GLOBAL: Revolutionising higher education

Universities need to transform in various ways if they are to respond effectively to the socio-economic and technological demands of today's world, according to internationally respected scholar Manuel Castells. But despite the many challenges and opportunities facing universities, many "continue to be corporatist and bureaucratic", rigid in their functioning and primarily concerned with defending their own and professors' interests.

The global knowledge economy and society is based on processing information, which is also what universities are primarily about, Castells said during a lecture on higher education delivered at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa recently.

"Therefore the quality, effectiveness and relevance of the university system will be directly related to the ability of people, society and institutions to develop."

In the context of technological and communication revolutions, universities are central actors in scientific and technological change and in training a labour force suited to new conditions of production and management. They are also critical contributors to democratisation and social equality (or lesser inequality), and sources of cultural renewal and innovation linked to the new forms of living people are entering.

Being institutions that process information, universities have themselves been dramatically affected by technological changes. Information and communication technologies are deeply affecting the functioning and culture of the university, "sometimes without full knowledge of what's happening and without controlling these processes."

To try to understand processes of change, Castells took an historical perspective of higher education, seeing individual universities as fulfilling different functions that are accentuated in some universities at some moments of history, but combine and recombine, depending on the emphasis on the function.

So Castells' notion is of the university system, not just universities, "because different units provide different functions and the whole system has to combine these different functions".

An early function of universities was to produce values and legitimatisation. All the world's major universities began as theology schools - producers of values and social legitimisation - while non-religious universities played a similar role in, for instance, producing imperial values or justifying domination and western superiority in the colonial world.

The second, as important historical function of universities was selection of the elite - establishing a social stratification in society through selection into some universities, such as the US's Ivy League institutions, the grandes écoles in France, and Cambridge and Oxford in the UK. In some countries, 90% of those who govern business and politics come from such universities, so the section of elites is "extremely important, then and now", said Castells.

The third function, in historical sequence, was training the labour force. The 'professional university' in fields such as medicine, law and engineering, was critical to the development of industrialisation. Examples are the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne, or Caltech in the US.

Fourth was a later, mostly German invention, the 'science university' whose primary function is the production of scientific knowledge. An early example was Humboldt in Germany and, in the US, Johns Hopkins and the 'land grant' universities, which produced science to develop specific industries that were important for the country.

A fifth function was 'generalist' universities that emerged to elevate the level of education of the population at large. These were the post-World War II universities developed in Europe, Latin America and Africa after independence. "Everybody should be able to go to university. That's why it was so important to keep the other functions in relatively separate institutions, not to be overwhelmed by mass education - and that's what happened in all countries."

Last, said Castells, came "'entrepreneurial' universities centred on innovation and the connection between the world of science and technology, and the business world and the enterprise world." The classic example is Stanford, a great scientific university that connects constantly to the business world. MIT moved decisively in that direction, and many other universities - such as in Singapore - followed this model. The notion is a close interaction between being top in science while developing an entrepreneurial system.

Every country, Castells said, developed systems in which different universities fulfil one or some of these functions, which are combined in different ways across the system. "One of the key issues is how to articulate these different functions without downplaying one or the other.

"For instance, it's obvious that not every university can be a research university. But at the same time, every university has to have access to research centres that exist in the university system for specific purposes and may develop a small nuclei of research linked, on the one hand, to the needs of society and the economy and, on the other hand, fed by the networks of research that can be constructed in the entire university system," he explained.

"Moreover, because we are in a global economy and in a global research system, the notion of universities being stand-alone, major research centres is gone. The critical thing is to be in the networks of global production of knowledge, of research and innovation."

To obtain a 'ticket' to enter one of the global networks, a university either has to be the best in the field or to provide something that is interesting enough for all the other participants to want it in. "The internet is crucial," said Castells. Academics don't have to travel to other research centres but can connect, research and diffuse results via the internet.

In the current global knowledge economy, he said, knowledge production and technological innovation are the most important productive forces. Without some level of a national research system composed of universities and private and public research centres, no country can participate in the global knowledge economy.

Today, the most important resource of all is the human mind. "There are endless examples of how betting on the human mind has been decisive for the development of countries."

The once-poor East Asian economic tigers have one thing in common - very good education systems at all levels, based on the traditional values of education and also on investment by government and companies in education. Another example is Mauritius. There is a direct correlation between the capacity to invest in education and in universities, and both the level of economic growth and human development, said Castells.

Universities also have a major role in producing a quality labour force - which depends on quality education, which depends on educators who have been trained by quality universities. You can build schools and provide laptops, he said, but "if there are no good teachers there's no good education". This requires good working conditions and pay, and respect for teachers, and "it all starts with being well trained at the level of the university".

The type of training needed today is 'learning to learn' - "constant reprogramming of skills in a constantly changing economy, technology, and socio-cultural environment," continued Castells. "The information we need is on the internet - if you know how to look for it and what to do with it." It is no longer necessary to implant knowledge in young people's minds - it is likely to become obsolete anyway.

The ability of people to recycle knowledge and skills requires two things: that education creates 'self-programmable' people able to change and move between occupations, and retraining through life via high quality distance education delivered through the internet.

Castells argued that distance education has become critical. "Developing countries have to leap-frog dramatically, and can only leap-frog by using virtual education to teach those who are already at work." Face-to-face learning is inefficient and burdensome in retraining people. Developing nations need to gear their distance providers towards mass lifelong learning.

A further function of universities remains the production and consolidation of values - "ethical values, personal values and the formation of flexible personalities...We need to train students to have a few solid values - not lots of principles that are impossible to follow."

Higher education needs to develop pedagogic models that do not give precise instructions on how to behave, but give people the capacity to reorganise their lives. "This fundamental function of the university is not taken seriously by any university that I know, although some are starting to think about this."

Interdisciplinarity, Castells continued, might be a bad word in many academic circles but is what the world now requires. But why is interdisciplinarity, which is so obviously needed, so difficult? "Because disciplines are peace treaties between warring factions. Reach the river where chemistry and physics divide and then, okay, you don't cross, I don't shoot."

As a result, interdisciplinarity is only practised in some disciplines, such as communication or city and regional planning. "I always end up in these disciplines simply because I feel freer. I don't have to demonstrate if I am a sociologist or an economist or a political scientist. But try to recruit the political scientist in a sociology department - no way!"

It is thus essential for interdisciplinarity to be promoted by universities. The University of Southern California, for example, rewards interdisciplinary academics with a higher salary, and there are special chairs for interdisciplinary scholars.

Experience shows that there need not be differences between public and private universities in terms of efficiency and quality - both types of institution can be great. What matters is how flexible, efficient and competitive a university is, so its management is critical. Also essential is that university serve the public interest. "You can be in the public interest and be private. But if you are not in the public interest then you become a business."

Finally, the technological transformation of the university has to be tackled seriously, Castells said. "We are already in a system that is hybrid" - face-to-face and virtual because scholars and students work on the internet and email, and are constantly connected. "But all this is happening without any real policy, any transformation of the pedagogic method of the university". Contact universities need to embrace the notion of e-learning as a critical form.

"All of this depends on the capacity of the university to keep its autonomy. We're the last space of freedom...in society and it's essential to preserve not only for scientific reasons, but for social and political reasons. At the same time we have to earn this autonomy and freedom every day and use it in the public interest, not in the defence of our privileges.

"If we combine these two things we can continue the tradition that started 1,000 years ago. If not, pressures of society will destroy the university as a space of reflection and innovation."

karen.macgregor@uw-news.com