutions are between late adolescence and early adulthood.

Experiences on campus for these students are often exceptionally intense and formative. These experiences shape the charter of students every day in many ways with too little attention being paid, on the part of the students themselves, or their teachers and counsellors, to learning exactly what sort of character is being formed.

Faculty, as well as administrators, should give more thought to how we might better prepare graduates to grapple with the daunting problems of the societies of the future.

The second theme I referred to addresses the core mission of the university.

The transmission of knowledge has always been its generic task, and the purposeful search after new knowledge - research - has long been its primary task. In return, the authorities granted the university a virtual monopoly over these two functions.

Today these historic monopolies have largely disappeared and the explosion in the use of information technologies is dramatically changing means and conditions of access to knowledge.

New 'knowledge providers', some located within a broader setting of 'tertiary education', others as part of a complex pattern of 'distance learning' and 'life long learning', are rapidly emerging in parallel to, and beyond, the university. This situation reflects the evolving and volatile nature of the 'knowledge society' itself.

As institutional frontiers between 'learning' and 'research' become more permeable and as learning and research become responsibilities assumed by institutions other than the university, a number of fundamental questions arise. What is to be the specific role and purpose of the university as distinct from other 'learning providers' and 'knowledge providers'?

Is there a specific and desirable type of knowledge which the university should make its own? In a society in which knowledge is a tradeable item, is it desirable that the university becomes a species of 'knowledge supermarket'? What kind of university will provide a legitimate gateway to the knowledge society? Will it be more specialized?

Is there a future for the so-called 'comprehensive' university - that is, an individual establishment which includes the full range of faculties? What are the likely fields of specialization and concentration? Will the future university in effect be a network of highly specialized establishments linked together across frontiers by the new technologies?

Issues which, two or three decades ago, were posed in terms of access to institutions, are now posed in terms of access to knowledge and learning.

Function replaces structure and institution as the prime analytic perspective of higher education. Whilst the valuation of knowledge is increasingly viewed from an economic perspective, such valuation is nevertheless crucial in determining society's dominant values and ethics as well as defining what is socially relevant and useful knowledge.

Who is to have access to what kind of knowledge? What is the social and political vision such access upholds? Does the university uphold the values of meritocracy and democracy? Or does it endorse access to knowledge as a mere outgrowth of the ability to pay - that is, subscribe to a plutocratic vision of the society of the future?

The future of the university in the knowledge society clearly cannot be discussed solely in financial terms. Who is to set the norms which determine the value of knowledge? The market alone? The private sector? Governments? The academic disciplines and their masters? What should be the role of the university? Is its time-honoured responsibility as one of the guardians of knowledge, acting on behalf of humanity, worthy of retention?

What are the likely consequences should the university let such a responsibility go by default? Is the university to forego its function of social critic and conscience of humanity? These are difficult questions and there are many more.

Here I would venture a thought. The unique quality of a university, be it residential or non-residential, is its ability to provide room, under one roof as it were, for a multiplicity of disciplines, including the new ones, whilst also providing the opportunity and ambience for students to interact with their teachers and their peers in a relaxed atmosphere in which friendships are forged, tolerance and understanding are learnt and practised. Learning from the Internet is no substitute whatsoever for learning from your teachers and your peers.

To achieve this some universities could consider shrinking their size, while concentrating on excellence, possibly in selected fields.

But this is probably a chimera, given the exploding populations of Asia. What I fear, on surveying the Asian scene, is that the line between universities and other institutions of higher learning will erode to the point of erasure.

Universities as the guardians of the intellectual life, the defenders of truth and justice, the havens of divergent opinions, the bastions of independent thought might well fade away. Would that matter? In my opinion it would matter profoundly.

The soul of a nation resides in its universities, the voice of a nation should be heard from its universities, the mind of a nation should be developed in its universities. On the global scale it is the universities of the world, collectively, that think, speak, rejoice and weep for mankind.

These questions lead on to the third theme. Over the past half century increasingly complex ties have emerged between universities and the external world. In terms both operational and symbolic the view of higher education as a 'market-driven' institution has gathered momentum especially during the past two decades.

However, higher education does not deal with one 'market'. It deals with a multiplicity of markets and interests, not all of which are necessarily similar to one another.

The 'market' for first degree students is very different from the 'market' for trained researchers at doctoral level, just as the market for commercial contract research differs enormously from the demand for services to the community.

Considerable efforts will have to be made to ensure that the individual university responds efficiently and in a timely manner to the demands coming from the external environments, and most particularly by the reform of systems of internal administration and governance. For some, this will involve strengthening the lines of internal accountability.

For others, the introduction of management by objectives, the reinforcement of internal assessment of individual performance and the extension of strategic planning to institutional level are key elements. Strengthening the contact between university and outside interests has invariably entailed strengthening the leadership role of the university.

At the start of the third millennium, when teaching, learning and the generation of knowledge are more than in any previous period in human history the basic determinants of social and economic development, the need to reassert the university's claim to be a key actor in the accelerating pace of change, stands paramount.

There is undoubtedly a future for the institution of the university in Asia. Indeed, without universities there might be no future for our region. Our region is the most diverse in the world. It is very diverse in size. It contains small island nations in the South Pacific with populations of a few hundred thousand, and some of the most populous countries in the world: China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Japan, Bangladesh.

It is home to over two and a quarter billion people - one fifth of mankind. It is also very diverse in terms of economic development. It includes a number of developed economies, some speedily developing ones and some which though old have only fairly recently embraced economic policies that make them globally competitive.

The region's countries also differ in terms of their present political systems - we have parliamentary monarchies, socialist or communist States, parliamentary democracies and a range of hybrid forms of government.

In Asia, what is hugely different from the Western university model is that most, if not all, of the countries of the region stress the development of their tertiary and higher education sector as an integral part of their national economic and social development plans.

In these countries, universities are seen as instruments for furthering national goals. In some of them, national goals include explicitly the education of an intellectual and cultural elite; in some, the stress is on economic competitiveness. On the whole, an instrumentalist view of higher education and of the role of universities is dominant in Asia.

University education in India is carried out on a vast scale, as vast as in China. But the system, the philosophy, is different from most other countries in Asia. Independent India built on the university system it had inherited from the British. Thus, to a large extent the core values reflected in the preamble to the IAU's Constitution, fifty year ago, remain largely intact.

Most Indian universities do enjoy a great degree of autonomy, and they do strive to uphold these core values. More important, the guiding principles of university education are not laid down as canons of State policy. Further, the English language plays a decisive role in university education.

This has enabled Indian universities to keep effortlessly in touch with the rest of the world. It is said that the phenomenal success of the southern Indian States in the field of information technology is due in no small measure to the wide and confident use of English in those areas of the country.

Mr. Chancellor, I was truly delighted while reading some of the literature put out by your university to note that your vision is "meritum ethicus".

Your university believes that the professionals of the future need to be thinking and working both strategically and operationally across national and cultural boundaries. Your university is committed to develop leaders capable of making decisions in a complex global environment and who are dedicated to serve their companies, society and humanity.

You also believe that education must relate to the real world environment and be able to contribute to and benefit from it. You want your students to comprehend whole systems and organisms rather than fragments. You want them to acquire a holistic approach to their education which when coupled with innate merit will transform them into citizens with vision, a deep sense of ethics and social responsibility.

Mr. Chancellor, let me say that I have rarely read a vision statement of such breathtaking sweep. Your university has already in the space of 20 years expanded across the length and breadth of India. It is ranked among the ten best business schools and ranked number one among private business schools in India.

This rate of expansion would not have been possible if you had been unable to live up to the noble goals you had set for yourself. Now you have come to Sri Lanka. You seek a new home here. You are most welcome. You will be among friends in this country.

Your university caters to a deeply felt need on the part of our students for specialized knowledge which will help them to secure employment and compete effectively in a modern business environment.

But more importantly your university is from India, our oldest neighbour and dear friend.

ICFAI has taken the initiative to establish ICFAI Education Lanka (IEL), a not for profit educational institution in Colombo. This institution will initially provide programmes at the undergraduate and graduate levels in the areas of Commerce and Business Management.

The fee structures for these programmes are kept at a very moderate level and are within the lines offered in India for similar programmes. This means that your courses will be within the reach of a large number of our students who would never be able to afford an education abroad.

The primary objective of the IEL is to provide skill oriented and professional programmes and degrees that will ensure steady employment of the graduates of IEL. In due course, IEL will launch MBA, engineering and distance learning programmes which would be highly beneficial for the students of Sri Lanka.

The overall aim of IEL is to establish a fully integrated campus with multidisciplinary courses in the sector of higher education.

Mr. Chancellor let me venture a final thought. Let not your university become mainly a manufactory of graduates for jobs in the market. I think it is true to say that all of us who have been to university did so because we felt, and we were told by our parents, that a university degree was a passport to employment. There is nothing wrong with that.

The question that arises today is whether the justification for a university, its role in society, should depend only on its capacity to mass produce graduates for employment or whether it should have a much nobler, more extensive, more far reaching role in its interaction with the society in which it is rooted.

I sincerely hope that as you start your life in Sri Lanka you will hold fast to the vision which you have outlined for your university at all its various centres in India.

May I hope for you in the elegant words of the handbook of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Information of the university of which I have the honour to be an honorary doctor - "we strive to produce a university graduate who is flexible, self confident and innovative to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

www.ceylincoproperties.com

www.Pathmaconstruction.com

News | Business | Features | Editorial | Security
Politics | World | Letters | Sports | Obituaries

Produced by Lake House
Copyright © 2003 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.
Comments and suggestions to :Web Manager