Headline, March30, 2013

'''UNIVERS​ITY: SHAPE WITHOUT FORM -

 SHADE WITHOUT COLOR'''

Most of the misery that the present world is facing, and is likely to continuously face for the next many decades, has much to do with performance of universities,  -the world over!?

Where is the world on this?

All of you are  -at the same place of desiccation which the great poet T.S.Eliot saw : Shape without form. Shade without color. One where the human being,  say you, the student, is reduced to a 'Headpiece filled with straw!! or,  if not,  read T.S.Eliot's 'Hollow Men' -1925. 

How and why?

This has been and is,  a world, in which human beings are assuming a dual role as both information and processors, and where the syntax of atomization for the sake of 'efficiency' prevails. And these hidden values are subtly advancing into public discourse. One outspoken and brilliant commentator who wrote for the Financial Times, not so long ago, offered the following modest proposal with regard to the universities:

Henceforth, they should be reorganized along the same production lines that have revolutionized Japanese factory life. Inevitably, he said, new modes of 'just-in-time electronic education, delivered to your living room by commercial companies, will undermine the most hallowed names in higher education. We should welcome such a modular approach.

After all, 'the plain truth is that ''universities'' are selling a product that is '''ridiculously expensive''' and ill-suited to the needs of a rapidly changing economy '. It would be a lot smarter to focus on developing the student's ''''cognitive abilities''' with respective to specific entrepreneurial needs'.

Obviously, the author evaluated the university system on the narrow grounds of its functional and economic expediency ignoring its place in pluralistic society.

      

The stark Truth is that the threat to the Universities is very real and growing! Even as the University comes under every type of attack, even under politically motivated attack, a combination of financial pressure and technology is undermining many of its customary functions.

As a result of the proliferation of knowledge, especially in scientific fields, scholars now cluster in specialized electronic communities as much as they do in the old, cross disciplinary, islands of excellence they inhabited before. It becomes commensurately hard to integrate their work into a holistic view.

Meanwhile, the cost of storing data in physical form, which is rising at the same exponential rate as information is being generated, means that no single university or library can be comprehensive in every field. It must perpetually reinvent itself as a conduit, a crossroads, a filter for digital information exchange.

Here, as in many other parts of the society, the timeless question being raised afresh by the spread of digital tools include whom  (or what) to trust in the role of the intermediary, and what values should guide the way.

'In the past, people came to the information which was stored in the university,' remarks one communication expert.'In the future and now, the information comes to the people, where ever they are.'

What then is the role of the university? Will it be more than a collection of remaining physical functions, such as the science laboratory or the cricket team? So in the days ahead will the effect and impact of electronics on the university be like that of printing on the medieval cathedral, ending its central role in the information transfer?

When all is said and done, remember, What is demanded of the student is practical competence at clearly measurable and above all commercially useful tasks. Where the universities went wrong, and continue to go wrong is that Reinforcing what we already know or desire,  -''the status quo''- is given greater value than preparing ourselves for interaction with the unknown.

Where is the integrity and judgement?!!

All Students to ensure that they share this post with every university, the world over!

With most respectful dedication to Bill Gates/Melinda Gates and their lovely daughters.

See you all on !WOW! : World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless.

Good Night & God Bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless