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What are the purposes of higher education in any nation? What do we ask of it? And what do we ask for it? We may think things are clear in everyone’s mind, but they are not, even for some specialists. The most obvious image is the one in the minds of pupils and their parents. They think graduates have a better social status, and believe that their certificate qualifies them to that status.
They think higher education is above the other types of education, and that it qualifies students for specific jobs, especially if these certificates are issued by the top faculties, as are called by the community. They also believe that the certificate is in itself is a social passport, regardless of the knowledge or skills that are supposed to be gained from that education. This image is so widespread because it is derived from the reality in which we live and our repeated experiences.
Another category views the issue from a professional utilitarian perspective, which is represented by the professional unions. From their prospective Higher education has to be in line with professionals (doctors, engineers, traders or else) and protect them, as if education was a reaction to the market needs or to the current situation of certain professions. This is a narrow-minded idea though. Higher education has several other benefits, summed up in the fact that it is the engine of development for any community. This education is not only a reaction to the job market, unemployment rates or the state of a profession in a particular period in time. This kind of education, which lays out the future and builds human beings capable of achieving development and not just filling vacancies, builds people who can create opportunities and not just benefit from them.
A few intellectuals look at higher education from a different perspective. They are the ones who ask the following question and answer it day in and day out in society and the media: Are we education providers, or builders of modernity and civilization?
The identity of universities
The identity of universities came to light in the Middle Ages to meet Europe’s political, material and spiritual needs, which emerged from the development of its civilization. Across centuries, universities took over a number of social tasks, and the diversity of these tasks constitutes universities’ unique personality.
Every university needs to “reproduce”, “spread” and “evolve” at the same time. They also need to know the reasons why change happens or why traditions are hard to die. For this to happen, they have to question what has been learned, to test the different patterns of thought in the community, and eventually run the risk and present the unexpected to those communities, which do not want things to change and indeed fight any reform or change in order to preserve a reality they simply got accustomed to, even if it is criticized.
Universities reflect the process of changes.
Their role in the society is to innovate and absorb the new, to build and transfer knowledge, and harmonize between knowledge, the ways to obtain and use it in the present, and future requirements. Based on this, the role of academic institutions is embodied in research, teaching and providing assistance for all activities, based on their capacity to oppose (critical dimension) and approve (the need to comply).
Functions of universities
The Magna Charta Observatory1 uses a model to
understand how balanced higher education reforms are between consistency and uniformity. It supposes that universities everywhere try to meet four goals: Welfare, order, meaning and the truth.
These goals, altogether, are the reason for the foundation and existence of these universities.
Universities focus on the welfare of the community. They prepare students to constructively integrate in the labor market through the acquisition of knowledge and skills, which are the tools for progress and development. They can also develop their research and innovation to strengthen the economic strength of a particular nation. The objective behind all this is to meet social needs effectively and economically. In this, the utilitarian goal of the investments that governments and stakeholders, who are concerned with organizing the physical entity of their societies, inject into their universities is justified.
There is indeed a significant return, and it can be measured on individuals and on the community.
As for social order, universities help the community to be harmonious, with its different groups exchanging references and turning science,
1 Institution founded in 2000 by the University of Bologna and the European University Association (EUA) to monitor the application of the principles of the Magna Charta and spread them to the world of higher education.
knowledge and technical skills into something appropriate. This requires setting the skills and the fields of knowledge related to civil integration, using them in teaching, and adapting them to the current social needs. Likewise, higher education defines people’s “qualifications”, and the various higher certificates and graduate studies become a passe-partout to get respectable well-paid jobs on the different steps of the social ladder. Universities are the most important source arranging higher qualifications.
As for meaning, universities deal with the axioms of life as are known by the community. They look at them from different global points of view, be they old or new, and reconsider the ideas and principles which are commonly accepted. They rearrange data according to new and different standards, be they intellectual, moral or aesthetic.
The richness of “meaning” lies in the full mastering of this knowledge and the different viewpoints, in the skepticism about these axioms, and in the ability to reorder the world as we know it in light of all this. Here comes the universities’ ability to indicate possible reforms in the society, and this is the basis of any civilizational leap in any nation.
When it comes to searching for the truth, universities explore the unknown as the natural order, of which humankind is part. The goal is not only to try to demolish walls of ignorance, but to question how deep man’s understanding is of the universe around him. The stages of this effort go hand in hand with the scientific method of reasoning, which universities must apply when studying the various sciences, and which includes skepticism, imagination and comprehension. This process is fraught with peril, as it may sometimes lead us to error and failure. Yet, this is accepted by science as long as it occurs through scientific reasoning and proof, and the search for the truth remains an essential part of universities’ work.
However, it must not be taken for granted that these roles are not played by universities alone.
Some of these tasks may indeed be taken over by other non-academic institutions, such as vocational training and special degrees as provided by specialized schools, or curricula offered by academies of art and science. Major industrial and public enterprises, too, can conduct research, while technical laboratories can work relentlessly on research, development and innovation for commercial enterprises. All this though, meets in one single melting pot called “university”. Yes, all these institutions can perform some of the university’s tasks to achieve the welfare of the community, contribute to students’ education, or participate in the search for the truth or confirm the meaning. Yet, the university remains the place that brings all these things together and grows them in an integrated way, and this makes it the beacon of civilization that I am talking about. A graduate remains concerned with being a source and indeed a grower of culture.
The specificity of universities
If the models portrait above are correct, we can say that universities are built on two main pivots. One moves from the focus on direct presence (the needs of well-being) to a new reality (the call to search for the truth), while the other moves from opposition (being critical) to approval (being committed and contributing to social productivity). The efforts made to harmonize those functions always lead to a search for one single goal, as literally mirrored by the very word uni-versitas.
Practically speaking, a university may focus on one or two of these functions, while the others would remain in the background to preserve its academic identity. However, it should refer to all of these four functions anyway, and give them different levels of importance so as to reflect it’s unique and various academic characteristics. But what are the pivots which lead to the highest level of cooperation among all areas and activities, and turn their merging into evidence and arguments that justify the specificity of each university, show its own system of values, and meet the needs of specific functions?
Modernization is the task assigned to universities not only in developing or semi- developing societies, but to all countries as modernization does not stop and should not stop . This objective includes the four tasks of a university as stated in this article. In order to understand the definition of modernity and its contents which lead to social change and scientific development, universities (a nation’s necessary institutions and the core of its cultural development) should survey the environment in which they are created and realize the possible complexities of change (this means academic freedom). Universities must set a vision of their commitments towards this transformation and determine how to use their assets in the best possible way (institutional autonomy). Practically speaking, this means determining the medium-term strategies that lead universities to lay down institutional policies that can be tested, measured and verified (this imposes the availability of accountability).
In his book “The Future of Culture in Egypt”, Taha Hussein, an Egyptian icon in education and culture history of Egypt, says and we quote
“it is not just a scientist who is created inside a university, but indeed a cultured civilized man who does not just want to be cultured, but is keen to be a source of culture. He does not just want to be civilized, but is keen to be a developer of civilization. If a university achieves non of these two goals, it is not worthy being called a University, but is indeed nothing more than a modest school. It is then not created to be a beacon of light for the country in which it is located and for mankind for whom it works. Instead, it becomes just a factory, preparing for mankind a group of workers with limited hopes and limited capabilities who can achieve limited good and carry out limited reforms.”
end of quote.
