STRONG WORDS indeed from the guru extrnordinaire and lifelong academic Peter Drucker, writing recently in Forbes magazine. Now in his 87th year, Drucker commands enormous respect and universal interest for his observations on where he thinks the world is heading. But he has on occasion been wrong.
If he is suggesting, as it would seem, that traditional university campuses will be replaced by satellite teaching or other distance learning institutions, now extravagantly called cyberuniversities, then he is surely mistaken one more time.
In the intellectual and creative development of the ideal student of today, the contribution from outside the formal classroom or laboratory is much greater than from within. Students grow academically, socially, emotionally, spiritually and every other way much faster and more effectively from their interactions with each other and with lecturers outside the formal academic time table than they do attending lectures. A generalisation, to be sure, with which some may disagree, and which will certainly have its exceptions.
In the ideal world, the lecture programme provides the boundaries for the academic domain within which the lecturer should inspire and identify the distant horizons. But each student must find his or her own way within that domain and it's here that intellectual attrition and debate with fellow students and lecturers is vital.
For most students, informal discussions in corridors, or with lecturers outside class times, are remembered as times when their intellectual curiosity and academic creativity was aroused, when they really began to formulate original thoughts and ideas, when self-confidence, both academic and social, began to grow.
Sometimes these developments in individual students or in a group can be startling. Everyone involved in teaching has enjoyed the extraordinary growth in maturity and intellectual synergy of "a good class" over the four or five years or a degree course. The video screen of the cyberuniversity will never replace this dynamic of the campus.
THE non-academic side of student life is very important. Each student is different and some find greatest fulfilment in student societies or sports' clubs. For example, the Literary and Historical Society in UCD, founded by John Henry (later Cardinal) Newman in 1854 or thereabouts, has been a prime training ground for countless leaders of Irish society, and many of these will acknowledge that participation in the L & H meant far more to them than their formal studies.
There are those who will say the same things about the Boat Club, the Students' Union, the Bell Ringers' Society, or any of the many other societies or clubs found on most campuses today.
All of this is well known and generally accepted by those directly involved with students, but it is worth repeating for those outside the academic milieu who have some authority for university funding and institutional development and who may be unduly influenced by those, like Drucker, who believe that the technological innovations of open and distance learning (ODL) will replace the traditional campuses.
Let me not be misinterpreted - ODL and satellite-based education is profoundly important in the world of academe but it is limited in its great usefulness. It will certainly not replace, nor dinge in any way, the university campus world which has been with us for some 700 years now - or longer if you want to go back to Socrates.
Quite the reverse - it has already created a new population of students. It admits into higher education students who cannot physically attend because of space, time, money or social considerations. It opens avenues for the unemployed, the disadvantaged, the disabled and those in industry, particularly in the smaller companies, who can pursue their studies only from their desks, homes or offices.
A related danger in all this is that public expenditure on higher education primarily might be seen as relating to economic development rather than to the intellectual and social development of the individual - what the Spanish philosopher Ortega called the creation of a cultured man (sic) who sees the paths of life in a clear light." Whilst the two views need not be mutually exclusive, the difference in emphasis is profound enough to lead to different university systems.
This is a much larger issue than could be considered in this short article. Suffice it to say that a contemporary university and its curriculum must be unequivocally directed towards the education of the student as a whole person and not as graduates with appropriate skills to meet society's industrial and economic needs. Each university should achieve the latter objective, but it would be short-sighted and would fail in the long run as an institution worthy of the title university if this was the over-riding mission.
The university must assert its role as a major spiritual power in our society and not an adjunct of the job market. Newman was the greatest advocate of liberal education in the last century and his views are still as relevant now as they were then.
