DEFINING THE UNIVERSITY OF THE 21ST CENTURY

by Barry James

Disraeli managed to say it in 13 words: "A university should be a place of light, of liberty, and of learning".

More than 100 education ministers, hundreds of university heads, professors, consultants, international officials and even a token smattering of students spent the past week trying to come up with a new description of a university for the 21st century, taking many thousands of words to do so.

The delegates at the World Conference on Higher Education were grappling with some particularly modern problems, such as the vastly increased numbers of higher-level students from 13 million worldwide in 1970 to more than 80 million today, the inability of governments to pay for such expansion; the irruption of information technology and the concept that education has to become a lifelong process to cope with the constantly changing needs of work and society.

The most passionate call for change came from the director-general of UNESCO, Federico Mayor of Spain. "Never before in human history have communities everywhere, and millions upon millions of individuals everywhere, attached such importance and value to education," he said. "We realize we need a 'learning world to match the 'information society'. And people are crying out for a truly learning world. One where each and every person has the opportunity to fulfill his or her potential".

"No one - and I mean, quite literally, not one single person - should feel they are sentenced to lifelong exile from the world of learning. It is a matter of human dignity. It is a matter of democracy ".

Without a revolution in knowledge, Mr. Mayor added, the digital revolution could "only entrench inequality, injustice, exclusion".

The World Declaration on Higher Education for the Twenty-First Century came up with some recommendations that are somewhat advanced in parts of the world - for example, the idea that women should be treated as the equals of men in access to higher education, that university places should be awarded according to merit rather than membership of an elite; that universities should enjoy academic freedom or that they should be open to lifelong learning.

"Admission to higher education will depend on the merit, capacity, efforts, perseverance and devotion showed by those seeking access to it, and can take place in a lifelong scheme, at any time, with due recognition of previously acquired skills," the ministers said. "As a consequence, no discrimination can be accepted for access to higher education concerning race, sex, language, religion neither for any economic or social distinctions, nor for physical disabilities."

The document also stressed that universities must have the role of promoting peace.

An accompanying "framework for priority action" insisted that students should be considered "among the main stakeholders of higher education" who should be associated "with the policy decisions and organization of management structures".

But radical student views in those parts of the world where the three Rs stand for rebellion, revolution and rioting did not find a place in this government-sponsored meeting. It was left to relatively tame bodies such as the International Movement of Catholic Students and the International Association of Students in Economics and Management to put the learners' point of view in a debate sponsored by the British Department for Education and Employment. The final documents had nothing to say about the growing practice in the United States and other developed countries of providing specialized higher education within companies and - workplaces, which some experts believe is a challenge to the traditional concept of the university. The consensus of the ministers was that higher education remains the responsibility of the state.

Prime Minister Lionel Jospin of France said the state remained the essential guarantor of equal opportunity in education. Mr. Jospin said higher education must adapt to the market economy, but it must not be determined by the market".

The ministers also stressed that higher education must do better at preparing students for work - to turn out job creators rather than unemployed graduates.

They also emphasized the role of universities in promoting civilization and human values. They must "exercise their intellectual capacity and moral prestige to defend and disseminate universally accepted values, such as peace, justice, freedom, equality and solidarity," the ministers said. They should enjoy academic freedom "while being responsible and accountable to society".

Abridged from The International Herald Tribune

9.b. Explain the meanings and give examples of usage of the following words from the article above. Use the chart below.

9.с Answer the questions using the information from the text

UK UNIVERSITIES

A large proportion of young people – about a third in England and Wales and almost half in Scotland – continue an in-education at a more advanced level beyond the age of 18. The higher education centre provides a variety of courses up to degree and post-graduate degree level, and carried out research.

The main higher education institutions in the UK are universities, teacher training colleges and other colleges of technology and art, including:

– 108 universities (one of which – the University of London – comprises over 40 institution) and 19 colleges and institutes of higher education which have the power to award their own degrees;

– 34 other colleges of higher education, which do not have degree-awarding powers but provide courses leading to degrees validated by universities; and

– the Open University, which provides part-time higher education opportunities through open and distance learning.

British universities are independent self-governing institutions. Although they all receive considerable financial support from the state, the Department for Education and Skills has no control over their regulations, curriculum, examinations, appointment of staff, or the way in which government funds are spent. The funds are allocated by the Department on the advice of the university grants committee, a body appointed by the Secretary of State. The universities discuss matters of common interest and express their views on these matters through the Committee of Vice-Chancellors.

Uniformity of standards between universities is promoted by employing external examiners for all university examinations.

The government is encouraging universities to co-operate closely with industry on research. Around 60 science parks have been set up by higher education institutions in conjunction with industrial scientists and technologists to promote the development and commercial application of advanced technology.

All universities fall into several broad categories.

Oxford and Cambridge: the ancient English foundations. These two universities founded in the Middle Ages (Oxford in 1168, Cambridge in 1209), and the oldest in British and were the only universities in England until the early 19^th century. As Oxford and Cambridge have much in common, they are often referred to collectively as Oxbridge.

Two features of Oxford and Cambridge are widely admired and are being gradually extended to other universities. One of the distinctive features is that they are collegiate universities organized into a federation of colleges. Each college is completely autonomous so far as their property, finance, and internal affairs are concerned, but the university awards degrees and determines the conditions on which they are awarded. Students become members of the university by becoming members of their colleges. Among the best known college at Oxford are Trinity College, St. John's College, Jesus College St Anne's College, Magdalen College, St Hilda's College (for women), and at Cambridge: Christ's College, Churchill College, King's College, New Hall. All the students live in the hostel and so does the majority of the teaching staff.

The value of the collegiate system lies in fostering a community spirit, in which a useful mingling of intelligence can take place.

Although the colleges and the universities are separate corporations, all are parts of an integrated educational entity.

The other feature of Oxbridge is the tutorial system, whereby each student gets personal tuition once a week in his tutor's own room. This, with a weekly programme of private study is considered so important at Oxbridge that students are not even compelled to attend general lectures, which must therefore be of high quality to attract a large modern audience.

Although Oxford and Cambridge educate less than one tenth of Britain's total university student population, they continue to attract many of the best brains and to mesmerise a greater number, partly on account of their prestige as well as on account of the seductive beauty of their buildings and surroundings.

There is a real problem about the exclusiveness of Britain's two oldest universities. Though Oxbridge is no longer the preserve of the social elite, as now it is open to all according to their intellectual ability. Nevertheless, Oxbridge retains its exclusive and spellbinding culture, creating a narrow social and intellectual channel, from which the nation's leaders are almost exclusively drawn. If the expectation is that Oxbridge will dominate the controlling positions in the state and economy, is the country ignoring equal talent, which does not have the Oxbridge label?

The Old Scottish Universities.Scotland boasts four ancient universities: St. Andrews (1411), Glasgow (1451), Aberdeen (1495), and Edinburgh (1583). In the Scottish lowlands, greater value was placed on education during the XVI and later centuries than in much of England. These universities were created with strong links with the ancient universities of continental Europe, and followed their longer and broader course of studies. Even today, Scottish universities provide 4-year undergraduate courses, compared with the usual 3-year courses in England and Wales.

The “Modern”, or “Civic” (“Redbrick”) Universities.The civic universities mostly were founded as university colleges in large industrial towns and cities in the latter half of the XIX century and the early years of the XX and prepared students for external degrees of London University.Later they became universities of theirown right.

The word civic means urban. These universities were founded to serve the needs of their city and the surrounding area, in contrast to Oxford, Cambridge, and London universities, which took students from all over the country.

Civic universities are usually referred to by the slightly contemptuous term 'red brick universities.' This described their construction, which is contrasted with the more dignified and solid-looking ancient stone architecture of Oxford and Cambridge.

Civic universities meet the needs of industrial revolution and include Durham,1832, Manchester,1851, Birmingham 1900,Liverpool1903,Leeds,1904,Sheffield,1905, Bristol 1909,Reading,1926Exeter,1955Leicester,1957.

The University of London was constituted by Royal Charter in 1836 as a body empowered to examine and confer London University degrees on students of certain approved and recognized institutions. These degrees were called external and until 1900 London University restricted its work to awarding them, except in Medicine. London was the first British university to admit women to its degrees (in 1878). The University now is not only an examining body, but a teaching institution as well. It has become a federation of colleges. The largest of the London colleges are like universities in themselves, having many different faculties and departments. Others specialize in certain subjects, for example the London School of Economics and Political Science or the Imperial College of Science and Technology. All arrange their own lectures and classes, but the university organizes the examinations and awards degrees

The University of Walesalso stands aside in the modern civic universities. It consists of university colleges (e.g. Wales College of Cardiff, University College of Swansea) and a medical school. Before it became a university, it was a college that offered courses leading to the external degrees of London University.

The New (“Glass”) Universitiesare the third wave of Universities founded after the World War II. In the 60s of the 20^th century appeared Universities ofSussex, Essex, Keele, Warwick, Kent, York.The new universities were established to meet the need for more university places to cater for advances in technology. Their most distinctive features are that they were empowered to award their own degrees and that they tried to design courses which break down the conventional departmental structure and enable undergraduates to study different subject areas with equal intensity.

The Technological Universities founded as technical colleges in the XIX century, became colleges of advanced technology (CATs) and received full university status in 1965. Some examples of the ten technological Universities are University of Aston in Birmingham; Bath University of Technology, Heriot-Watt University, University of Bradford, University of Surrey.

The Former Polytechnicswere granted the University status by the Further and Higher Education Act of 1992. The polytechnics received the full range of degree-awarding powers instead of having their course and degrees validated by the Council for National Academic Awards (CNAA). 39 institutions which have been affected changed their titles as a response to their new status. Some of them are Bournemouth University, University of Greenwich, Staffordshire University, University of Portsmouth, Middlesex University, University of Westminster, University of Central England in Birminghametc.

The Open University(Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire) is claimed to be the first successful distance teaching university. It arouse as the result of social programmes by the government of Britain in 1969 to break the insidious between exclusivity and excellence. The OU was founded on belief that communications technology could bring high quality degree-level learning to people who had not had an opportunity to attend campus universities. Many of its students tended to be older and had for a variety of reasons missed the opportunity of higher education in their youth. There are no formal entry requirements for admission to undergraduate courses which are based on the credit system and are designed for students precluded from achieving their aims through an existing institution of higher education. Teaching is undertaken by means of a combination of printed material, face-to-face tuition, short residential schools, radio, television, audio and video tapes, computers and home experiment kits. The University also offers continuing education courses including in-service training for teachers, updating courses for managers, scientists and technologists and short courses of community education.

The University of Buckingham.The privately financed University of Buckingham was founded as a University College and admitted its first students in February 1976. Later it received its Royal Charter. It offers two-year courses in law, accountancy, sciences and economics, which now lead to the degree of Bachelor. It is also enabled to award higher degrees.

1.b For the following statements indicate one or several names or types of universities and colleges, mentioned in the text above.

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