Promoting innovation in education

There are solid reasons to believe that if there is true consensus to give tangibility to universal values, success may be expected in addressing many problems confronting higher education on all continents. This includes the complex task of harmonising global university standards and respecting diversity without condoning mediocrity.

Additional evidence in this regard came from the Bangkok 22nd General Assembly of the International Federation of Catholic Universities (IFCU), made up of 200 universities from all continents and hosted by Assumption University.

During its deliberations some participants insisted on the universities' responsibilities to share information and knowledge to enable students to better understand the role they have to play in a globalising world. To that end, it is necessary to recognise the reality of globalisation and its potential for development. Education should lead and orient us to prepare adequate answers and also to act as promoters of a social transformation firmly centred on human development, encouraged by innovation.

Many of these ideas were also developed during the European Higher Education Fair and the Asia-Link Symposium focusing on EU-Asia higher education policy and co-operation issues.

This event offered a platform for high-level dialogue between government officials, key senior managers and policy makers and representatives from higher education institutions and academic networks. Consideration was given to increasing awareness of EU mechanisms and programmes and possibilities for future co-operation, as well as the impact of the internationalisation of higher education on the two continents.

The International Conference on Educational Leadership, organised by Assumption University, considered other significant topics like leadership in a global context, perspectives and challenges in higher education, professionalism, quality assurance, teaching competency, university-community partnership, technological strategies to enhance higher education and so on.

The most recent highly specialised event, the International Association of Universities and the International Association of University Presidents (IAU/IAUP Symposium), was a joint meeting convened in Chiang Mai by the most prestigious non-governmental organisations in the field.

It dealt with national dimensions and cross regional experiences on strengthening institutional autonomy as one of the major strategic objectives in higher education policy. Whether rhetorical or real, this objective is related to the basic principles that should govern relationships between higher education and society.

The debate on all the above issues can lead to complex bilateral and multilateral negotiations in the political and academic fields. Generally acceptable conclusions or solutions are still a long way off. The debate, therefore, must continue.

As highlighted by Rev. Bro. Dr Bancha Saenghiran, president of Assumption University, the greatest threat to the success and survival of higher education institutions is complacency.

Promoting innovation demands new, energetic efforts to find valid answers to the massification, internationalisation and potential commodification of higher education.

In a world of global vulnerabilities, abrupt discontinuities and unavoidable perplexities, authentic solutions can be found only in an educational climate largely open to a genuinely democratic dialogue inspired and guided by universal values.