The university: obligation or transaction?

At a meeting last week about the future of Norway’s continued commitment to global health and development (Vision 2030), someone asked the dean of the medical school at the Norwegian University of Technology (NTNU), why should there be a graduate programme in global health at the university? A perfectly reasonable question, given the challenges facing Norwegian society today. Problems faced by Norwegian society, like other prosperous nations, are fundamentally different from most challenges of global development. To understand the context of this question, we have to recognise where Norway is, in terms of its geography, economy and its global development agenda. Norway, as many of us know, is tucked all the way in northern Europe, like a little hat on top of Europe and does not have any immediate neighbours with high health disparities. In terms of the human development index, gender parity in the workplace and social consciousness, it is often used as a benchmark to aspire to even among high-income countries. Apart from the Vikings, who came from Scandinavian lands and affected the political landscape of Europe many centuries ago, there has not been any Norwegian colonisation in Asia, Latin America or Africa, and hence the argument about guilt or ‘white man’s burden’ is not quite appropriate there. On the other hand, Norway is among the most generous donors and most active players on the global stage when it comes to investments in maternal and child health and effective global campaigns for vaccination. In the fields of innovations in sustainable development and newborn health, Norway punches well above its weight. In this context, the question why should one create a graduate programme and invest extensive resources in creating capacity for a problem that is inherently foreign, is actually very apt. The dean responded, with immense clarity and authority, that it is the moral responsibility of the university to address the grand problems of the day through knowledge creation and rigorous training. A high burden of disease, in many parts of the world being one of the biggest challenges of our times, it is our duty, as a university, to respond to this question of profound implications on global society at large.

In my conversations with Norwegian students, within and outside Norway, across gender divide and age group, and irrespective of prior international experience, this sense of moral imperative is universal. This brief but powerful one-minute conversation made me think about our own universities and institutions. What is the moral imperative there? If I were to ask the vice-chancellor, the rector or the dean of a reputable university in Pakistan ‘what is your moral responsibility?’,  what would they say? What would they say is the vision and mission of a modern Pakistani university? Beyond the mottos that are embossed on the front gates and all the stationery, what is the mission? Is the university there because there is a demand for higher education, and education is a good thing? Or is the university there because it is engaged in answering critical questions and addressing the grand problems, local or otherwise, of our time?

To illustrate my point, let us do a hypothetical experiment here. Imagine that today a university finds itself in a particularly exciting position. Imagine that the government (or a generous donor) decides to cover all the expenses of the students. The university does not need tuition funds anymore. What would be the nature of our vision? The argument that ‘we teach because students (or their parents) are spending lots of money for us to teach’ would no longer hold. What would we say in that case? While this imaginary scenario may not hold, a deeper conversation on what universities do, and what they ought to do, is much-needed.

We need to separate daily operations of the university that require financial resources from the grand vision. While sound economic models are a necessity, the vision of a university should never be based on a financial transaction. The moral imperative, should we find one, is related to the moral compass. The aspiration to do the right thing may channel into a will to do so.

Published in The Express Tribune, March  17^th,  2015.

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