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Higher Education: New Challenges and Emerging Roles for Human and Social Development
GUNI has published its third report Higher Education in the World, which offers an overview of the role of higher education for human and social development in the context of globalisation. This article sums up the main ideas in this third report, which was presented during the 4th International Barcelona Conference on Higher Education.
The third Global University Network for Innovation (GUNI) report offers a critical and constructive analysis of the role of higher education (HE) and higher education institutions (HEIs) and their contribution to human and social development in the context of globalization. The report aims to promote a debate that will enrich perspectives of the important social role that higher education is called upon to play in the globalised world. What does the world of today need to make progress tomorrow’s society? We have to answer this question in order to guide the role of higher education, particularly in our interdependent, complex and globalised world. The main value of HE should be to serve the common good, at a time when what we understand by “good” and “common” is difficult to define.
At this point in history, more technological advances are being made and more resources allocated to education than ever before. However, there are also two major conflicts: one resulting from the relationship between humans, i.e. their coexistence, and the other associated with the relationship between humans and the natural environment. Despite the fact that one part of humanity enjoys a better quality of life, major challenges are emerging, such as: sustainable human development and climate change; justice, equity and human rights; intercultural coexistence; peace, democracy, citizenship and global governance; and technology, science, ethics and values. These challenges urgently require a paradigm shift for reconstructing society and building a better world for future generations.
Voices are now being raised—many from within the universities themselves—warning that the models that have guided development over the last century are now exhausted. We need to rethink the current development paradigm and our collective social values. A pressing need to coordinate sustainable development has arisen, embracing both environmental issues and economic, human, social and cultural aspects, and all that these imply. The concept of development includes economic growth, but it is not focused on this topic alone. Although economic growth is essential, it should incorporate new parameters that minimise undesired effects and embrace other aspects fundamental to personal and collective well-being.
Universities are still the main institutions for generating and disseminating knowledge and therefore the basis of nations’ development. However, we are currently in a particular moment of humanity’s history with common and global problems and challenges, which require a critical reflection upon what is and what should be the contribution of HE to society. That is way one has to ask what knowledge should be created and disseminated to build what society and how define universities their role in this regard.
In the emerging knowledge society, perhaps one of the most important challenges involves understanding the concept of knowledge itself. It is essential to break the hegemony of conformity of thought, which seems to be advancing rapidly in globalised society. The boundaries between disciplines are becoming blurred and we need to link different areas of knowledge that used to be separate, in order to understand complex problems. We need to return to models for understanding reality in which the areas of knowledge are interlinked to give a holistic view.
Education
In recent years, institutions have come under a lot of pressure to meet social needs. This has been explicitly linked to training individuals with technical and specialised knowledge, focused on a specific professional practice. Such practice can help to generate financial wealth under parameters of increasing competitiveness.
Higher education trains people who will reach the highest positions of responsibility in society. The decisions made by university-trained professionals have a major impact on the way that societies are constructed. Decisions in all areas of activity and in all of the professions can be made using an approach that focuses on collective common good. We are not sufficiently aware of the collective implications of our behaviour and individual decisions. HE therefore plays a fundamental role with respect to the curricula: the ethics and values that the citizens of tomorrow receive.
Thus, we can either focus teaching on training professionals or on educating citizens who will carry out a profession. The education that citizens receive is important, as it is what they give back to the society that has given them the opportunity to study. Individual and collective responsibility in professional decision-making, within new global ethical paradigms, will be an important subject in the intermediate future.
We also need to incorporate new, transversal curriculum contents into higher education programmes, to equip individuals with tools that are more suited to the context in which they carry out their professions. Understand the individual and the society in which he/she lives is the basis for a new contribution to social construction.
Research
Universities are also the institutions that contribute most to scientific and technological progress, by generating new knowledge. Thus, one of universities’ greatest challenges involves fostering the capacity to assimilate and critically examine the role of science in society.
Nobody questions today the value of science and technology and its great capacity to increase the well-being of societies. However, the deficiency of public resources for research is forcing institutions all over the world to guide the knowledge generation to satisfy the demands and necessities of those who can pay for it, principally in the production sector. Nevertheless, human knowledge should be considered an asset for everyone, particularly the knowledge generated by institutions that serve the public. Thus, we should reconsider the priorities of research, finance them, and disseminate the achievements so that all people can take advantage of them.
The link between scientific research and social needs should be studied and analysed, mainly in order to support political decisions that have collective implications. To consider the extent to which universities’ research agendas coincide with the priority agenda for development in the world, is an exercise of social responsibility of science and knowledge. Focusing knowledge generation on the problem of climate change and on the Millennium Development Goals are current decisions that could have a major impact in the future. Thus, HEIs are called upon to play an essential role in building society, from the perspective of their social commitment.
Community engagement
In these times of rapid change, there is another major challenge: choosing between adapting to the demands of the labour market and anticipating the demands of society. To achieve the latter, institutions first have to identify where to redirect problems and how to do this; where new knowledge is needed and how to disseminate it. Anticipating and being proactive are ways of responding to social demands, but perhaps not in the manner that society or the market expects. Therefore, institutions need to be open to society. A dialogue must be established that creates an effective network of relations with all social sectors.
Another important issue involves the social value of higher education. The contribution of higher education to human and social development involves a change in paradigm: from a system that emphasises the individual and competitive aspects to one that stresses the collective and social aspects.
Currently, many HEIs worldwide are involved in significant experiences linked to their relationship with the surrounding environment. Most of these experiences involve a new way of understanding value interchange between HEIs and society, by providing specific responses to human and social development needs.
The institution
The report provides a critical, constructive and propositive analysis of the role of HE and its institutions in contributing to human and social development.
We question, for example, whether HEIs are being proactive or reactive in the face of social changes. Do they answer to part or all of society? Do they prioritise what is fundable or what is strategic for the well-being of nations? Do they generate new models of knowledge and contribute to the renewal of thought and ideas or are they just repositories of accepted knowledge that hamper the regeneration of knowledge? Are they active agents in constructing society or on the margins of the initiatives that are working for a better world? We question whether institutions are involved in and support these roles of human and social development or whether some of their academics take on such tasks in an individual and isolated way.
We are therefore facing the necessity to reinvent from a HE perspective an innovative and socially committed response that anticipates and contributes value for social transformation. We may envision a university that anticipates social challenges, a university linked to the local that works in global networks, an independent, plural, open university that integrates society contributing to the collective good and taking full responsibility for public service. Universities are the driving forces of the knowledge economy, but they must also respond to the human and cultural goals of society.
Therefore, the report analyses the social function of higher education, based on what higher education is today and what the context requires, to propose what universities’ function should be, with regard to their activities. In short, the report suggests that we need to reconsider the interchange of value between universities and societies—in other words, rethink their social relevance.
The report is published in Spanish by Mundiprensa and in English by Palgrave. It can be purchased through the websites of these two publishing companies.
Cristina Escrigas, Executive Director, GUNI
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
