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Abstract:
“A university is an institution of higher education and research, which grants academic degrees in a variety of subjects. A university provides both undergraduate education and postgraduate education. The term university is derived from the Latin word universitas magistrorum et scholarium, roughly meaning community of teachers and scholars.”
“The University of Constantinople, founded as an institution of higher learning in 425 and reorganized as a corporation of students in 849 by the regent Bardas of emperor Michael III, is considered by some to be the earliest institution of higher learning with some of the characteristics we associate today with a university (research and teaching, auto-administration, academic independence, et cetera)”. If a university is defined as “an institution of higher learning” then it is preceded by several others, including the Academy that it was founded to compete with and eventually replaced. If the original meaning of the word is considered “a corporation of students” then this could be the first example of such an institution.”
One could see a proliferation of universities through out the world empowering the hitherto neglected regions and people. Many cases of fake universities and degrees awarded fraudulently were the feast of the visual media the world over. This must be one of the major concerns for policy makers.
There are several myths associated with the setting up of universities. Like railways and air ports, politicians demand the setting up universities in their own constituencies to speak out as achievements in the area of infrastructure development. It is not development. Setting up universities must be based on sound criteria and must be demand driven as well.
Some of the criteria of are considered for setting up a university include population of the area to be covered and the type of the economic activity. One has to ascertain the number of feeding institutions and their standing in terms of excellence in the catchments area. Another consideration is the sustainability of the institution in the long run even after the state support is with drawn. The number of courses which are demand driven may be ascertained after consulting the end users with stake holder surveys as well as the industry as future emphasise is on public private partnership.
The new challenges and the emerging ground realities may necessitate the setting up of newer universities like Space strategy university, Defence university, Technology university, Maritime university, Hydrocarbon university, Medical university, Poetical university, Sociology university, Economics university, Economic crops university, Animal Husbandry university, Law University, Parliamentary democracy university, Peace and disarmament university, Post – conflict rehabilitation university, International relations university, Post –harvest technology university, Fisheries university, Small Industry university, Large Industry university, Solar Energy university, Fossil Fuel university, Argil Management university, Planning, Monitoring & Evaluation university, Maths University, Stock Market university, and the like. They are only illustrative. The list can be more exhaustive. But much depends on the location specific and economy specific demands and compulsions of each and every country and region. The key word must be excellence in human resource development and management as well as industry and community need. Universities must enjoy autonomy and shall ensure accountability. There is a need to have any number of universities in the developing world.
Human resource development vision 2050 must be in place for all countries if they want a holistic plan for education. All countries are to participate in it wholeheartedly. The vision document must spell out priority areas and strategy, besides out lining the mission statement.
On experimental basis, universities may be set up as integrated centres of excellence. These universities are expected to stand at the centre of global intellectual and technological leadership. In fact the synergy between research and teaching must be maintained as an index of the usefulness of universities to the society at large for the educational policy makers and decision thinkers alike.
One of the most disquieting features of many a university in the developing world is that they are the hot bed of politics. Campus must be freed from the fountains of blood of the youth. And politicians must grow up in stature, sagacity and wisdom.
Efforts are required to facilitate the captions of industry to start up new universities by making use of the corporate social responsibility, jointly with government participation for the common good of humanity.
University Grants Commission- UGC- needs to change its name as it is a misnomer. It may be rechristened as University Coordination Commission (UCC).
The golden rule is that courses and curricula must be demand driven and not supply pushed any more. In fact the felt needs of the community must be the sole criterion.
Full Text of the Paper:
Introduction:
Let us look at the very concept of university by examining the dictionary meaning of the term university.
“A university is an institution of higher education and research, which grants academic degrees in a variety of subjects. A university provides both undergraduate education and postgraduate education. The term university is derived from the Latin word universitas magistrorum et scholarium, roughly meaning community of teachers and scholars.”
Dictionary meaning of university is, “a corporate body, an institution of higher learning with power to grant degrees, its body of teachers, students, etc”.
Earlier Universities and Ancient Ones:
Some of the earlier universities were The Platonic Academy (sometimes referred to as the University of Athens founded in 387 BC in Athens by Plato. Nanjing University of China (National Central University) was founded in 259 AD. Taehak university of Korea was founded in 372 and Gukhak was established in 682. Nalanda University an ancient university was established in the 5th century AD in Bihar, India. Academy of Gundishapur was an important medical centre of the 6th and 7th centuries AD in Iran. Ashikaga Gakko of Japan was founded in the 9th century and restored in 1432.
“The University of Constantinople, founded as an institution of higher learning in 425 and reorganized as a corporation of students in 849 by the regent Bardas of emperor Michael III, is considered by some to be the earliest institution of higher learning with some of the characteristics we associate today with a university (research and teaching, auto-administration, academic independence, et cetera)”. If a university is defined as “an institution of higher learning” then it is preceded by several others, including the Academy that it was founded to compete with and eventually replaced. If the original meaning of the word is considered “a corporation of students” then this could be the first example of such an institution.”
It is also worth while to quote the details of the medieval set up of universities.
“The first higher education institution in medieval Europe was the University of Constantinople, followed by the University of Salerno (9th century), the Preslav Literary School and Ohrid Literary School in the Bulgarian Empire (9th century). The first degree-granting universities in Europe were the University of Bologna (1088), the University of Paris (c. 1150, later associated with the Sorbonne), the University of Oxford (1167), the University of Cambridge (1209), the University of Salamanca (1218), the University of Montpellier (1220), the University of Padua (1222), the University of Naples Federico II (1224), the University of Toulouse (1229). Some scholars such as George Makdisi, John Makdisi and Hugh Goddard argue that these medieval universities were influenced in many ways by the medieval Madrasah institutions in Islamic Spain, the Emirate of Sicily, and the Middle East (during the Crusades).
The earliest universities in Western Europe were developed under the aegis of the Catholic Church, usually as cathedral schools or by papal bull as studia generali. The development of cathedral schools into universities actually appears to be quite rare, with the University of Paris being an exception, later they were also founded by Kings (Charles University in Prague, Jagiellonian University in Krakow) or municipal administrations (University of Cologne, University of Erfurt). In the early medieval period, most new universities were founded from pre-existing schools, usually when these schools were deemed to have become primarily sites of higher education. Many historians state that universities and cathedral schools were a continuation of the interest in learning promoted by monasteries.
In Europe, young men proceeded to university when they had completed their study of the trivium–the preparatory arts of grammar, rhetoric and dialectic or logic–and the quadrivium: arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy.
Outside of Europe, there were many notable institutions of learning throughout history. In China, there was the famous Hanlin Academy, established during the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD), and was once headed by the Chancellor Shen Kuo (1031-1095), a famous Chinese scientist, inventor, mathematician and statesman. It was followed by another era of the emergence of modern universities. That part is mostly well known to all concerned policy makers and researchers alike.
Proliferation of Universities:
One could see a proliferation of universities through out the world empowering the hitherto neglected regions and people. Universities sprang up both in the urban and rural areas. One important aspect of such a wide spread university mushrooming was the quality of education that was imparted in many a place of higher education and research. At times quality was the main sacrificial goat. Many cases of fake universities and degrees awarded fraudulently were the feast of the visual media the world over. This must be one of the major concerns for policy makers.
Millennium Development Goals:
The Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations, among others, had highlighted the education sector too. Out of eight goals, one is exclusively dedicated to education namely to ensure universal primary education. Besides, achieving goals such as combat HIV, AIDS and malaria; improve maternal health; reduce child mortality; ensure environmental sustainability and to promote gender equality and women employment, literacy has an unequivocal role to play.
There are several myths associated with the setting up of universities. Like railways and air ports, politicians demand the setting up universities in their own constituencies to speak out as achievements in the area of infrastructure development. It is not development. Setting up universities must be based on sound criteria and must be demand driven as well.
Criteria for Setting up Universities:
Let us now consider some of the criteria in question. They include population of the area to be covered. The type of the economic activity is a major factor to be reckoned with- is it mostly agricultural or industrial area? One has to ascertain the number of feeding institutions and their standing in terms of excellence in the catchments area. Another consideration is the sustainability of the institution in the long run even after the state support is with drawn. The number of courses which are demand driven may be ascertained after consulting the end users with stake holder surveys as well as the industry as future emphasise is on public private partnership. There was a time when universities were teaching the same old antediluvian curriculum with the declared objective of producing mostly pen pushers. In fact the demand for university graduates was only limited as the total capacity of the economy was limited. Now we have come to a stage of liberation in our thinking process of creativity as well as capacity building and capacity utilisation.
Thrust Areas:
The new challenges and the emerging ground realities may necessitate the setting up of newer universities like Space strategy university, Defence university, Technology university, Maritime university, Hydrocarbon university, Medical university, Poetical university, Sociology university, Economics university, Economic crops university, Animal Husbandry university, Law University, Parliamentary democracy university, Peace and disarmament university, Post – conflict rehabilitation university, International relations university, Post –harvest technology university, Fisheries university, Small Industry university, Large Industry university, Solar Energy university, Fossil Fuel university, Argil Management university, Planning, Monitoring & Evaluation university, Maths University, Stock Market university, and the like. They are only illustrative. The list can be more exhaustive. But much depends on the location specific and economy specific demands and compulsions of each and every country and region. The key word must be excellence in human resource development and management as well as industry and community need.
New Deal:
There was a time when universities were more of teaching shops. That approach must give way to proactive and result oriented strategy in educational planning as it must be top down and bottom up in its approach. They are to be centres of excellence. In fact the potential users of the university products must be forced to visit such centres of excellence for campus selection. In fact, universities must turn out to be centres of demand driven places for trade and industry as well all the sectors of the economy. This is possible among others by introducing state of the art courses as well as innovative ones judged from the point of view of empowerment and utility.
Autonomy and Accountability:
Universities must enjoy autonomy and shall ensure accountability. There is a need to have any number of universities in the developing world. If the number of students exceeds some 3000 to 5000, such centres or colleges may become a university with specialisations. For new universities, it was felt that the major thrust will be one centre of excellence concentrating on one subject only. There is no need for deemed universities. In that place give permission to start as many new universities with self supporting and self sustaining mandate. Thus the state has no financial burden at all. It is said water seeks its own level. If they are good, they would have students to register themselves for the courses offered by them.
Human Resource development Vision:
Human resource development vision 2050 must be in place for all countries if they want a holistic plan for education. All countries are to participate in it wholeheartedly
. The vision document must spell out priority areas and strategy, besides out lining the mission statement. This is a kind of blue book. All intending future universities must be guided by this vision document. In fact adequate brain work is required to churn out such a document of immense importance. This may be the end result of regional and national level workshops and brainstorming seminars. It must have clearly spelt out policy frame work for deliberations and discussions among the stake holders and policy makers in order to arrive at an achievable and realist vision document.
University Coordination Commission:
University Grants Commission- UGC- needs to change its name as it is a misnomer. It may be rechristened as University Coordination Commission (UCC). The UCC would provide strategic leadership to the universities, coordinate its various activities, and control it with course corrections, distribute funds for start up operations as well as provide incentives for excellence achieved by its various members and constituents. UCC would facilitate global net working with member countries and other universities as well as help twinning in programmes between universities as part of job enrichment and job enlargement. In other words, the proposed UCC would play the role of strategy thinking in the realm of higher education to render it efficient, effective, relevant and timely as well as thematic.
Integrated Universities:
On experimental basis, universities may be set up as integrated centres of excellence. It may have primary school, secondary school, graduate studies, post- graduate studies, doctoral studies and research all rolled together. However, much depends on the specific location and regional dynamics as special considerations in evolving such integrated universities. It is high time that efforts are to be made to initiate such integrated experiments in the developing countires. There are a few such cases as on now like the one launched by the noble laureate Tagore in India.
Treasure Houses or Power Houses?
Universities are “creative machines unlike any other that we have known in our history” observes The Economist of January 2010. These universities are expected to stand at the centre of global intellectual and technological leadership. But do they stand as expected of them? Admittedly many of them the world over had facilitated enriching inventiveness with extra ordinary range of innovations in the realm of technology and in thinking emanating from their research. Besides, university education must be deliberately facilitating mass education as a route to social mobility and the resultant enlightenment. Big universities are too big and too rich. There is a growing gap between the rich and the poor as is the case with political economy as observed by Marx. A classic case is that of Harvard’s endowments in 2006. It was greater than the combined total endowment of all the top American universities to illustrate the argument with an example. Is it a good trend? Policy makers must sit in deliberation of such a proclivity. There is another cardinal concern of the growing divide between research and teaching, especially in the case of undergraduate teachings. In fact the synergy between research and teaching must be maintained as an index of the usefulness of universities to the society at large for the educational policy makers and decision thinkers alike.
Universities to be freed from Politics:
One of the most disquieting features of many a university in the developing world is that they are the hot bed of politics. There are any numbers of such stories from the world over to support this observation. Politicians deliberately instigate the young men and women to jump in to their band wagon. At times little thinking gets into such impulsive actions of the students resulting in their ruinous educational hopes as well as the great expectations of their parents. This is more so if the students are first generation enrolments in education institutions of illiterate parents. Campus must be freed from the fountains of blood of the youth. And politicians must grow up in stature, sagacity and wisdom. Students shall not commit their potential future on the unholy alter of campus politics.
There are other types of politics as well. The recent Korean research fraud is a point in question. Again manipulative methodologies and cooked up data are all part of the university politics. This mess needs to be cleared by conscious policy level interventions.
Public- Private Partnership:
CSR- Corporate Social Responsibility- is fast catching up every where in the world. The erstwhile foundations are the modern day CSR in a way. Efforts are required to facilitate the captains of industry to start up new universities jointly with government participation for the common good of humanity. It may be recalled that there are several private initiatives in setting up universities under the aegis of individuals and churches. It has been very rampant in USA, Australia and Europe. Even in less developed economies like India, there are several such attempts of late. The point of emphasis must be that such institutions are to be centres of excellence.
Avoid Duplication:
There is no need for setting up universities on the traditional lines any more. The requirements are different and the challenges are new ones as the emerging scenario has several vicissitudes. If information technology is the need of the hour, there is no point of shying away from that challenge. One size fitting all can not be the approach any more in a competitive environment. We need to innovate and integrate so that the posterity would thankfully acknowledge the present day decision makers. The golden rule is that courses and curricula must be demand driven and not supply pushed any more. In fact the felt needs of the community must be the sole criterion.
Conclusion:
“A university is an institution of higher education and research, which grants academic degrees in a variety of subjects. A university provides both undergraduate education and postgraduate education. The term university is derived from the Latin word universitas magistrorum et scholarium, roughly meaning community of teachers and scholars.”
“The University of Constantinople, founded as an institution of higher learning in 425 and reorganized as a corporation of students in 849 by the regent Bardas of emperor Michael III, is considered by some to be the earliest institution of higher learning with some of the characteristics we associate today with a university (research and teaching, auto-administration, academic independence, et cetera)”. If a university is defined as “an institution of higher learning” then it is preceded by several others, including the Academy that it was founded to compete with and eventually replaced. If the original meaning of the word is considered “a corporation of students” then this could be the first example of such an institution.”
One could see a proliferation of universities through out the world empowering the hitherto neglected regions and people. Many cases of fake universities and degrees awarded fraudulently were the feast of the visual media the world over. This must be one of the major concerns for policy makers.
There are several myths associated with the setting up of universities. Like railways and air ports, politicians demand the setting up universities in their own constituencies to speak out as achievements in the area of infrastructure development. It is not development. Setting up universities must be based on sound criteria and must be demand driven as well.
Let us now consider some of the criteria in question. They include population of the area to be covered. The type of the economic activity is a major factor to be reckoned with- is it mostly agricultural or industrial area? One has to ascertain the number of feeding institutions and their standing in terms of excellence in the catchments area. Another consideration is the sustainability of the institution in the long run even after the state support is with drawn. The number of courses which are demand driven may be ascertained after consulting the end users with stake holder surveys as well as the industry as future emphasise is on public private partnership.
The new challenges and the emerging ground realities may necessitate the setting up of newer universities like Space strategy university, Defence university, Technology university, Maritime university, Hydrocarbon university, Medical university, Poetical university, Sociology university, Economics university, Economic crops university, Animal Husbandry university, Law University, Parliamentary democracy university, Peace and disarmament university, Post – conflict rehabilitation university, International relations university, Post –harvest technology university, Fisheries university, Small Industry university, Large Industry university, Solar Energy university, Fossil Fuel university, Argil Management university, Planning, Monitoring & Evaluation university, Maths University, Stock Market university, and the like. They are only illustrative. The list can be more exhaustive. But much depends on the location specific and economy specific demands and compulsions of each and every country and region. The key word must be excellence in human resource development and management as well as industry and community need. Universities must enjoy autonomy and shall ensure accountability. There is a need to have any number of universities in the developing world.
Human resource development vision 2050 must be in place for all countries if they want a holistic plan for education. All countries are to participate in it wholeheartedly. The vision document must spell out priority areas and strategy, besides out lining the mission statement.
On experimental basis, universities may be set up as integrated centres of excellence. These universities are expected to stand at the centre of global intellectual and technological leadership. In fact the synergy between research and teaching must be maintained as an index of the usefulness of universities to the society at large for the educational policy makers and decision thinkers alike.
One of the most disquieting features of many a university in the developing world is that they are the hot bed of politics. Campus must be freed from the fountains of blood of the youth. And politicians must grow up in stature, sagacity and wisdom.
Efforts are required to facilitate the captains of industry to start up new universities by making use of the corporate social responsibility, jointly with government participation for the common good of humanity.
University Grants Commission- UGC- needs to change its name as it is a misnomer. It may be rechristened as University Coordination Commission (UCC).
The golden rule is that courses and curricula must be demand driven and not supply pushed any more. In fact the felt needs of the community must be the sole criterion.
END
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