Higher Education crucial to meeting the MDGs - Sharma

Recent flight chaos caused by the volcanic ash cloud has prevented the Commonwealth Secretary-General from attending the Vice Chancellors Conference in Cape Town, South Africa.

The Conference, organised by the Association of Commonwealth Universities and taking place between 25 and 27 April, will focus on ‘Universities and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)’, which Kamalesh Sharma adopts as the theme of his speech.

‘Heart of education’

He begins by echoing the words of Professor Mahmoud Mamdani of Columbia University, who addressed Commonwealth Education Ministers in Cape Town back in 2006.

“Higher education is the strategic heart of education,” Professor Mamdani claimed then. “It is where choices are developed.”

Mr Sharma says he is also of the view that Higher Education is “where the real skills and real motors for development are born,” and that in today’s information societies, “knowledge drives economic growth and development, and higher education is the main spring which generates this drive.”

While acknowledging that Higher Education is anything but perfect – “it still has limited reach and unequal access”, for instance – Mr Sharma stresses that “the health of the Higher Education sector is the surest sign of a society on the move.”

He points to the global powerhouses of the US, China and India, all of which have focused heavily on expanding Higher Education.

How do you marry Higher Education and MDGs?

Mr Sharma’s speech looks at the eight MDGs, in each case asking how they can be married to Higher Education.

With Goal 1, that of eradicating poverty, the Commonwealth Secretary-General says that this is “in part achieved by universities as factories of brainpower and business leadership... Simply, graduates generate wealth: just ask corporations who take their executives and smart workers from the institutions of the developing world.”

In response to criticism that Higher Education’s role in generating wealth may seem a world away from the task of eradicating poverty, he argues that Higher Education has a “long and honourable tradition of rural development, training and research.”

He mentions the Commonwealth of Learning’s ‘Lifelong Learning for Farmers’ Programme, which melds local and international solutions in places like India, Uganda, Kenya and Papua New Guinea. “Food security, and developing new technologies for living off the land, are major determinants in the fight against poverty,” he adds.

Ensuring primary education and gender parity in all walks of life – Goals 2 and 3 – are tailor-made for Higher Education assistance, Mr Sharma goes on to say. For it is from Universities that quality teachers of both sexes emerge to teach at primary level. He quotes UNESCO that the world needs at least 10 million additional teachers by 2015 (another 15% of the current global teaching workforce) if Universal Primary Education is to be achieved, and a serious start made on expanding secondary education.

Role of research

Moving on to goals 4 and 5 – reducing child mortality and improving maternal health – Mr Sharma states that they rely on university research, and university training of nurses and doctors.

“Their role in researching vaccines, medicines and treatment for Goal 6 is also self–evident,” and the seventh MDG, seeking environmental sustainability, also lends itself to university research, he insists, especially in the search for less carbon-intensive energy usage.

In looking ahead to the events of the three-day conference, Mr Sharma hopes that they will “be underpinned by the spirit of the eighth and final MDG, that of international partnership”.

“As key institutions of civil society, universities are uniquely positioned between the communities they serve, and the governments they advise,” he says. “They are at the core of societies – and often in the rebuilding of broken societies.”

Key Links:

• Education

Related News:

• Association of Commonwealth Universities