V Working Groups and Final Plenary Discussion

Working Group 1

The Role of Donors in the Development of Knowledge Societies

Chairs: Jamil Salmi & Erik W. Thulstrup
Rapporteur: Ole Mertz

Other participants:

Michael Harms Frands Dolberg
Poul Erik Rasmussen
Tomas Kjellquist
Anne Sørensen

• What is a knowledge society? Is it the same in all countries?
• Most bilateral donors emphasize research capacity building; why is higher education often not mentioned? Is good higher education in the developing world a luxury?
• How can donors ensure that their Higher Education and Research (HE&R) capacity building benefits the targeted developing countries and not primarily rich countries?
• What can donors do to ensure that HE&R capacity built in developing countries is sustained? How can they ensure that it is used for the benefit of these countries and does not remain in ivory towers?
• Does S&T play a special role in this connection?
• Do donors in general cooperate efficiently with each other? Do they fully benefit from each other’s knowledge and experiences? Do they coordinate their activities efficiently?

Main issues

• Donor focus on primary (and secondary) education
• Why support higher education and research?
• Approaches to pro-poor support of higher education and research
• Advocacy
• Action

Donor focus on basic education – constraints for higher education

• Aid must be directly aimed at the poor – higher education considered mainly to benefit the rich
• Primary education traditionally associated with a higher social rate of return
• In SWAp-exercises Ministries of Education take part – but they are often not in charge of higher education
• Ministries compete over donor funds – science and technology ministries often marginalised
• Research is (reluctantly) accepted, but higher education is considered a luxury by some donors

… but also new developments in favour of higher education

• In Germany, the primary-tertiary education discussion is less polarized
• Kofi Annan has expressed UN support to prioritizing science and technology, including links to higher education
• NEPAD sees science and technology as playing a significant role in the “African Renaissance”
• Other initiatives at international level that are important points of departure for boosting national agendas.

Why support higher education and research?

• Economic growth one of the prerogatives for poverty reduction – higher education and research needed to ensure growth and achieve the MDGs
• Achieving poverty reduction is very complex and requires all levels of society to develop – capacity to implement development programmes often lacking
• Higher education has become basic education in developed countries – why should developing countries lag behind?

Approaches to pro-poor support of higher education and research (1)

• Accept that higher education is more expensive and outcomes take longer to materialize
• Ensure that capacity development has the dual focus of
• Developing (or reforming) institutions
• Developing capacity for research and learning at tertiary levels
• Coordinate donor policies and develop modalities for funding that
• Stimulate demand for knowledge, e.g. local competitive grant schemes
• Link research to planned or ongoing policy reforms
• Inspire north-south collaboration among researchers
• Ensure long term funding schemes needed to develop and sustain capacity for research and higher education (SAREC have 7-25 year commitments)

Approaches to pro-poor support of higher education and research (2)

• Support developing country alumni from universities in the North when they return, e.g. (German experiences):
• Small equipment and infrastructure grants
• Access to academic literature
• Support continued partnerships
• Make sure scholarships also go to poor people
• Universities should demonstrate that they can provide
• Research and higher education that contribute to poverty reduction
• Research which is relevant for and applicable in development programmes
• Promote and support existing networks and initiatives such as The Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS) and Nelson Mandela Foundation for Science and Technology
• Research: cross-sectoral and/or a separate sector?

Research: cross-sectoral and/or a separate sector?

• Large lobby for primary education – a similar lobby needs to be developed for tertiary education, e.g. through university consortia
• Expanding the constituency of the tertiary education lobby with NGOs, private sector
• Developing country alumni educated at developed World universities can be an important lobby group
• Canadian universities are particularly active lobbyists within this sector
• Universities in Sweden participate in development but are not active in policy debate
• In Denmark:
  • Rector’s conference is the only official forum
  • Five research networks within development.

Action

• Strengthen lobby activities vis-à-vis policy-makers and donors with strong arguments
• Provide summary of conclusion from this workshop to relevant government agencies
• Strengthen Nordic/EU donor coordination for addressing the need for national research councils and development of higher education
• Conference in Sweden, organised jointly with Association of African Universities, May 2006

Working Group 2

Drain and Gain on a Global Scale Reciprocity in Development

Chairs: Julia Hasler & Jens Jørgen Gaardhoje
Rapporteurs: Ingrid Karlsson and Hans Gullestrup, Professor, Business Department, Aalborg University

Brain drain in developing countries

• Brain drain in European countries
• Basing economy on a brain gain policy
• Success stories?
• Is economic growth in certain regions dependent on brain exchange?
• Is there such a thing as global responsibility?
• Are there alternatives to the brain deficit policy?
• Solutions for the developing countries
• Solutions for the developed countries

“Disclaimer”

The group was very small and needed a more diverse membership particularly inclusion of participants from the developing countries that suffer from brain drain. We believe that this drawback has limited our creativity and we recommend that future workshops aim for a larger and more diverse group.

Concepts

What is Brain Drain? This is when someone is educated in one country and then permanently settles in another country, and where he/she is not contributing with “brain work” to his/her former home country. Brain drain also covers the situation where individuals leave a country, are trained elsewhere and then remain in the country of training in order to work, thereby contributing their brain power to

What is Brain Gain? This is when a university/business/country gains and uses the fruits of brain work from a person having most of his/her higher education paid elsewhere.

Usually neither Brain Drain nor Brain Gain is found in their true meanings. More often a person moves geographically from one place to the other but keeps in contact, and work to a certain degree, with old partners and colleagues in his/her country of origin. This behaviour is usually also appreciated by the new employee, since it brings in new contacts and working methods to the new place.

The reasons for leaving a country after having received a higher academic degree could be many. They can be economic, politic, scientific, or private. Usually the person from a poor country leaving for a richer country feel obliged to send money back home, but often they are also engaged in many ways of professional collaboration and networking. This phenomenon we can call Diaspora Brain Circulation, and it involves both physical and mental circulation of persons, ideas, and creativity.

Furthermore, Brain Development is a term which could be used in cases where the individual and the new professional environment increase its brain wealth through competence development. This is of course the case when, for instance, a person leaving his/her home country for political reasons is recognized as a brain resource in the asylum country. The authorities of the welcoming country thus helps the individual refugee person to develop professionally through, for instance, updating the education to new circumstances, levels of technology, language, cultural and religious contexts etc.

Brain capacity can also be misused. A particularly unnecessary way of misusing brains is when they are not used at all for advanced private enterprise or academic problem-solving; e.g. a medical doctor driving taxi cabs or a PhD in biology cleaning hotel rooms. This happens quite often in countries like Sweden and Denmark and is due to many difficulties in integrating those persons; it can be due to shortcomings of the individual when it comes to learning the local language, but often it is also due to prejudices from employers. Many other problems could occur which increase difficulties in integration, for instance the shortcomings in cooperation and sharing of information between different authorities. This is a Brain Waste and needs to be much better understood, recognized, and counteracted.

Finally, Brain Equalizing is another threat which is seen more clearly, the more mobility of research students and researchers increases. With Brain Equalizing we mean for instance that only certain ideas, subjects, methods or cultural contexts are tolerated. This is harmful to the whole society because it lessens the diversity of thought and ideas and it decreases creativity. Brain Equalizing is sometimes done through political means, for instance when internet use is restricted or books and papers are censured. But the thinking of people can be mainstreamed to a harmful extent also through MSc and PhD study programs carried out by universities in rich countries – for instance it may concentrate too much on the use of modern technology, or it may disregard traditional knowledge.

Aims of the rich country

• The poor country wants to keep its good brains for development, e.g. for the same reasons as the rich country
• If there is no possible way to keep the brains (it is not possible to compete with salary levels or with working conditions compared to the rich country) it wants to keep contacts and build networks for future benefits.

Solutions for the rich country

• Increase possibilities for industry contacts
• Find interesting problems to solve together (e.g. formulate research problems in cooperation with colleagues from the south)
• Take good care of your PhDs and Postdocs to avoid isolation or brain waste
• Introduce your students to personal and institutional networks
• Counteract brain waste through programs for updating and development of education
• Give good opportunities for learning the local language
• Always underline that the free exchange of ideas and persons is a prerequisite for development of knowledge and science (e.g. in relation to visa requirements and other bureaucratic and legal hindrances to mobility of researchers)
• Build Diaspora networks and help to maintain them – these are a tremendous resource for linkages and contacts
• Be respectful to cultural social, religious and other differences
• Work to help in translation of essential books, software, manuals etc. to all main languages
• Don’t try to equalize brains – we need the differences

Solutions for the poor country

• Salaries should not be too low
• Return grants should be developed
• Payments to the individual or research financing to the institution for returning home could be offered
• If aid from an international organisation or a rich country is offered, only training programs with strong links to the home country, or sandwich programs, should be accepted
• Building of well equipped institutions, libraries, computer facilities etc for the benefit of returning brains
• Develop annexes to famous institutes in the poorer countriesy (example: the network of Pasteur Institutes world-wide)
• Conscious work to counteract corruption to ensure that the absolute best brains goes into paid programs (this ensures a good motivation for all to work hard : I can’t understand the meaning of this sentence
• Support to the Diaspora to maintain links with homeland, e.g. keep in contact through embassies, give support to Diaspora networks, involve in industrial and research institute development in the homeland; build links and bridges, support joint publishing and use well known and successful people from the relevant Diaspora as role models
• Increase the number of south-south meeting places
• Increase south-south cooperation to create interesting and creative working environments for the workers in S & T
• Increase the interest in research on intrinsic values and attitudes – and leadership development – why is there a big difference in development between South Korea and Ghana?

Working Group 3

The Role of Universities in the Development of Knowledge Societies

Chairs: Michael Oborne & Jens Aage Hansen
Rapporteur: Laura Zurita

Other participants:
Henning H. Jensen
Susan Wright
Brigitte Gregersen
Leiner Vargas
Eskild Holm Nielsen
Søren Jeppesen – Unexus
Arne Wangel
P. Agamuthu
Malin Aakerblom

• How do we perceive knowledge society?
• Universities and capacity building in South? Why do we do it? Main components?
• What kind of capacities should we build? How to interact with civil society? Vertical dimension, is there a balance between primary, secondary and tertiary education? Is there mutual interest? Interaction?

Capacity building

It is important that we define what capacity is, and how we build it.
Capacity can refer to people and competences, but to infrastructure as well. Capacity building can refer to numbers (number of students that get a degree) or to quality (improvement of the curriculum).
When talking about collaboration between Universities in North and South, in the first phase it may be a transfer of knowledge. But when a certain level of understanding is reached, it should be a common creation and a process of creating knowledge together. Central to this process is the ability to communicate, to share values and purposes. It takes time in a research community to get to this point of creating knowledge together.

Knowledge based society

Why is it different from previous societies? Knowledge is one of the key resources and has always been a part of the society. What now defines knowledge society is the speed at which the knowledge is produced and discarded. Now we have to learn continuously, and use our knowledge in new ways in all sectors. The successful countries are the ones that make use of the knowledge. Thus, if Universities are to play a role in Knowledge Societies they must be able to both produce and disseminate knowledge.

Capacity in knowledge based society is about how to learn to use this knowledge. It could be interesting to use the term learning society instead, as learning is a dynamic process. The determinant factor is the capacity to combine knowledge in a productive way.

How do you measure knowledge? It is important when we make decisions to know what we get. It is not possible to measure knowledge directly. We can measure indirect indicators: spending in RD, in education, importance of the innovation in private sector.

Some indicators may not show real knowledge, spending is not necessarily productive. In order to strengthen our position we should show that there is a relationship between indicators (of knowledge and learning) and growth and/or welfare.

Capacity building in Denmark

How well is Denmark adapted to the world outside? Or, in a broader perspective, what is the role of the Universities in capacity building and in development? Where do Universities fit into the global economy? Are they becoming producer of commodities (in this case, graduates)?

All universities are facing the same challenges: Decreasing resources, increasing number of student, pressure to get involved in society. The role of Universities, as a result, is changing: Research is getting closer to society since the Second World War. The state is cutting funds, and at the same time demanding a bigger influence in the research agenda. Partnership with the private sector is gaining in importance, and the relationship between funding and independence can become an issue. There was a widespread consensus that the Universities should define their own research agenda, but in a continuous dialogue with society.

Universities should give research-based education, and impart a component of research and critical thinking in their education. However, the level of competences should be discussed with society- e.g. in some countries the industry consider that PhD. level is not useful for them – but still there is need for researchers and teachers at the Universities.

Criteria for evaluation should be in accord with the goals and methods, the evaluation criteria define the performance.

University is a complex environment. However, even acknowledging complexity, Universities should be able to define indicators they should be evaluated with. The Universities need to be accountable, and clarify how they contribute to the welfare and/or growth of the society they live in.

There are two models of university. In the one model, the University is a factory, producing knowledge and products, as opposite to an organic structure. The University is managed in order to get more production, there is more centralization and more dependence. This can be combined with a competitive orientation, where Universities compete with other Universities.

In the other model, that we prefer, the Universities are flexible systems, enabling environments that support innovation and research. The Universities collaborate rather than compete.

Reporting from the Closing Session: Can We Do Better within Higher Education and Research?

by Eskild Holm Nielsen, Associate Professor and Birgitte Gregersen, Associate Professor, Aalborg University

Main conclusions

1. It is widely accepted, that Higher Education and Research (HE&R) are the crucial factors for creating and maintaining sustainable growth in developed countries. However, there seems to be a need to enhance the understanding among some politicians and DANIDA that this goes for developing countries as well. The long-term poverty reduction goals in contemporary development aid can only be achieved if the focus on capacity building within HE&R in the South is strengthened.
2. It is necessary to promote to donors and the broader society that capacity building within HE&R is a long-term, complex and uncertain activity that can only be successful if mutual trust between the involved partners is created. This requires long-term and stable (also in financial terms) collaboration. Furthermore, it is important to stress that capacity building is not a one-way knowledge transfer activity from the North to the South. It is a process of mutual learning between all the participants. It was underlined that the Danish universities who are active within capacity building in the South should take a more visible part in the public debate in these matters.
3. The need for donor coordination and collaboration was strongly emphasized. This also includes the need for university coordination and collaboration. It was especially mentioned that a Nordic alliance for promoting the role of universities might be useful.
4. There is a danger that the ongoing transformation of universities in the North may favour collaboration with industry, research institutions and Networks of Excellence within the North, leaving little room and finance for activities related to capacity building in the South. As a consequence, there is a need to expand the portfolio of the universities in the North to include capacity building in the South as an explicit commitment. Such a commitment includes a broad palette of instruments: definition of the research agenda, scholarships, curriculum development, PhD education, management, institution building, knowledge infrastructure, etc.
5. It was suggested that the conference committee take the initiative to invite The Rectors’ Conference, DANIDA, The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and The Ministry of Science and Technology to a discussion of how the institutional and financial support for capacity building within HE&R can be improved within the Danish context. Such a discussion should involve the following questions:
   1. Is there a need for an independent body with capacity building within HE&R as its prime focus? (Should such a body eventually take the form of a “Danish DAAD” with universities and research organisations as the core members?)
   2. How can the portfolio of Danish universities be extended to include capacity building in the South as an explicit commitment? A related issue to this will be to agree on relevant measurements for capacity development.
   3. How should these activities be funded? What are the possibilities to stimulate “tri-part funding” between government funds, university budgets, and external funding from especially private industry? (Should/can capacity building within HE&R be considered as a contribution to achieve the Barcelona goals?)

This page is included in the publication "Capacity Building in Higher Education and Research on a Global Scale"
© The Ministry of Education 2006