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2 |
The Structure and Governance of the Future
AKU |
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2.1 |
We have argued that AKU needs to have important
sites in more than one country, and probably as many as three.
This dispersion is essential to realising AKU's character as
an international university but it has serious costs of both
practical and intellectual sorts and should not be pushed beyond
a necessary minimum. We foresee the need for a site somewhere
in the Western world, most probably in Europe; and we believe
a site in Africa is necessary to maintain a broad concern with
the generic problems of development and for other reasons. The
presently unsettled state of Central Asia makes prediction difficult,
but we assume there may at some time be a significant AKU presence
there, either fairly autonomous or linked to Karachi and Pakistan. |
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2. 2 |
A dispersed, international AKU will need organisation
and governance at two levels: central for the university as
a whole; dispersed for the components. A central Board of
Trustees and a chief executive officer and academic head as
now exist will, of course, he needed. The Harvard Committee
believed it should consider the possibility that at some future
time the University's centre might be in a place other than
Pakistan. That possibility now seems more remote than it did
eleven years ago, but this Commission did not lose sight of
it. Whatever the official location and the legal basis for the
future Board and executive leadership of the University, we
assume that the position of the Chancellor, essentially as in
the Pakistan Charter, will be preserved. |
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The Harvard Committee thought that the proper
discharge of its functions would require that "the central board
should be composed of wise and experienced educators and statesmen".
And went on to say : "It should by its eminence and international
character help protect the components of the University from
political interference and enhance the credibility and attractiveness
of the University to collaborating institutions and supporters
throughout the world". The Rector should "have a distinguished
record as an educator and administrator of academic and research
enterprises, a broad international acquaintance, and strong
interest in the problems of the Third World". This Commission
warmly endorses these criteria for selecting future Rectors
and board members. |
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Each of the components of the future University
will need its own responsible executive and academic head, and
some form of advisory or oversight bodies, depending on the
nature of the component, its geographical location, and its
relations to other components. Considerable responsibilities
may fall on the executive and oversight leadership of new branches
of the University : in the planning of programmes and budgets;
the recruitment of staff, clients, and donors; the establishment
and maintenance of relations with national governments and with
networks of co-operating institutions. Recent experience in
relating the Board of Trustees to the Academic Advisory Committee
for IED suggests a pattern of limited independent authority
for the oversight bodies of new components; or at least that
there may be wide variation in the relations of the central
Board with the new components. The location of IED in Karachi
within easy gaze of the Board and the University's academic
and executive leadership may, however, make it an atypical case.
In any case, it has been clear to the Commission that academic
advisory competencies in the fields of each component will certainly
be needed; we also think some weighty nationals from the country
in which the component is located will be needed. We have been
impressed that the initial academic and executive heads of the
components - and perhaps more than the first - will need exceptional
qualities and consequently their selection should engage the
central authorities of the University. In a more routinised
long-run, this engagement of the centre might be reduced to
more passive "advice and consent". |
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2.3 |
Some legal basis for each component will be needed
under the laws of the country in which it is located. This
might take the form of a special charter but it also could
be a simpler arrangement based on the general provisions for
foreign organisations establishing branches or affiliates
within the country. We have been led to believe from recent
experience of AKDN that these arrangements may be easier than
in the past and we hopefully regard them as not a major problem.
We emphasise that the legal arrangements, whatever their
particular character, should protect the University's autonomy.
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2.4 |
We think it sensible to go ahead on the presumption
that an internationalised AKU can develop satisfactorily under
the existing Pakistan Charter until experience should show otherwise.
The present charter provides for branches of the University
outside Pakistan and for international representation on the
Board. There are likely resistances in some countries - notably
India - to having a branch or branches of a university chartered
in Pakistan. There may also be troublesome problems from the
limited size of the Board specified in the Pakistan Charter.
The Harvard group thought a new charter would be preferable
but that the Pakistan Charter with its provisions for the Chancellor,
the Board of Trustees, and a Rector could serve satisfactorily
for an expanded university. Without judging the ultimate outcome,
we believe it is right to attempt this latter course. |
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Some adjustments in the composition of the
central Board will undoubtedly be necessary. For example,
if a significant branch is established in Africa it would be
anomalous not to have an African on the Board. And as the range
of subjects addressed by the University increases, the Board
will presumably want to broaden its range of intellectual competencies.
There is not much room within a board of thirteen members to
make such adjustments, but perhaps enough to postpone early
efforts at amending the Charter, which we are told might be
difficult. |
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The responsibilities of the Board will, in
any event, increase. It will have to review plans and budgets
for a diversified and expanded University; it will have to determine
priorities and locations for development of the components,
keep informed on what they are doing and evaluate their performance.
There will probably, in due course, have to be arrangements
to assure mutual understanding and communication with the oversight
bodies of components. Orderly and efficient management of the
Board's business will be imperative, with the use of committees
such as the Hospital and the Strategic Planning Committees.
The pattern used in the Hospital Committee, which includes members
who are not members of the Board, may be essential in the Board's
future exercise of responsibility for an expanded and diversified
University. The Strategic Planning Committee now has responsibilities
for monitoring the recommendations of the Medical Centre Committee.
We would think it natural and desirable that it have similar
functions in relation to this Commission's recommendations and
the planning processes they will entail. Through the use of
such a committee, the Board may be engaged from an early time
in new developments without being overwhelmed with detail about
them. |
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