The Need for Catholic Universities to Respond to Globalization and Evangelization

15th ASEACCU Conference for Administrators De La Salle University
Manila, August 24-25, 2007 Victor Ordonez

Any attempt to present a credible prognosis of the future is helped by a look back at the past. As we search for new roles for higher education amidst the social, political, economic and ethnic challenges brought about by globalization, it may thus be useful to scan the broad historical sweep of how universities have evolved over the centuries. Essentially, from the beginnings of the original monastic centers of learning in medieval Europe, universities have performed the functions of knowledge creation, knowledge transmission, and knowledge conservation. Within these have appeared in different cultures and at different times other important roles such as the production and preservation of elites, the advancement and application of scientific discovery, the preservation of cultural and national identities, and so on. Evident in this review is the ability of higher education institutions to adapt, although slowly and conservatively, to wide reaching social change and develop concerns for equity, new kinds of inquiry, and the promotion of values of open inquiry.

The challenge that rapid globalization presents to today’s universities is whether they can continue to adapt, no longer slowly or organically as they are used to, but in the quantum leaps that are required by new realities. Knowledge is not what it used to be, or more accurately, the manner by which knowledge is created, transmitted, and conserved now happens through modalities, institutions, and configurations unknown before, and at speeds once unimaginable.

Universities may no longer play a priority role, and certainly not an exclusivity role, in an environment of internet access, media overload, corporate and lifestyle-customized offerings, and so on. They continue to play a vital role, but it must be recognized that this role must be reshaped in the context where are alternative knowledge providers, which they must recognize, collaborate with, and mutually strengthen. Whereas before universities were the “ivory towers,” the only knowledge stores in town, now they are but one outlet, albeit the flagship outlet, in a megamall of knowledge providers, i.e., corporate training centers, internet courses, community center programs, educational television, and so on.

More significantly, globalization has changed knowledge, not only in the new networks and modalities of knowledge providers it has spawned, but in the very configuration of the building blocks of knowledge itself. The knowledge society has produced new learning needs, requiring new avenues of thought, and these are not met by traditional university curricula, which have not basically changed over the years. There is a real danger that universities are preparing students of a world that may no longer exist. University programs are traditionally supply driven, not demand driven. Academic subjects are offered because professors have degrees in them, and because they will continue to teach these as long as they are tenured, whether the students need them in handling tomorrow’s problems or not. Even at lower levels of education, the curriculum is organized around academic subjects, rather than around pressing problems and issues. But which better meets a student’s learning needs? Students spend whole semesters on sines and cosines in the academic subject of trigonometry, and only get passing mentions on key issues like ensuring a sustainable environment, understanding the Moslem faith, dealing with multi-ethnic tolerance, global warming, and conflict resolution, and other skills much more needed than trigonometry.

You will surely recall the four learning pillars of the Delors report, and the Delors lament that education in the last century has succeeded very well in the first pillar, learning to know, and succeeded somewhat in the second pillar, learning to do, but failed in learning to be, and most especially in learning to live together. The Ministers of Education in the Asia Pacific at their last meeting put values education as among their two top priorities (the other being the education of girls). Education in this century will have to focus on the relational, rather than the informational.

When one re-packages what to teach, there are several inevitable consequences. How to teach must correspondingly be changed; this implies new pedagogies, often assisted by instructional technology, fluid classroom sectioning, interaction with the workplace, and so on. It also has a profound influence on how departments are merged, re-named, reorganized and made more fluid; something that is bound to meet faculty resistance. The world of the faculty will itself change; detached from their traditional academic moorings, there will be a tremendous challenge to re-tool themselves and their competencies to more directly address the needs of the future. These needs may in fact expand the concept of faculty, incorporating expertise and experience where it can be found even outside the sacred enclaves of tenured staffs.

Another impact of a rapid changing global society on higher education is the changing nature of its clientele. Students and individuals have greater and constantly evolving demands form a competitive, globalized, and still unfolding knowledge society. Universities must cater to these demands. It must realize that its clientele is no longer just early adults before they enter the world of work, but members of all ages in a learning society. Professionals need constant updating; it is said that the half-life of professions like engineering is only five years, perhaps shorter for the medical and technical professions; so that these professionals need to constantly go back to learning to keep relevant. Longer life-spans and more leisure time also create a demand for more learning in the humanities, the arts, and leisure for those who have the interest and the time. A definite wave of the future is exemplified by the case of UCLA, where the total high tuition income of its 30,000 students is now overtaken by the fees and income from the university’s extension and adult education non-degree programs.

Even among the undergraduate degree programs, students are not what they used to be. In the United States, for example, they are now older and more discerning. The average age of the United State undergraduate is now 29 years old. Many have stopped for a few years to work or to earn enough to pay tuition, many have taken the part-time route combining study, work, leisure, and travel, and most no longer take four or five years to finish, but take much longer than that.

Thus they are not only more discriminating, but also more conditioned by learning habits acquired outside the academe, mostly acquired through peer influence and through media. They think differently from the older generation, are motivated differently, have thought processes that operate differently (more by instant gestalt intuition than by logical inductive reasoning), and therefore learn differently. Teachers who do not appreciate this cannot be effective. They have to enter the minds of the youth, understand their motivations, their interests, and their lifestyles, in order to relate and be effective.

A final thing that can be said of the students of the future is that there will be very many more of them. In spite of the stagnant growth of aggregate populations in some countries, the success of the Education For All campaign and the corresponding increases in high school graduates, and well as the increasingly complex demands of a technological workforce, will continue to see dramatic increases in tertiary enrollment. This has powerful implications:

First, governments will by and large no longer have the resources to be the main provider of higher education as they once used to be. Private higher education will expand, including cross-border education. Public education in turn will be under pressure to “corporatize,” to raise their own funds through research, real estate, tuition and fees, and endowments raised; this has seen the evolution of academic leaders into corporate managers. To use University of California again as an example, whereas the State of California used to supply about 75% of its funding in the 1970s, today it supplies only 39% of its financing, leaving the university administration to come up with the rest.

In Asia and the Pacific, the massification of higher education raises serious issues of quality and of equity.

On the one hand, the expansion of public and private institutions meeting the great demand for higher education places is characterized by an unevenness of quality, and standards vary widely. Fee charging private institutions meet this demand for those who can afford to pay, further worsening equitable access for the poor. In the attempt to balance this, a number of rural public universities have been set up for the less advantaged, but these tend to be of an inferior quality.

On the other hand, governments realize that their higher education outputs must meet international standards and well as domestic demand, and are pressured to set up internationally recognized centers of excellence. They recognize that the outputs of their secondary system, and well as their limited resources, does not allow them to relipcate the great universities of the West. But then if they do not strive to be competitive, they risk being sentenced to stagnate into further marginalization in the global economy. Korea, for instance, which has by proportion the greatest number of college students in the world, is concerned that none of their universities figure regularly in the much talked about league tables of the best universities in the world. But there policy makers are worried that pouring money into the centers of excellence takes away funds from support of the vast majority of universities that fuel their day-to-day economic development, and thereby promote inequity.

Perhaps the most obvious direct impact of globalization on higher education is how the education enterprise has become so thoroughly and rapidly internationalized—learning without borders.

Students are moving across borders in greater numbers than ever before. And the trends are shifting somewhat; there are more students coming to Asia and Pacific than before; there are more Asia-Pacific students studying in neighboring countries within the region; there are more short term students than long term students; there are more research graduate students than undergraduate students.

Faculty is likewise much more mobile. Faculty exchange programs, both medium term and short-term, are regular features of twinning arrangements and programs of academic societies.

The phenomena of overseas labor and greater mobility of professionals and even non-professionals has blurred the boundaries of where one can work. In some countries remittances from overseas labor has become a major contributor to their economies. But sustaining this must depend on some kind of international recognition of the quality or at least acceptability of professional degrees of the sending countries. UNESCO has for some decades now been promulgating a Convention for the Mutual Recognition of Degrees, at first on a regional basis, and then internationally. Slowly, country after country has studied the provisions and safeguards of this Convention and has been convinced to ratify it.

In the resulting global education community, the academic marketplace is no longer confined to national settings. More than ever, knowledge is becoming universal, escaping borders of all kinds, with unpredictable consequences. Its pursuit and advancement are based on the free exchange and circulation of ideas across scientific fields, geographic boundaries, political systems, and academic disciplines. Even as we have indicated a doubling of students traveling aboard within the next five years, we are witnessing the unparalleled growth of cross-border education, where overseas education comes to the student, instead of the student going to it. Thus we have a proliferation in Asia of branch campuses from other universities, twinning arrangements with partner institutions, joint degree programs, one-year abroad arrangements, and so on.

Distance education is another phenomenon, which is still in its early, although already dramatic, stage of development, both in cross border education and within national boundaries. The numbers are already startling; the largest ten distance education intuitions around the world already account for seven million students, with some institutions enrolling over 500,000 each. The expanded access facilitated by contemporary instructional technology has made possible the enormous numbers and quality control mechanisms that would have been impossible under old distance education systems. And while initial course development and the prerequisite infrastructure for delivery makes this model more expensive in the beginning, successive iterations over time dramatically reduce unit costs. At the aggregate social level, as the number benefiting from distance education continues to grow and effective per student costs decline, the resulting capacity may address issues of access and equity in the massification of global higher education. The ultimate test will be the quality issue, as to whether it will churn out mediocrity in the name of access, or whether it can be spurred by innovative approaches that will better serve learners’ needs and challenge the more traditional education providers. Even traditional universities will increasingly turn to the distance education mode as it services the wider segment of the knowledge society.

In summary then, the globalized world is rapidly forming, reforming and deforming knowledge societies. With knowledge as the dominant currency of human growth and development in the future, universities have little choice but to recognize their ever changing roles as creator, transmitter and preserver of knowledge in the context of serving society. And they must do so beyond merely fulfilling the traditional role of equipping and updating professionals. They must reach out to and serve the shapers of development, and assure that society continues to be equipped to address its more pressing societal problems, expand its innovation and research capacities, and foster the values needed for a productive, cohesive, harmonious, and ethical society. The overall welfare of countries will depend a great deal on the extent to which universities can do this.

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Let me now turn now to the second and perhaps more difficult part of the conference theme. In the light of all we have said about the need for paradigmatic change for higher education, what is the role of Catholic universities in the above? Will Catholic universities go along with these changes, will they follow reluctantly, or will they take the lead and pioneer new and different way of doing things?

More fundamentally, will their Catholic character be an operational dimension to guide these changes? Even more fundamentally, are we clear on what makes a Catholic university Catholic in the first place?

Is ownership by the Church or by a religious congregation the determining factor? Some congregations have turned over ownership to lay boards without any diminution of their Christian character.

Is it because they provide the academic excellence and good social networks that parents expect when they pay the extra tuition to send their children to these universities? Indeed there are a small handful of such schools, some historically established precisely to fill a gap for quality where it was not available. Now of course there are many more institutions of quality, but I suspect that it may be that parents now put more weight on getting children into the right social set than on academic quality. Ironically, the better Catholic institutions have become unwitting instruments of creating and perpetuating an elite upper class in societies where the rich are getting richer and the poor and getting poorer.

Is it the discipline and order that attracts students and parents to Catholic universities? But values and discipline are not the monopoly of Catholic schools. In fact, with a few exceptions, it is hard to prove that the products of Catholic universities as a group live by values and principles significantly different from their secular university counterparts.

Others may claim that Catholic universities distinguish themselves by explicitly opening up the spiritual dimension for the learner. Here again, Catholic schools do not have a monopoly. Interestingly enough, the acknowledgement of the spiritual is more and more globally felt, and all true education must include this dimension. Even the UNREDCO Delors Commission points this out:

Often, without realizing it, the world has a longing, often unexpressed, for an ideal and for values that we shall term ‘moral.’ It is thus education’s noble task to encourage each and every one, acting in accordance with their traditions and convictions and paying full respect to pluralism, to lift their minds and spirits to the plane of the universal and, in some measure, to transcend themselves. It is no exaggeration on the Commission’s part to say that the survival of humanity depends on it.

What then is the essence of a Catholic education in a university? It may be useful to reflect upon this question, and articulate a response to it, first individually, and then to discuss this as a group.

Perhaps I can pause here for a minute and start by asking you for a one-sentence statement on what you think the essence of a Catholic university is.

To complement your reflections, I offer here three other partial responses to the question: one from a university mission statement, one from the thoughts of the IFCU President, and one from a keynote address delivered some years ago to the Asia chapter of the OIEC:

1. From the mission statement of our host institution, De La Salle University, let me excerpt this key phrase: “to create (programs) that will be signs of God’s kingdom and instruments of salvation… for individuals and groups who seek the fullness of their humanity through education.”
2. From Prof. Cernera, IFCU president, whom you will hear tomorrow: “its mission is to preserve, transmit, and develop the Catholic intellectual tradition.”

3. From a speech I delivered to OIEC Asia: “the distinctive contribution must be in the manner in which it supports and nurtures the faith in individuals and Christina communities. And it must do so according to its character as a learning institution.”

Your responses, as well as the statements above, are undoubtedly valid, but in reality what do they imply? How in fact can this essence be validated and made manifest for all to see?

Let us return to the respondents above, and see how they, and you, attempt to articulate this. Let me start in the reverse order this time, and draw from their explanations of how they embody the Catholic character of their institutions:

1. From the OIEC speech:

• Making a distinction between teaching and preaching, and recognizing the disastrous consequences of confusing the two. The former is to enlighten, and basically addresses the mind; the latter is to inspire and motivate, and basically addresses the heart and the will. Schools are not churches; classes are not religious revival sessions. Religion classes are an essential aspect of Catholic universities, but in the educational context the emphasis is on the concepts and understanding of the faith, rather than on the exhortation to piety. Even in the great institutions of religious thought, there is the distinction between theology, which is the intellectual and rational analysis of the foundations of the faith, and homiletics, which is the cultivation of the facility to persuade, to inspire, to transform abstract faith foundations into living allegiance and devotion. Hopefully, practice follows understanding, but without understanding, practice becomes less sustainable.
• The teaching of religion is a complex matter. Too often what has been passed on to students is an indiscriminate mass of information that does not distinguish the essential from the accretions of history or culture. The frequent result is that the student ends up turning his or her back on it completely. Good theology requires as much a knowledge of the most solid theological wisdom which distills the message of the Bible and Jesus Christ over the centuries, as well as a knowledge of the world from which the student comes, how he/she thinks, feels, learns and is motivated. Perhaps the most critical task for universities in this century is the search for extracting the essence of the Christian faith, whole and integral, from the often outdated and arcane expressions and formulas in which it is fossilized, and then re-expressing that essence in the techno-savvy, globalized, hip-hop language and symbols, expressions and symbols of today, of today’s youth.
• How much priority, how much funding, is given by Catholic universities to serious study and research to expand our understanding of the faith? How do we evaluate our efforts in this area, to see if we are indeed making a difference in a more profound grasp of the faith by our students? And how do we go about this task? Do we just leave it to our theology departments, or do we strive to imbue all programs, the faculty, indeed the entire academic community, with this striving?

2. From Prof. Carnera, as illustrated in his institution the Sacred Heart University in the United States:

• A humanistic approach that seeks to place the learning of all academic disciplines in the service of addressing questions of human meaning.
• Educational programming to help students make the link between discipline knowledge and their engagement of this with contemporary issues of the common good.
• Creating the living experience of the Church’s liturgical and spiritual life.
• Involving the community in ministries of charity and getting them to reflect and learn from them.

3. From the De La Salle mission statement
• Imputing the community with a sprit of faith
• Participating in the Church mission of easing the plight of the vulnerable and marginalized sectors
• Bringing Christian perspectives and values to bear on human knowledge and culture
• Impelling learners to translate their knowledge into actual practices for the betterment of society
• Preparing learners for responsible participation in the family, the community, society and the Church.

It would be worthwhile and quite enlightening to get each of you to spell out and share how you would embody the response to our question about the essence of Catholic universities, but obviously we have neither the time nor the setting to do that. Nevertheless, it is a good individual exercise as well as a group exercise
that could eventually be pursued.

Distinguished participants, let me conclude.

The theme before you is challenging, and I am aware that you have a daunting task to respond to the inevitability of rapid and dramatic global change. And I further realize that your task is two fold:

On the one hand, you are driven by a need to respond to the impacts of globalization and a transforming knowledge society, to cast about for new content, new pedagogy, new educational delivery systems, that more adequately address the emerging learning needs of an expanded clientele, the technological globalized trends of the times, and the critical problems facing society.

On the other hand, you are driven by a need to re-invigorate the Catholic dimension of your universities, to find new and relevant ways to vivify and explain the Christina faith to your students, who are unconsciously thirsting for a message that speaks their language, seeking ways to discern and respond in ways meaningful to them, and to integrate your academic programs and university sub-cultures more firmly into the fabric of society and Christian communities.

I have raised more issues and questions than answers, hopefully to provoke rigorous discussion and analysis, but more importantly to provoke actions: institutional change, policy change, and program change.

I advocate change even as I humbly salute the heroic achievements and historic contributions to education and Catholicism that you and your predecessors have made in Asia. I am compelled to remind myself that we cannot rest on the glories, achievements, or even structures and modalities of the past. If we do, we are not using our full potential. In this fast changing world, we have an obligation, indeed a vocation, to harness the vast potential that we represent, not only to reshape Catholic universities, but more broadly to refashion education in general and thereby the very societies they serve. We cannot squander the opportunity this week to do some hard thinking, reflecting, and praying, to engage in frank discussion and ultimately to undertake bold innovations and embark upon creative alternative paths, to move to action. For this noble mission, you have my more earnest wishes and my most fervent prayers.