Globalization and Education Roundtable
April 25, 2007
The Impact of Globalization on the American Land-Grant University
Robert A. Kennedy, President, University of Maine
• Thank you. It is a great
pleasure to be here and an honor to be co-hosting this conference with
the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research.
• I want to compliment the tremendous educational leadership of both His
Highness Sheikh Nahyan and His Excellency Dr. Hassan.
• Even being in this country only briefly, you can not help but be
impressed with the philosophy and accomplishments of the educational
system in the UAE—at every level—and what it means to the future of this
country and its contributions to our world.
• I've also had the opportunity to learn a lot about the goals and
aspirations for this country's educational system for the future—the
hopes to provide educational and leadership opportunities for women,
increasing research efforts, and quite simply, having a pre-eminent
higher educational system. That vision is inspiring and I don't have any
doubt that it will be achieved soon.
• I offer my special thanks and wishes to Dr. Suwaidi, the
director-general of the Emirates Center, who I was privilaged to spend
time with earlier today. And thanks, too, to Dr. Aida Azdi and Nicolas
Heard for executing such an impressive conference—which, on behalf of
the University of Maine—we have been so delighted and honored to
co-sponsor.
• My colleagues and I also had the privledge of visiting Dean Peggy
Blackwell at Zayed University yesterday—the hospitality, goals and
programs of that institution are tremendously impressive and my
congratulations to Provost Muir on her appointment there.
• Yesterday someone described Abu Dhabi as "warm, welcome and safe."
It's all of that, but I have found that the welcoming and hospitality
aspects of my first visit to this country to be overwhelmingly positive.
• At the University of Maine, we are very proud to have two centers
named after people who have had a significant role in increasing the
understanding of the Middle East for Americans: Secretary Cohen, who
provided the keynote address for this conference on Monday, and Senator
George Mitchell—who, by the way, is extremely proud of his Middle
Eastern heritage. Both our William S. Cohen Center for International
Policy and Commerce and the Sen. George S. Mitchell Center for
Environmental and Watershed Research, have been instrumental in bringing
international recognition to the University of Maine.
• As president of a public university—a land-grant university—in the
U.S., I have witnessed the impact and consequences of globalization in
our society and especially upon higher education, but it's also affected
the way that colleges and universities interact with governmental
agencies, with businesses—and most certainly—it has provided
opportunities and challenges for students.
• Higher education is subject to forces of change from a number of
factors, including the economy, demographic shifts, federal and state
policies, public opinion and even the environment.
• Globalization is a major "force of change," too, with opportunities
and risks as many speakers (including Sec. Cohen) have pointed out.
President Emeritus Charles Vest, from MIT, expressed his optimism about
globalization in higher education—which I certainly agree with—when he
said that for higher education, "the solution is to strengthen the
quality and nature of science and engineering education, with a focus on
technological proficiency, leadership, and international vision." I
would simply add that all disciplines need to be included since many of
the most vexing problems are not the technological ones.
• At MIT, where Vest served as president, globalization has been
described as "a new phase for the research university; creating a
physical and/or virtual presence in other countries, alliances with
overseas partners, and freely shared, digitally housed content."
This conference is, in fact, a wonderful step on helping to accomplish
those goals.
• The Internet, which has impacted globalization so much, increases
accessibility and it creates new ways of teaching, doing research,
creating technology and doing business. It also means an explosion of
new opportunities. If universities through the late 20th century were
shaped by nationalism, universities of the 21st century are being shaped
by globalism.
• The World Bank estimates worldwide spending on higher education at
$300 billion per year. There are more than 80 million students around
the world, and 3.5 million people employed in higher education. One
report predicts that the number of higher education students will
probably reach 120 million by 2010—three short years—and this part of
the world will certainly be in that kind of growth mode. In the U.S.,
one of the surprising trends is the increase in college enrollment by
older adults and much of that is attributable to on-line courses and an
interest in world affairs.
• From small community colleges to the largest research universities,
the push to internationalize is shaking up American higher education. In
a survey of education leaders issued last month—globalization was seen
as one of the top issues in American higher education.
• I think that this situation was well summarized by the provost at
Tufts University (Jamshed Bharucha). He wrote—and these sentiments have
been echoed throughout this conference—that: "National borders can no
longer contain the most serious problems the world faces, be they
economic, environmental, health-related, or political. Through education
and research, universities play key roles in addressing these problems."
• He continued by saying: "Higher education should equip us not only to
seize the economic opportunities afforded by globalization, but also to
navigate an increasingly interconnected, crowded and dangerous world. We
fail to understand other cultures at our peril."
• Most students, faculty, staff, and government officials well accept
the fact that international academic exchange and mobility are critical
aspects of university inquiry and teaching. The knowledge economy is
growing rapidly worldwide, and in most advanced nations, national wealth
now depends more on education and creativity than on natural resources.~
Consequently, the value of, and demand for, higher education is
increasing worldwide.
• At UMaine, which is a mid-sized university, we have students from 47
states and 76 countries. International students and faculty members add
a vital aspect to our curriculum and our community. The corporations
that hire our graduates have themselves become globalized.~ They expect
that our graduates will be capable of working in Tom Friedman's
flattened world, which means that our graduates need new skills and
increased exposure to multiple cultures.~
• In a national survey conducted by the American Council on Education,
more than 70 percent of U.S. students said it's important that the
university they attend offer foreign language and international courses,
study abroad programs, and opportunities to interact with foreign
students. Eighty-six percent agreed that having international students
on campus enriches the learning experience of American students. The
importance given to international learning opportunities by both
students and the American public suggests that universities with robust
international offerings will have a competitive advantage in attracting
future students.
• Globalization is a phenomenon to which universities both respond to
and contribute to.
• Faculty collaborate on research with overseas colleagues. We have
numerous examples at UMaine, including an international Antarctic
research expeditionary program at our Climate Change Institute,
international collaborations related to archaeological research in South
America, and even engineering research on the horse racing track here in
Abu Dhabi!
• Additionally, the Internet makes it easy for us to team-teach or to do
collaborative research across the globe, just as it does from one part
of a state to another.
• We now have various ways of delivering courses by means that overcome
barriers and broaden access—we offer 441courses each semester through
the Web, and I learned yesterday from my colleague, Dr. Baktiari, that
we offer 71 lectures by podcast!
• Interestingly, when the Internet first came into existence, some
forecast that it would mark the end of residential colleges as we know
them. In fact, not only have residential colleges grown, they have
incorporated distance technologies into the curriculum in unforeseen
ways like lab-based courses in the sciences and engineering, medical
education and other areas that were previously only taught "hands-on."
Once the technology is in place on both ends of the Internet connection
and the curricular materials are prepared, it is just as easy to employ
it between Augusta, Maine and Abu-Dhabi as it is between Augusta, our
state capital, and Orono, Maine, where the university is located.
• International student and faculty exchange (and the related rise of
international credit recognition and transfer) serve to diversify our
communities and broaden our perspectives even more.
• As an aside, I would note that in 2005, U.S. universities and
educational entities had 30,000 academic, professional and cultural
exchanges, including the prestigious Fulbright Program. Now, there are
almost 800,000 alumni of all exchange programs.
• Also important are professional disciplinary conferences held
throughout the world, such as this excellent conference on globalization
between our Cohen Center and the Emirates Center, and a planned 2008
international climate change conference at UMaine.
• For the U.S., sending Americans abroad is only part of the evolving
calculus of responding to globalization. Bringing foreign researchers
and students to U.S. institutions matters just as much, but as has been
noted many times in this meeting, in the wake of the September 11
terrorist attack, the U.S. government has placed much tighter controls
over who comes to the U.S. and how long they can stay.
• In the aftermath of 9/11, U.S. colleges and universities have been
called upon to make major changes in the reporting and documentation of
international students and scholars, and the number of international
students has just recently returned to pre-9/11 levels.
• Presidents of American colleges and universities remain concerned,
however, that the federal government's understandable efforts to
strengthen security initiatives through new visa policies and procedures
have had unintended consequences. Most significantly, obtaining a visa
has become a roadblock to U.S. higher education. Despite recent U.S.
State Department efforts to alleviate this problem, we continue to hear
from students and scholars that the process is bottlenecked and
difficult to navigate. As a result, these problems are discouraging and
they are preventing significant numbers of international students and
scholars from studying and working in the United States, hurting us and
the home country.
• There is a perception that American higher education has not embraced
globalization, that we have been too reactive in our policies and our
overall approach. But, education is global and we know that. The
weaknesses, in areas such as immigration and even overcoming language
barriers, are largely the result of American history, geography and
ideology—but no matter what the reason—need to be overcome, and I hope
soon.
• What has complicated the situation even more is the limitation of
resources, and occasionally, the complicating policies affecting public
universities by state legislatures.
• The impact and consequences are significant for American people and
American universities, but not all states have the same kind of
resources. In fact, state support for public higher education has been
in decline for many years. An American Association of University
Professors report pointed to a Cornell University Ph.D. thesis on this
subject, revealing a quarter-century decline of more than one-third,
when looking at the percentage of state budgets going to higher
education. The pace of that decline has accelerated in recent years, and
it is more pronounced in some states than others. Conversely, one could
argue that the internet has added new technologies that can offer
courses much cheaper and to a worldwide audience, bringing in revenues
not heretofore available.
• The post 9/11 world has added challenges, but multiculturalism
continues to be not only a goal, but a necessity for those of us who
wish to truly educate our students and serve our society. We are
determined to keep our university open to the most talented and
brightest students and faculty from all over the world, particularly
from the Muslim world, the Middle East and Asia.
• This means taking a leadership role in establishing collaborative
relationships, maximizing resources and sharing expertise for the common
good.
• Examples of new ways of doing this include UMaine's School of Policy
and International Affairs and its Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences
– just two examples of "virtual schools"—an increasingly common, and
often necessary approach. Circumstances are causing us to constantly
explore new ways of maximizing our resources, sharing expertise with
like-minded institutions such as other universities, and developing the
programs that will help us achieve the collective goals that benefit
society.
• While the theme of this conference might be globalization—and I'm
honored to be here to talk about higher education's role in that—the
most rapid and surely the best and most secure route to a global
existence is for the international education, research, business,
government, and cultural sectors to move forward together, as pointed
out so well and so frequently at this conference.
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