EUROPE: Higher education's global role

As a demonstration of how the top higher education people from across the world can meet, debate, agree and disagree without ever losing sight of their common goals as academic leaders, you would find it hard to better the four-yearly conference of the UNESCO-based International Association of Universities.

The conference, held this year at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands from 15 to 18 July, is global in concept as befits the only worldwide general association of universities. But it also provided unique opportunities for local and global networking, said Dr Hilligje van't Land, IAU senior programme manager.

The mission and activities of the IAU focus specifically on the social significance of universities and international collaboration - about 420 registered delegates from 118 countries attended this year.

Part of the meeting was devoted to an analysis of IAU activities over the past four years and a look forward to the next. But important votes and decisions were taken, most notably the election of a new president, Dr Juan Ramon De La Fuente, former Rector of the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

De La Fuente has a distinguished record of health reform in Mexico where he was Minister of Health between 1994 and 1999, created the National Commission to protect patients' rights, and won a legal battle to introduce generic drugs on the market.

While much of the conference was concerned with business matters, one objective was to present a showcase to non-members of what the IAU did, said Eva Egron-Polak, IAU Secretary-General.

"Apart from, UNESCO itself, "you will not find a more comprehensive overview of higher education institutions around the world as in that room," Egron-Polak told University World News. "IAU is frequently used, and I think rightly, as a place where institutional heads or senior managers from various institutions can come to meet not just their colleagues from the region or from similar kind of cultural group but really from groups they would never meet anywhere else.

"For instance we had a speaker from Israel addressing a room where there were quite a few Lebanese, quite a few Iranians, quite a few Iraqis, and that is a real achievement."

One major speech at the conference, which directly addressed the question of the social role of universities, was by Professor Brenda Gourley, Vice-Chancellor of Britain's Open University. Gourley focused on professionals "because they represent such a force for change in the practice of those professions - and indeed in their role as leaders of most big businesses".

She said it was still true that most students represented an elite in society "and if that elite does not recognise the imperatives of the world today, then universities must surely shoulder the responsibility for that".

"The young people of today will, more than at any other time in history, make a spectacular difference to what happens this century," Gourley said. "This generation will collectively determine whether our planet survives, or not. As educators we have a critical role in fostering, supporting, encouraging and, above all, equipping our students with the values and skill-set necessary to drive forward such initiatives. Have the stakes ever been higher?"

She said that never before had so many people needed education: "And it is education that fuels sustainable development, education that is fundamental to enlightened citizenship, to the peace and harmony - and even continued life - of this planet we inhabit".

Education "will have to reach many more than hitherto, and an education which must be infused with the dramatic portent of our times - a world where the extremes are not only unacceptable by any standards but capable of being solved with what we have between us".

It was now a time for leadership, and particularly a time for university leadership. "The issues that have to be addressed are complex, they go beyond national and regional preoccupations, they have long time horizons and call for actions and mobilisation across the world. If universities are unable to respond to such crucial issues, it is difficult to imagine who would.

"Indeed if universities cannot respond it is difficult to understand how they could be defended. We would, in my view, be in dereliction of our main purpose - and in conflict with our main claim to universality."

alan.osborn@uw-news.com