2.7. Challenges Faced By
Institutions In Meeting Their Missions
Formulating and developing correctly the university's mission
and commitment means a series of challenges that particularly affect higher
education, which is facing the most radical transformation and renovation in
its history. This is mainly due to the following reasons:
1. Knowledge not only
changes within each discipline but also in its overall coherence and
complexity. It is not possible to treat the complexity and the dimension of
scientific findings if knowledge remains confined to the traditional
disciplines. (Eduardo Ramos and María Del Mar Delgado; 2005).
2. Access to knowledge is changing;
it can be reached from all directions and at any moment, but its abundance does
not mean that it is always validated, organized, and structured. The problem
for education today is not where to find information but how to offer access to
it without exclusion and, in turn, to teach/learn how to select it, assess it,
interpret it, classify it and use it. This conception profoundly modifies
teaching and the traditional role of the teacher. (Eduardo Ramos and
María Del Mar Delgado; 2005).
3. Technological tools free
the university from limitations of time and space. The traditional class
consists of placing a group of students and a teacher in the same place at the
same time. Today it is possible to organize class activities in different
places and at different times. (Eduardo Ramos and María Del Mar Delgado,
2005).
4. The role of the teacher
is no longer the same, and society's expectations in this respect are
increasingly numerous and complex. The teacher is the main agent of the
transformation of the educational system; he/she must train the citizens of
tomorrow and make them acquire scientific knowledge. In the present context of
change, a new concept of society is emerging which some call the `learning
society' due to the central role played by knowledge in the productive process;
others prefer to refer to it as the `information society'. Independently of
which terminology is used, it is evident that global changes are forcing a
change in the traditional role of teaching and are redefining the part played
by universities. (Eduardo Ramos and María Del Mar Delgado, 2005).
As a consequence of the above reasons, the most important
challenges faced by higher education today are:
1. The change from an industrial society to an
information society The future of countries and their positioning
in the international context will largely depend on the solidity of their
systems for training human resources and their technological and scientific
research systems. In order to face these challenges, universities must widen
the space for the production of knowledge and adopt new approaches which permit
greater connection between the training that students receive and the new
demands of society.
2. Going from simply demonstrating knowledge by
the issuing of certificates to training students in self-learning and fostering
the integral development of their human capacities. Contemporary
society and globalization impose a vocation for change which obliges
the university to incorporate imagination and creativity, and which
incites it to no longer be only at the service of a narrow
professionalization, as has unfortunately been the case up to now.
Future graduates must be accustomed to work in inter-disciplinary
teams, have a satisfactory understanding of world problems and speak
at least one foreign language. (Eduardo Ramos and María Del Mar Delgado,
2005).
3. Complementing knowledge based on the
acquisition of information with self-learning. The new teaching
methodologies must encourage students to learn to
work, do research, invent, create, and not limit them to continue
memorizing theories and facts. In other words, the students must
participate in the educational process. In order for
them to do this, they must prepare themselves for
`self-training', `self-education' and `self-assessment', that
is, they must assume the responsibility for orientating
themselves and taking control of their own training.
The important thing is that it is really
the students who acquire the learning skills and that these
become a genuine means for development of the
individual or of society, in such a way that the
students can acquire useful knowledge, capacity for
reasoning, aptitudes and values (UNESCO, 1990). This new
conception implies that educators become facilitators
and also that they work as part of a team with their
students so as to identify and select problems. Students
must learn not only to memorize but learn to use all means of
information available to them, whether this is
through libraries, national and international
databases, the radio, the cinema, television or Internet.
(Eduardo Ramos and María Del Mar Delgado, 2005).
4. Training students so that they consider
life-long learning and rotating periods of work with periods of training to be
natural. Life-long learning means having at one's
disposal the intellectual tools that are necessary for adapting to the
constant changes and the varying requirements of the job market and
for protecting oneself against the obsolescence of knowledge, which is
occurring at an increasingly rapid rate.
Students now need to be trained for an unstable work
environment and probable rotation, not only between jobs but sometimes
even between types of occupation or economic sectors. In order for
this to be possible, not only are more skills needed but frequently
new and different ones, which place new and different demands on
educational and professional training systems.
Higher education will play a fundamental part in
encouraging the capacity for innovation and creativity. A suitable
balance between general and specialized training is indispensable,
together with emphasis on learning processes rather than on
instruction or teaching processes. The new `curricula' must include
general training cycles, basic training cycles and specialized
training cycles; (Eduardo Ramos and María Del Mar Delgado, 2005).
5. New tools and skills. New jobs
are bound to require flexibility, creativity, autonomy, innovation, speed of
adaptation to change, life-long study and team work. These demands imply
continuous adaptation to challenges such as handling new situations,
responsibility, participation, pluralism or changing values. The university
must prepare students physically, intellectually and emotionally so that they
can meet these demands when they graduate.
The new context is characterized by uncertainty and by the
speed at which changes occur. Therefore, educational systems must be capable of
educating for change and uncertainty. The acceptance of change as an inherent
characteristic of higher education institutions implies accepting flexibility
as a work norm. Universities and higher education institutions in general must
become «life-long education centres for everyone» (UNESCO, 1998).
Accepting this challenge involves a series of transformations
in academic organization and work methods. Educators must essentially be
designers of learning methods and contexts, capable of working as a team
together with the students. In this way, educators, as they train, are training
themselves, and they learn at the same time as they teach (Eduardo Ramos and
María Del Mar Delgado, 2005).
The establishment of closer and fruitful collaboration between
universities and the productive sector also makes it possible to diversify ways
to finance higher education, thus achieving growing participation of the
private sector in the overall financing of higher education, whether public or
private(Eduardo Ramos and María Del Mar Delgado, 2005).
.
The experience of introducing a `Higher Education System on
Rural Development' (HESORD) into the University of Cordoba (UCO) represents an
effort to adapt to all the challenges and trends described. In fact, HESORD was
not initially designed as a comprehensive system, but as a single higher
education initiative. It has been, however, the continuously increasing demand
for new products that has encouraged the launching of a wider educational
offer. This programme of studies is undergoing a complex process which concerns
three strategic aspects of the current university: mission, commitment and
vision. Furthermore, as explained below, this process is intended to be as
faithful as possible to modern trends in higher education, and to the role that
agriculture and the rural world will play in society in the twenty-first
century. (Eduardo Ramos and María Del Mar Delgado, 2005).
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