VIII	STRUCTURE, GOVERNANCE AND FINANCE OF THE FUTURE AKU
	1	Aga Khan University in Transition
	1.1	The Chancellor's Commission was appointed at a time when AKU was committed to beginning a new phase of its life by moving beyond being a university only in the health sciences. This Commission was asked to think boldly and bravely about what the University might become in this new phase by looking 20 or 30 years ahead, with results we have reported in previous Sections here. We were also charged to say where future branches might be located, what their legal basis would be, and to "recommend appropriate senior management and governance structures for the University as it evolves through various phases of development ... and define suitable linkages with other related entities". We were, moreover, to address the financial implications of the vision we depict of the future AKU. Our efforts to discharge these various responsibilities are set forth in this section of' our Report.
	1.2	It must be said that AKU is sailing into seas where there are few charts to guide it. There are now many universities that are international in character and purpose and there are universities with multiple campuses, or even whole university systems. But the universities that are international in character are typically strongly rooted in a particular country, as MIT is in the U.S. or Cambridge in the U.K. And most of the universities with multiple sites are all in one country as Napoleon's University de France was, or even in one state, as are the state universitv systems of the U.S. In important senses, AKU is now a Pakistani university but it has also been from its beginnings an international university. It represents a commitment of the international Ismaili community and its Imam, who have provided indispensable moral and financial support for its development. The location of the Aga Khan University Foundation, the repository for the University's endowment, in Switzerland expresses this international character. Anti the future we have laid out for AKU goes beyond appending foreign branches to a Pakistani university. There are few examples and no very pertinent models for AKU as a dispersel international university, with branches in as many as three or four parts of the world. The United Nations University and others ve have studied provide more cautionary than positive guidance for AKU.

[Previous] [Next]