GLOBAL: Evaluate socially focused universities

National and international policy-makers have been allocating new roles to universities in developing countries that emphasise making higher education the driver of the 'great leap' towards sustainable development. It seems they view universities as the main means of subverting a dynamic that threatens to leave developing countries 'out of the game' in the 21st Century.

Up to now, universities in the global South have aspired to be protagonists in development mainly through the contribution their graduates make as professionals to the advance of science and technology.

Research has been oriented towards the search for knowledge as an end in itself. There were attempts to link academic activity to social needs, but this was not sufficiently developed and restricted higher education to replicating a teaching model (knowledge transmission) whose justification was exclusively about professionalising the workforce.

Since the end of the 21st Century, developmental goals have been a core function of universities. This has not only been about increasing the number of graduates universities produce, but also about the way universities function and how they generate and promote wealth.

The current university model conceives knowledge as a product of systematic processes rationally designed to explain outer reality according to internationally agreed scientific, intellectual methods.

According to that model, knowledge production requires skills that are exclusive to scientists. Scientific knowledge occurs in the university and other suitable environments and is distinguished from extra-university or colloquial knowledge. This concept lies at the heart of 'world-class' universities and prevails in the scientific mainstream.

At present, universities in under-developed countries are compelled to adopt this traditional model, which effectively seals them off from the impoverished social context in which they are located.

However, knowledge production in such universities cannot be justified as a mere epistemological exercise. It has to respond to three main requirements: first, to be relevant to social and economic needs; second, to include diverse knowledge producers (communities, non-scientific or non-academic actors); and third, to embrace the diverse spaces where knowledge is produced.

Universities in under-developed countries debate the conflicting needs of expanding their scientific, technological and innovative potential and tackling the conditions that prolong inequality and poverty by constructing shared development alternatives that improve living conditions for their societies.

The latter is all about gaining a 'positive social return' on government investment in university education in developing countries and assessing the real impact that knowledge production has on achieving more than the minimal conditions necessary for survival for the majority of their inhabitants in terms of sanitary, educational, infrastructural and cultural wellbeing or, to put it another way, human development.

Even though there should be no contradiction between the role of universities and this positive social impact, if we analyse the issue in more depth we discover a significant tension between the practical instrumentation of that 'positive social return' and the traditional emphasis on scientific knowledge production.

Many of the contextual problems belonging to under-development can be resolved by the simple application or adaptation of previously produced knowledge; they do not demand highly sophisticated research into problems defined by an international scientific agenda which is more suited to the development of the most advanced countries.

This explains the emergence of different university models which are opposed to the leading international 'world-class' university model. One is the 'developmental university' model, which has acquired momentum in African and Latin American countries.

'Developmental universities' are those whose mission is to generate knowledge that supports problem-solving 'in, with and for' the social context in which the university finds itself and that contributes to human and sustainable development.

This model includes knowledge production aimed at building environmental sustainability and improving the quality of human life, either through research performed according to mainstream scientific standards or through research that incorporates everyday knowledge and dialogue with extra-academic actors.

Nevertheless, conventional codes are not appropriate either to evaluate the quality of Southern universities, or to map the knowledge production activities-actors of such universities.

Indicators such as publication in high-impact journals, international science prizes bestowed on scholars, patents and top rankings are incompatible with a university whose primary focus is to tackle the social problems of developing countries through the recognition of popular knowledge and the engagement of extra-university actors in the task of learning and recreating knowledge.

What kind of universities do developing countries need? Many tensions emerge when we try to reconcile the university model dedicated to advanced research with the university model dedicated to overcoming under-development. To address these tensions we have proposed a plural-framework for developing countries' universities.

Our hypothesis postulates that, in the context of developing countries, there cannot be a single model for universities. Rather, different models of universities or other higher education institutions that respond to diverse needs and are substantially different in quality, status and content need to coexist.

Some universities will reflect the top research centre model; others, the training or professionalising model; and there will be universities that focus their performance on social needs such as community engagement, social service, the micro-economy and social mobility.

* Maria Cristina Parra Sandoval, Ana Julia Bozo de Carmona and Alicia Inciarte are based at the Universidad del Zulia in Venezuela.

* Parra M, Bozo A and Inciarte A (2010): University: The last call? Published by Astro Data, Maracaibo, Venezuela. Read the full report here.

COMMENT:

I find this article very important in rethinking the role of universities and research in the south. Indeed, the "new academy" should be engaged with the real world, the everyday affairs of the people and the social responsability approach.

This is what higher education, at least in Latin America, should think about. A trans-disciplinary approach leads to this open market of ideas and knowledge production, involving different kinds of actors, and not only academics.

But this should not exclude the search for the most rigourous production, and a new kind of researcher. That's the challenge for our universities: how to develop a new vision of scientific research at the service of public affairs, how to promote a productive dialogue between researchers, society and policy-makers.

Ana Julia, Mariá Cristina and Alicia show us the very first challenge in the reanking. There is a way ahead.

Luis Carrizo, Latin American Centre for Human Economy, Uruguay