AU Graduates in the Era of Globalization

Dear Graduates,
Honorable Guests,
Dear Members of the Assumption Community,

On behalf of Assumption University’s Council, its administrators, its faculty and staff members and together with all our honorable guests, parents, relatives, friends, and other well wishers present here today, may I first of all convey my heartfelt congratulations to all of you graduates assembled here today in order to receive a well-earned academic degree. A Commencement Exercise marks a major milestone in one’s life. You have now moved up on the academic ladder from apprenticeship to professionalism, from the status of “ignorant” to the status of “educated”. You are now ready to make the transition from the college life to the professional life, from dependence on your lecturers and mentors to self-reliance.

Clearly, we live in a time of very rapid and profound material and social transformations. Industrial production is steadily shifting from material- and labor-intensive products and processes to knowledge-intensive products and processes. The past decades have seen a continuous moving away from manual procedures and analogue techniques towards cybernetic operations and digital techniques. This in turn has enabled an unparalleled level of communication and integration of the world’s commercial and financial services. We are now rapidly evolving into what has been called a post-industrial and a knowledge-based society. We are entering a new age, an age of knowledge, in which the key strategic resource necessary for prosperity will be knowledge itself. An age in which the direct need for advanced state-of-the-art education will remain important but in which transmitting and instilling an attitude of lifelong learning, will become ever more pressing.

The above facts will translate and have already translated into major shifts for our culture and our society. They are part of a phenomenon now commonly referred to as Globalization. Now that you are about to enter the workforce, most (if not all) of you will sooner or later be confronted with this phenomenon and its many consequences. Allow me to use this commencement occasion to present you with some reflections on this topic.

From the way I will describe and discuss globalization and its consequences, you will notice that it is a process about which there exist (often highly emotive) differences of opinion. Most people look upon the subject at least with a degree of skepticism and few embrace it wholeheartedly, not only because they fear unforeseeable consequences, but also because they disagree with some of the consequences that are indeed foreseeable. For many, if not most people, globalization carries the idea of progress and wealth and constitutes a (in essence) beneficial key to future development of the world. For others, globalization inspires hostility or even fear, believing that it is a process that will increase inequalities between nations, threaten employment, decreases living standards or harm the environment. However nearly everybody agrees that globalization is an inevitable and irreversible process, both because of the strong market forces that are driving it and because of the undeniable opportunities that it has indeed already created or promises to deliver in the future.

Let me also flag here that for some scholars the process of globalization has been with us from the beginning of human history. Some analysts have even argued that the world economy was just as “globalized” 100 years ago as it is today. The only new factor would be that, mainly as the result of the enormous technological advances in modern electronic communication and the vastly increased travel possibilities, the rate of change of the globalization process had dramatically increased. Whether these developments still qualify as just another quantitative step in a long more or less continuous evolution or constitute a genuine revolutionary and qualitative discontinuity, is a debate which - for the purpose of this address- we will leave to the sociologists and the historians.

Globalization

In the closing decade of the twentieth century, many articles and books were written on the phenomenon of globalization. It became the topic of conferences, the emblem of newly created study centers and the subject of innumerous talks and journal articles. As is often the case for complex new concepts there is no commonly agreed definition of its exact meaning.⁽¹⁾ The fact also that globalization is multi-dimensional concept implies that there are as many definitions as there are dimensions. One of the more general definitions has been given by Catrione Hanley in her 2001 Newman Lecture. In her words “Globalization would be the imposition of the sameness on a group of things which are — in essence — diverse”. In such a definition, “globalization is the direct result of human interventions, human policy-making and human decisions aimed at maximizing efficiency at the cost of diversity”.⁽²⁾ Rather than trying to come to grips with a general, encompassing, definition of globalization, and for the purpose of this lecture, I will immediately switch to the major different dimensions of globalization and briefly go into the more readily discussed meanings of globalization in those specific cases. One usually distinguishes three dimensions of globalization: The Economic, the Cultural and the Political Dimension.⁽³⁾

⁽³⁾ Some authors will distinguish additional dimensions and for instance also refer to an ecological or environmental dimension of globalization.

Economic globalization is the first concept that comes to mind when mentioning globalization. It has in fact also been — historically speaking — the motor for the other dimensions of globalization. Economic globalization refers to the promotion and creation of what is effectively a world market i.e. to the increasing integration of economies around the world, particularly through trade and financial flows. A fully “globalized” economic world would be a world in which every economic actor can enter directly, knowingly or not, into a relation with any other economic actor anywhere else in the world. The term economic globalization often also refers to the free movement across international borders of people (labor) and of knowledge (technology). The major enabling factor behind these developments is of course the still ongoing electronic information-technology revolution.

Culturally, globalization may mean two quite different things. On the one hand, it might refer to the emergence of a homogeneous world culture and thus to the extinction of cultural differences and specificities. In this sense “homogenization” would be associated with a general rise of a so-called “middle-class” mass culture. (Some authors will speak of the “Americanization” or “Westernization” of the world). On the other hand, and more positively, the cultural effect of globalization may be just the precise opposite of this type of homogenization, as it, for example, also increases migration and promotes the free exchange of cultural values. This in turn has led to greater cultural diversity in many places of the world, especially in the metropolitan settings, and has in many societies given rise to a genuine multi-culturalism.

Politically, globalization would primarily refer to the diminished importance or — depending on one’s viewpoint — to the alleged decline of the sovereign nation-state. Actually it is precisely the effect of the economic and cultural globalization which limits (or if you wish, undermines) the capacity of national economic and political actors to steer and manage their economy, to maintain their ruling political structures or to support the cultural values of their society. Manifestations of this political globalization can be found in the participation in global economic coordination organisms (like the World Trade Organization or APEC), in supranational political and economic unions (like the EU or ASEAN) or in global legal conventions (like the one that has led to the International Court of Criminal Justice in The Hague). Another less formalized but genuine fall-out of political globalization is the increased global commitment to (and pressure for) human rights and democracy.

One of the main characteristics (or problems) of the current globalization processes is that the political dimension has — in general — not been able to keep up with the economic and cultural globalization developments. Although most of these latter developments are in essence “benign”, in the sense that do not generate existential problems,⁽⁴⁾ the absence of political globalization and its ensuing lack of communication and coordination has often been sorely missed.

The impact of Globalization on Higher Education.

Given the above broad contours of what we mean by globalization we can now ask what all this means for Higher Education.

Knowledge and education (and in particular higher education) form the foundations for implementing the complex processes that “technically” enable the globalization of the economic, cultural and political worlds. Societies, after having depended for decennia on raw materials and on labor-intensive products to create income and wealth, are now more and more switching to knowledge-intensive products and processes. Knowledge itself has become the most important pre-condition for participating in all the fundamental and important human activities. Globalization thus creates an increasing demand and supply for knowledge both in terms of volume and in terms of type. As knowledge is mainly transferred through education, clearly all three globalization dimensions confront Higher Education with major challenges.

In discussing these Higher Education globalization challenges one could distinguish between the effects on the students and those on the universities proper. In front of an audience of students, ready to leave the university, it might seem more appropriate to concentrate on the former, but as both questions are intimately intertwined, please allow me to also discuss the potential consequences of globalization primarily in terms of their effect on the university. The implications for the higher education student will be readily deducible from those described for the university as a whole.

Globalization will first of all have an impact on the “markets” on which universities have to operate. Universities will have to start competing worldwide in order to capture a share of the demand for education. A global university will (thanks to the Internet) be able to teach students anywhere at anytime and can draw its faculty from around the world. New competitive forces (such as virtual universities) will enter the market place and challenge the processes of degree conferring and credentialing.⁽⁵⁾ Local institutes of Higher Education will thus lose their geographic monopoly on the teaching of knowledge.

There will also be changes in the nature of the education proposed. In the words of Raja Mutthirulandi:⁽⁶⁾ “The educational need in the post-industrial society is preparation for and involvement in life” not just the creation of more graduates. This needed preparation can be achieved by enabling the students to acquire the “appropriate knowledge, skills and the intellectual capacity to meet the challenges of accelerated change and uncertainty”. In the future, the emphasis — at least in the better and “surviving” universities — will therefore be on fostering a lifelong-learning attitude. A lifelong career, thriving on a specific training in a single organization or business, will become a rare exception. While the labor market will always require a set of specified technical abilities required to exercise certain professions, there will be larger rewards for the initiative taking, for the capability to judge and evaluate, for the willingness to be flexible and to change and above all for the ability to communicate.⁽⁷⁾ Needless to say that also this brings to the forefront such factors as language and IT proficiency, management and team skills.

⁽⁷⁾ Note that some of these trends go against what students and parents often seek from a university, especially in South-East Asia. Students and parents increasingly favor professional degree programs that focus on immediate job possibilities, rather than on a broad cultural education aiming at the enumerated qualities, which — in the long run — would actually make the student better equipped for the coming knowledge era.

The major perspective for the existing universities is therefore one of being a participant in a market-driven restructuring of Higher Education as part of a global knowledge industry. One of the major educational challenges for the universities in the 21st century will be the question if and how these universities will be able to cope with the competitive pressures of the marketplace, all the while preserving their cultural heritage, their traditional values and their often unique character.

Culturally globalization will induce the universities to cater for a broader and more multi-cultural studentship. Universities will thus become more internationalized. This may force some of them to gradually abandon their old role of purely educating national “elites”. The transmission of specific national cultural values may have to be de-emphasized in favor of more global topics. In analogy with the natural sciences, there may be some “intellectual” globalization process, especially in the humanities and social sciences, towards the “ideal” of more “universal” knowledge. Although this may eliminate some inefficient national traditions, it will also often take place at the expense of the contextual nature of knowledge and knowledge production.

In a separate development more and more universities will participate in what, because of the need for lifelong learning, will become one of the main new growth sectors of education i.e. the continuing education of already highly educated adults (often referred to by the French expression of "(Education permanente”).

In general, the shift from prestige-driven to cost-competitive market forces will broaden the mission and capacity of many colleges and universities, but it will often do so at the expense of the quality of the nation’s very best institutions.

The challenges of political globalization will again closely mirror the other two trends. In many countries, a weaker and less autonomous state may mean that universities can count less on what has been their most reliable and steady funding source. Many states will more and more subject their national universities to a value-for-money concept close to a pure business approach. In some countries the political actors might even show a decreasing commitment to their own population, thus accentuating a policy shift that has been noticeable in many countries for at least the last two decades.

The developments sketched above contain a lot of food for thought both for the managers and leaders of the universities and for the higher education students. Globalization is with us, whether we like it or not. The real question is not whether higher education will be transformed and changed (and, incidentally, change has always been a characteristic of the university) but rather how and by whom.

Note also however that in the above we have in essence presented an (incomplete) list of possible future development. While for many of these developments one can already see clear trends and genuine onsets, for many others the realization clearly still lies in the future and is far from certain or straightforward. To conclude that the future of universities and Higher Education will linea recta follow the sketched development paths would be premature. Globalization is a highly multi-dimensional process. The real or perceived negative effects from globalization may very well produce counter-tendencies and ultimately lead us — for specific developments — into just the opposite direction. The dynamics of the whole process may also just come up with new compromises for the way we organize our Higher Education.

Traditionally, the governance form of Higher Education institutions has always been the result of compromises between the educational ruling forces i.a. the hierarchy, the market and the community values. In this sense the current globalization “upheaval” can be seen as just a search for a new compromise or for new sets of different compromises dependent on the boundary conditions of the setting in which the transformation has to take place. The current strong trend towards strengthening the market element in Higher Education, primarily stresses a model of the university behaving like a firm selling a “product”, that product being higher education and research. But even within this market logic analogy there is a lot of room for nuance, the phenomenon of so-called market segmentation just being one of them (such as e.g. the possibility of elite universities existing next to “mass” universities).

Also the specificity of the Higher Education product itself supplies us with many reasons why the market regulation might not fully dominate the realm of Higher Education, not even in the era of globalization. A more shaded challenge for universities could therefore be to accept the current globalization upheaval as a major societal transformation, as a process that will indeed transform education, but also a process which, when understood in its full complexity, does not have to destroy the diversity and the quality of the educational platform provided by the current institutes of Higher Education.

How has AU prepared its Graduates for the Globalized World ?

As stated before globalization has now been with us for some time. Although, as the previous comments illustrate, also AU will in the future have to make further changes, the education AU has given you over the past years, already incorporated many features fully adapted to the needs of the globalization era.

Let me first of all just remind all of you of the third point in Assumption University’s Vision 2000 for its Graduates under which all its staff and lecturers are required to operate:

AU envisions its graduates to be able to communicate effectively with people from other nations and to participate in the globalization process.

Assumption University has thus always strived to prepare its students to dealing with the complex intercultural dynamics of globalization. These efforts have been going on both implicitly and explicitly.

As AU graduates you have first of all been implicitly “globalized” through the truly international character of the university and its and its pervasive use of English. Students from more than 50 countries come to study in AU both for its academic qualities and for its use of English as the medium of instruction. AU courses are taught by a multi-national faculty of either foreigners or Thais holding advanced degrees earned in Universities abroad. All this has provided you with an unequaled day-to-day immersion in a multi-cultural international environment, both in and outside the classrooms, in the residence halls and through a multitude of on-campus social programs. As AU graduates you have thus been exposed to a diverse mixture of races, ethnicities and nationalities and you have experienced first hand with what it means and takes to live in peace and harmony with people of other races and nations. AU has also offered you a real window the global educational community of the world through its memberships in numerous international education networks and through its many joint-degree programs with universities in the US, Australia, India and the UK.

More explicitly AU has brought you globalization preparation through its curriculum developments. New curricula and study programs have been introduced reflecting up-to-date content and using teaching methodologies based on active participation and independent inquiry. Those curricula were designed not only to develop your analytical and strategic thinking, but also to motivate and prepare you for lifelong learning. They aimed not only at teaching the abilities and skills which are needed to qualify for a professional activity, they also tried to stimulate the previously enumerated social qualities that are bound to be of such prime importance in the future global knowledge society i.e. judgment and evaluation, flexibility and adaptability and of course the abilities to communicate, both orally, through language skills, and electronically, through the usage of the modern ICT tools.

As all of you know, over the years, AU has given you access to outstanding computer facilities and Internet connections and to a library with complete on-line catalogue facilities, the latter just recently even augmented by a powerful online journal database. Let me stress however that to all these preparations for (and all these exposures to) what it takes to meet the challenges of the globalized society, will not suffice if you do not leave AU with the profound inner conviction that graduation is not the end of your learning efforts but the beginning of a new learning cycle, your lifelong learning cycle, certainly different in form from the scholar methods to which you were exposed at AU, but equally necessary if you want to succeed in the global environment that you are about to enter

Conclusion

Let me conclude with a more personal remark.

Globalization appears to have become an irresistible force. You will have to participate in it if you want to live your life to the fullest and if you want to enjoy the undeniable development opportunities it offers. “Knowledge is power” has become the catchword of our time. There is no need to forget however that knowledge also includes knowledge of the Ultimate, of the Eternal Truth. Knowledge should not just allow you to write a brilliant report or to perform a successful analysis, it should also assist you in distinguishing between what is intrinsically good and what is intrinsically bad. Education and knowledge canand must also be a tool to liberate you from greed and envy, from selfishness and fear, from superstition and irrational prejudice. Education, in principle, allows each individual the opportunity to express his/her individual talents, and is fundamental to building a just and peaceful world. Try to reach out to others and try to use your knowledge for positive transformations in our society and for alleviating the suffering of the world’s poorest. In the professional ethics courses, at which — incidentally — many of you were often reluctant attendees, you were taught about important basic moral and spiritual questions and issues. Try to internalize these ideals and try to use them as a moral compass whenever you are applying your knowledge.

Dear Graduates:

Today is your day of celebration. Wherever your career and life may lead you, try to remain the “salt of the earth” and the “light of the world”. Be proud that you have now become a member of the large Assumption University alumni family. Go out now and move forward with confidence. Congratulations to each and every one of you once again! May the almighty God protect you from harm and grant you wisdom and prosperity!