by LAWRENCE S. BACOW, SHAMSH KASSIM-LAKHA, and SARAN KAUR GILL
Around the world, higher education faces pressure to respond better to the needs of society. More universities are rising to the occasion at the national level, and others are finding new ways to help neighborhoods and local communities solve important problems. Their success suggests it is time to question some long-held ideas.
As members of the Talloires Network, an international association of institutions committed to strengthening the civic role of higher education, we believe that a university is not an ivory tower. It is a social enterprise, with obligations to the society that supports it.
Scholarship need not be carried out in splendid isolation. Universities themselves will benefit if they work on crucial issues affecting their local communities, such as public health and education, challenges of urban or rural living, climate change and agricultural production, and the development of civil society.
Our efforts to deal with such issues in varying cultures and situations around the world have taught us lessons about how universities, by sharing their intellectual and material assets, can benefit society while also helping themselves improve teaching and other key activities.
1.) Working on local problems can enhance teaching and transform lives.
The largest city in Pakistan, Karachi has a 50-percent poverty rate. A third of its 16 million residents live in squatter settlements. Since 1985 the Urban Health Program at Aga Khan University has worked in several of these neighborhoods to improve basic health care, sanitation, education, and employment opportunities.
The university believed that its medical-education programs should directly deal with the most-pressing issues of its community. It therefore allocated 20 percent of curriculum time to providing local health services. It required medical students to conduct their practicum and research activities in poor neighborhoods, where they also offered counseling, health and nutrition education, health screening, and child and maternal aid. The university significantly improved what its students learned, made it more relevant, and assisted poor families in Karachi.
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