Role of Universities and Preparation Towards the Knowledge Economy

1. Role of Universities and Preparation Towards the Knowledge Economy Dr Edilberto C de Jesus Secretariat Director SEAMEO 22 May 2006

2. Basic Questions • What is the role of the University? • What are the requirements of the Knowledge Economy? • Does the role of the University change with the emergence of the Knowledge Economy?

3. KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY • EXPONENTIAL EXPANSION OF KNOWLEDGE • ACCELERATED PACE OF CHANGE • INCREASED INTENSITY OF COMPETITION

4. PRESSURES ON THE UNIVERSITY • SCOPE OF OFFERINGS • DEPTH OF COVERAGE • EXPANSION OF RESOURCE BASE • DIVERSITY OF STAKEHOLDERS

5. INCREASE COURSE REQUIREMENTS? the practical error of the last twenty years-- to load the memory of the student with a mass of undigested knowledge, [and] to force upon him so much that he has rejected all. It has been the error of distracting and enfeebling the mind by an unmeaning profusion of subjects; of implying that a smattering in a dozen branches of study is not shallowness, which it really is, but enlargement, which it is not;

6. The Idea of A University Defined and Illustrated In nine discourses delivered in 1852 in Dublin By John Henry Cardinal Newman

7. The Idea of A University • A PLACE OF TEACHING UNIVERSAL KNOWLEDGE • DEDICATED TO THE DIFFUSION AND TRANSMISSION OF KNOWLEDGE • Objective is not the advancement of knowledge, not scientific and philosophical discovery

8. Educational Process • Acquisition of knowledge • Development of argumentative powers • Forming intellectual capacities

9. ASPIRATION FOR “UNIVERSAL KNOWLEDGE” • An assemblage of learned men, zealous for their own sciences, and rivals of each other, are brought, by familiar intercourse and for the sake of intellectual peace, to adjust together the claims and relations of their respective subjects of investigation. They learn to respect, to consult, to aid each other.

10. Thus is created a pure and clear atmosphere of thought, which the student also breathes, though in his own case he only pursues a few sciences . . . . He profits by an intellectual tradition, which is independent of particular teachers, which guides him in his choice of subjects, and duly interprets for him those which he chooses. He apprehends the great outlines of knowledge, the principles on which it rests, the scale of its parts . . . as he otherwise cannot apprehend them. Hence it is that his education is called "Liberal."

11. UNIVERSITY EDUCATION the true and adequate end of intellectual training and of a University is not Learning or Acquirement, but rather, is Thought or Reason exercised upon Knowledge, or what may be called Philosophy

12. GOAL OF “PHILOSOPHY” A habit of mind is formed which lasts through life, of which the attributes are, freedom, equitableness, calmness, moderation, and wisdom;

13. PROCESS To open the mind, to correct it, to refine it, to enable it to know, and to digest, master, rule, and use its knowledge, to give it power over its own faculties, application, flexibility, method, critical exactness, sagacity, resource, address, eloquent expression,

14. PHILOSOPHY FOR A LIBERAL EDUCATION This process of training, by which the intellect, instead of being formed or sacrificed to some particular or accidental purpose, some specific trade or profession, or study or science, is disciplined for its own sake, for the perception of its own proper object, and for its own highest culture, is called Liberal Education;this I conceive to be the business of a University

15. Liberal Education, viewed in itself, is simply the cultivation of the intellect, as such, and its object is nothing more or less than intellectual excellence.

16. the cultivation of the "understanding," of a "talent for speculation and original inquiry," and of "the habit of pushing things up to their first principles," is a principal portion of a good or liberal education.

17. the business of a University [is] . . . to employ itself in the education of the intellect,—just as the work of a Hospital lies in healing the sick or wounded . . . . It educates the intellect to reason well in all matters, to reach out towards truth, and to grasp it.

18. as a man in health can do what an unhealthy man cannot do . . . so in like manner, general culture of mind is the best aid to professional and scientific study, and educated men can do what illiterate cannot;

19. PRODUCT • the man who has learned to think and to reason and to compare and to discriminate and to analyze, who has refined his taste, and formed his judgment, and sharpened his mental vision, will not indeed at once be a lawyer, or a pleader, or an orator, or a statesman, or a physician, or a good landlord, or a man of business, or a soldier, or an engineer, or a chemist, or a geologist, or an antiquarian,

20. but he will be placed in that state of intellect in which he can take up any one of the sciences or callings . . . for which he has a taste or special talent, with an ease, a grace, a versatility, and a success, to which another is a stranger.

21. SOCIAL DIMENSION "Society itself requires some other contribution from each individual, besides the particular duties of his profession. And, if no such liberal intercourse be established, it is the common failing of human nature, to be engrossed with petty views and interests, to underrate the importance of all in which we are not concerned, and to carry our partial notions into cases where they are inapplicable, to act, in short, as so many unconnected units, displacing and repelling one another.

22. But the professional character is not the only one which a person engaged in a profession has to support. He is not always upon duty. There are services he owes, which are neither parochial, nor forensic, nor military, . . . and yet are in no wise . . . inferior neither in their intrinsic value, nor their moral import, nor their impression upon society.

23. As a friend, as a companion, as a citizen at large; in the connections of domestic life; in the improvement and embellishment of his leisure, he has a sphere of action, . . . in which if he can show none of the advantages of an improved understanding, whatever may be his skill or proficiency in the other, he is no more than an ill-educated man.

24. It is the education which gives a man a clear conscious view of his own opinions and judgments, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them, and a force in urging them. It teaches him to see things as they are, to go right to the point, to disentangle a skein of thought, to detect what is sophistical, and to discard what is irrelevant.

25. It prepares him to fill any post with credit, and to master any subject with facility. It shows him how to accommodate himself to others, how to throw himself into their state of mind, how to bring before them his own, how to influence them, how to come to an understanding with them, how to bear with them.

26. A University training is the great ordinary means to a great but ordinary end; it aims at raising the intellectual tone of society, at cultivating the public mind, at purifying the national taste, at supplying true principles to popular enthusiasm and fixed aims to popular aspiration, at giving enlargement and sobriety to the ideas of the age, at facilitating the exercise of political power, and refining the intercourse of private life.

27. MODIFYING NEWMAN • MULTIPLE PATHWAYS TO INTELLECTUAL EXCELLENCE • MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCE

28. ASSUMPTION UNIVERSITY:VISION 2000 • International Community of Scholars • Enlivened by Christian Inspiration • Engaged in the Pursuit of Truth and Knowledge • Serving Human Society

29. ASSUMPTION UNIVERSITY GRADUATE • Healthy, Open-minded, with Personal Integrity, Independent Mind and Creative Thinking • Professionally Competent, Willing to Exercise Responsible Leadership for Economic Progress in a Just Society

30. ASSUMPTION UNIVERSITY GRADUATE • Able to Communicate Effectively, with People from other Nations and to Participate in Globalization

31. CONCLUDING QUESTIONS • TO WHAT EXTENT DOES ASSUMPTION UNIVERSITY FIT NEWMAN’S MODEL OF THE CLASSIC UNIVERSITY? • IS NEWMAN’S MODEL OF THE UNIVERSITY ADEQUATE FOR THE AGE OF THE KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY?

32. CONCLUDING QUESTIONS • HOW SHOULD ASSUMPTION UNIVERSITY CHANGE TO MEET THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY?

33. Thank you