Universities are in a unique position to promote the values of human understanding, co-operation, exchange and equitable social and cultural development, says Professor Jarlath Ronayne, vice-chancellor and president of the University of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia. Irish universities, he says, should take the initiative and reach out to minority and ethnic groups in this State. Involvement with such groups is likely to enable the universities - and the ITs - to play a greater international role.
"It's important that the universities recognise diversity and the contributions that different ethnic groups can make to the culture of the country," he says.
Ronayne, a Claremorris, Co Mayo-born graduate of TCD, believes that the management of cultural diversity is one of the greatest challenges facing the higher-education sector in the new millennium. "Population movements, which have seen millions of people resettled in other parts of the world, have been a key defining feature of the modern era," he says. "In the light of the enormous population moves that have taken place, the modern era might rightly be characterised as the age of migration."
The challenge for the higher-education sector is to embrace global links, engage with the social and cultural realities of migration and globalisation and to lead the debate about diversity, Ronayne argues. The decline of the nation state, globalisation and the emergence of trans-national and international social, political and economic structures - the EU, for example - makes it vital that our colleges and universities play a leading role in the debate on these issues.
The increase in the number of students demanding third-level education - and pressures to admit more students - means that more non-traditional students are now entering college throughout the western world. "All of us have an obligation to respond appropriately to the legitimate claims to equal access to educational opportunities by people of diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds, people with disabilities, people from disadvantaged social and economic backgrounds and women," he says.
"Our experience at Victoria University is that engagement at local level, as well as providing direct and concrete benefits to students and the communities we serve, can also serve as a foundation for promoting and nurturing developments at international level."
Take the Maltese project, for example. The Melbourne area has a Maltese population of up to 100,000 people. In 1989 only 12 per cent of that community's school-leaving cohort went on to third level. A research team from the university investigated the reasons and found that the local Maltese community placed little value on education. Since then, the university has worked closely with the Maltese community to raise the profile of higher education and encourage more young Maltese into the sector.
Today, 30 per cent of the Maltese community is going on to third level. As well as forging close links with the local Maltese community, the University of Victoria has also developed close contact with the University of Malta, and now regularly plays host to visiting Maltese dignitaries.
According to Ronayne, the Maltese project has provided a model for other university co-operations in the region. "For example, extensive consultation with the region's recently arrived communities from the Horn of Africa resulted in the design and delivery of culturally-sensitive curricula in courses provided specifically for these communities. Components of courses have been taught in one of the mother tongues, Amharic. English language support has been integrated at all levels and course content has been recontextualised to take account of African cultural mores, beliefs and practices."
Similarly, the university has built on an existing partnership with the local Albanian community, to assist Kosovar refugees. Senior university staff and Kosovar academics worked together to plan a strategy for those Kosovars whose education and training had been disrupted by the war in Kosovo. As a result, a number of Kosovar students enrolled on university courses and 26 of them were later able to resume their studies in Kosovo, Ronayne says.
"At international level, we are now in the process of organising a conference in partnership with our university exchange partners in the region to bring together academics from Albania, Macedonia, Greece, Italy, Kosovo and, we hope, Serbia, to explore and facilitate evolving regional relationships." This initiative, Victoria University's president says, came about as a result of local community engagement and highlights the role universities and academics can play in promoting mutual understanding, debate and the promotion of social and economic development in other parts of the world.
"The initiative also points to an expanding role that universities and academics can play in providing a safe and neutral space in which issues can be honestly explored and options for dealing with emotionally-charged challenges can begin to be expressed."
The University of Victoria' s involvement with East Timor has lead to staff and students working to develop the University of East Timor in the capital, Dili. "For many years the university has provided educational opportunities for East Timorese refugees, in spite of their contested status, such as the denial by successive Australian governments of refugee status and permanent residence," he explains. Practical assistance for East Timorese refugees, apart, the university has also provided space for the National Council of Timorese Resistance to debate the issues confronting East Timor as a new and emerging nation.
"As the position of the nation-state is weakened by the processes of globalisation," argues Professor Ronayne, "educational institutions are ideally placed to articulate and define egalitarian values and to lead the debates that now confront us. Academics, who as a group already operate across borders and boundaries, who share a commitment to an open society, and who have a professional responsibility to question the taken-for-granted, have a key role to play in these developments."
