Hossam Badrawi Official Website
By Dr. Hossam Badrawi, 22 Feb. 2016
What are the objectives expected from higher education in any nation? What do we seek of it and for it? We may imagine that things are clear in everyone’s mind, but they are not, even in the minds of some specialists. The simplest of these images is what mostly lies in the minds of parents and students. They see that a higher education graduate enjoys a better social status and his certificate qualifies its holder for such a status. They consider higher education superior to other types of education. There is even a psychological grouping within. They consider a university graduate superior to an institute graduate, an institute graduate superior to a technical education graduate and, undoubtedly, superior to general secondary school certificate.
These families also believe that the state, throughout its modern history, requires a higher education certificate for appointment in its significant jobs, and that it qualifies its students to employment, especially if it is an excellent higher education certificate represented by “the top faculties” as the community called it, or that the certificate itself is a social passport, notwithstanding the knowledge or skills that should be acquired from this education. I cannot deny this image in the minds of its beholders, as it is driven from the reality they live in and their repeated experience.
Another category looks at the matter from the view of the class interest, represented by syndicates. Medical Syndicate, for example, or other syndicates, would like to prevent expansion in medicine faculties, etc., not out of the prospective of expected quality or the high cost of establishing them, but out of a narrower prospective: protecting currently existing doctors or other professionals. If digital calculations show that the number of doctors compared with the number of population, for example, matches or close to the indications created by some at a certain point of time, then let us protect the currently existing doctors and prevent the youth from fulfilling their desires, even if they are qualified for it. Meaning, higher education should match and protect professionals, whether doctors, engineers, traders or other professionals and close the door in front of the future to protect the present reality, as if education is a reaction to the professional reality or market needs. It is an inadequate and narrow-minded perspective since higher education has other multiple benefits that are summed up in being the engine of development in any community. It is an education that does not come as a reaction to the status of job market, unemployment rates or status of a profession at a given moment. It is the type of education that shapes the future, builds people that are capable of making development, not just filling the gap of needs, and builds a human that creates and achieves opportunity, not just beneficiary from it.
A few intellectuals look at higher education from a different perspective. It is their and scientists’ turn to ask, “Are we educational service providers, or modernity builders and civilization makers?” And to repeat talking about its answer in the community, media and among the teaching staff members, who over time the idea of fulfilling a duty like a public servant and providing the educational service according to the curriculum approved by the ministry or Supreme Council of Universities has been enhanced. Enlightenment plays a role in asking the question, in response to what happens to the universities and higher education institutions worldwide.
University identity
Throughout centuries, universities took over some social functions. Diversity of these functions forms the unique personality that a university acquires. All universities need “multiplication”, ”expansion” and “development” simultaneously. They also require knowing the reasons for change or for adherence to traditions. In order to do so, they must question about what has been acquired and test the various patterns of thinking existing in society. A university should take the risk of providing all that are unexpected for communities that find it easier to keep it as is, even fight innovation and change to maintain the accustomed reality, even if it is criticized.
Universities embody the change processes, as its role in community is innovating and understanding what is new, conveying and making knowledge, achieving harmony and adaptation between knowledge, how to obtain it and use it in present time, and the future requirements. Based on this, the role of academic institutions is manifested in research, teaching and assisting all activities based on its ability to object, “critical aspect”, and to agree, “need for commitment”.
University functions
Everywhere, a university is supposed to fulfill four goals: welfare, order, meaning and truth. Thus, these goals collectively are the reason for founding and existence of these universities.
A university focuses on community welfare, either by preparing its students for constructive integration within the labor market, through acquiring knowledge and skills that form a tool to make progress and achieve advancement, or developing its research and innovation field to strengthen the economic power of a certain nation. The goal behind this lies in fulfilling the social needs effectively and economically. Hence, the beneficial goal of the investments that governments and the parties interested in organizing the physical entity of their communities direct to their universities is justifiable; there is a tangible measurable return on individuals and community.
For social system, a university helps community to be a “harmonious community” in which different groups exchange references and make science, knowledge and technical skills something convenient and adequate. This requires developing the skills and fields of knowledge related to civil integration, using it in teaching and adapting it with the current social needs. Higher education determines people’s “qualifications”. Certificates of higher education and post-graduate studies of different types become laissez-passer to well-paid prestigious posts of the various social system classes. Universities are the most significant source of organizing higher qualifications.
As for the meaning issue, a university addresses the life axioms, as known by the community. It examines the old and new various international points of view, reconsiders the accepted and settled intellectual references and reorganizes data according to the new and different standards, whether intellectual, moral or aesthetic. Enriching the meaning lies in complete and comprehensive awareness of these different types of knowledge and points of view, questioning the axioms and reorganizing the world as we know in this light. This results in the university capability of indicating the possible reforms in society, which is the base of any civilizational transition made by nations.
When the university addresses the issue of seeking the truth, it explores the unknown being the natural system of which humanity is a part. The goal here does not lie in just attempting to destroy the walls of ignorance, but also to deeply question about how man understands the surrounding universe. Phases of this effort meet the scientific reasoning method that universities should apply in studying various sciences. This method includes questioning, imagination and understanding. It is sometimes a risky process as it may lead to error and failure. Science accepts these things as long as they are conducted under scientific reasoning and proof approach. However, seeking the truth remains a basic input to the university function.
University Privacy
If the abovementioned models are meaningful, we can say that universities are built on 2 axes. One of them moves from focusing on direct existence, “welfare needs”, to the new reality, “call for seeking the truth.” The other moves from objecting, “critical side”, to agreeing, “commitment and institution’s contribution to social productivity side”. The efforts exerted to achieve consistency of these functions always lead to seeking the unity of purpose, as it appears in the term “uni-versitas” itself.
The modernization process is considered the function assigned to universities in developing and semi-developing societies, as it was assigned to them in many advanced economies. This objective includes the university’s four functions, as mentioned in this article. To define modernity and understand its contents that lead to social change and scientific advancement, universities, as institutions necessary for the nation and a building block of the region cultural development, should survey the environment in which they are established, realize the expected complications of change. ”This means the academic freedom“. Universities should develop their vision towards commitment to this transformation and identify how use their assets in the best possible ways. “This means the institutional independency”. Practically, the aforementioned means identifying medium-term strategies, which lead to institutional policies that can be tested, measured and verified. “And this imposes accountability”.
I would like to conclude this article by a saying of Taha Hussein, who inspired me in his book “The future of Culture in Egypt”. 70 years ago, Dr. Hussein said:
“A university is not a place where a scientist only is made up, but where a civilized man, who is not satisfied by being cultured but concerned to be a source of culture, is made up. He isn’t satisfied by being civilized, but concerned to be a civilization developer. If the university fails to achieve one of these two features, then it doesn’t deserve to be a university; it is just one of so many humble schools. It doesn’t deserve to be a source of light for the homeland where it’s established and for the humanity it works for. It is merely a factory that prepares for humanity a group of workmen whose expectations are limited in making good and reform.”
