| IX |
CONCLUSION |
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| 1 |
A look Back On What We Have Proposed |
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The main tasks of this Commission, as our Chairman
has regularly reminded us, have been large and general ones.
We w.ere charged to examine the "overall vision" of Aga Khan University as it was set forth more than a decade ago,
and, looking at what has happened in the world since then, to
say if and how that vision needed to be changed. Having confirmed
or refocused the vision of what AKU should be, we were to say
how the vision might be realised in the next twenty or thirty
years, in programmes of education, research, and service. |
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The original vision does not, in our view, need
any basic change. AKU is to be a private, autonomous, Muslim
university, open without discrimination to all qualified applicants,
and devoted to the needs of the developing and Muslim worlds.
As a small institution it has to be, as our predecessors said,
"distinctive in substance or quality or both" if it is to be
important in these worlds; and this has meant that in the midst
of the present abundance of higher education it ought not try
to be a "big conventional university with the familiar array
of schools and faculties". AKU should be a university with unique
qualities but not so idiosyncratic that it cannot easily be
recognised as a distinguished institution according to the standards
in instruction, research and academic leadership by which universities
are normally judged. |
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The challenge of fulfilling this
vision for AKU has not lessened in the decade since it started.
The pace of change has accelerated, in the accumulation and
proliferation of knowledge, anti in the social, economic, and
political settings AKU must face. An institution that wishes
to share in pushing outward the frontiers of knowledge must
now run fast just to keep these frontiers ii, sight. The challenge
and the rewards before AKU in keeping the pace and being a productive
centre of research and high quality education have certainly
grown; and they are heightened by the, lagging we have found
persisting elsewhere in the developing and Muslim worlds' higher
educatioll and research. The changes in the boundaries and the
character of these worlds have also brought new potential and
significance to AKU's work. The recourse to market economies
and private institutions in development strategy opens broader
perspectives of influence for quality private ir institutions
like AKU, and the search for deeper .n understanding of development
poses challenges for research and analysis in AKU. With the
present n emphasis on open economies the developing world le
must be more tightly engaged with the rich te industrial economies
and with globalisation and n migration the Muslim world is no
longer simply a subset of the developing world. AKU's work thus
may increasingly be significant for the whole world. |
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We have seen AKU making a strong start toward
realising the vision set for it and laying a base from which
this Commission could confid ently project an ambitious future.
AKU has established itself as an independent institution of
integrity and quality, tackling some of the issues facing Pakistan
but not losing its sense of commitment to wider purposes for
the developing and Muslim worlds. The support the University
has had from His Highness the Aga Khan and the Ismaili community
throughout the world has underscored its special and firmly
international character. It has encouraged the Commission to
propose that AKU becomes a much broadened and widely dispersed
university in the next quarter Century. |
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The future AKU we have proposed will be a highly
distinctive institution. It will be a Muslim university both
in its special attention to Islamic civilisations and the problems
of the contemporary Muslim world and in the pervasive influence
of the traditions of Islamic civilisations and learning in its
work. We expect it to be notable for its creative methods of
teaching and learning and for its devotion to the needs and
advancement of women. It will combine strength in research with
devotion to high quality education and service, and it will
do so in carefully selected modes and in subject matter that
sprawls over the boundaries of conventional academic disciplines.
A review of our proposals in Section VII above shows that the
future AKU we conceive will not have many of the familiar schools
and faculties of universities; it will not have law, or engineering
or management schools. It will still, however, be a very broad
university, ranging over the fields of knowledge from the sciences
to the humanities and from attention to the urgent, practical
needs of humanity to its more spiritual and intellectual needs.
It will, to fulfil its high ambitions, have to be firmly on
the "information superhighways" of the world, maintaining strong
and wide-ranging networks of ties to many universities and other
institutions. We hope that AKU's future teachers, researchers,
and students will be driven by their curiosity and ambition
to keep extending what is studied in AKU, and that they will
realise His Highness's vision of a happy balance of the spiritual
and the technocratic in what AKU does. |
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The Commission has, as charged, kept its gaze
mostly on what AKU might be in the long run. But we have also
given thought to the start toward this future, with results
we describe briefly before concluding. |
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| 2 |
Starting Toward the New AKU :Next
Steps Ahead |
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| 2.1 |
In earlier sections of this report we have given
some indications of the sequence and timing in which we think
new developments in AKU should occur. And in the previous Section
VIII on governance and finance we have made proposals on how
the new phase in AKU's history might be guided and directed.
We have not, however, drawn together what we think can and should
be done in the next decade or so. That is the concern of these
paragraphs. |
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| 2.2 |
We believe AKU should grow in an orderly way over
the coming years, holding faithfully to the missions set for
it. A periodic exercise such as was entrusted to the Harvard
Committee in the early 1980s and has been given to us as the
Chancellor's Commission in this decade may serve to affirm the
University's long-term aspirations and say what is needed to
keep moving toward them. In the intervals between such exercises
there will inevitably be much detailed planning and development.
We have given in Section VIII our views on the governing structures
we think will be needed to guide AKU both over the long run
and in the immediately coming years. If the proposals we have
made for AKU's future are to be followed seriously, we foresee
the need for : (1) appropriate attention by the Chancellor and
Board; (2) sufficient capacity at senior academic and executive
levels to undertake a vigorous planning and development process,
and (3) engagement of the faculty and staff in the shaping of
plans and programmes. |
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| 2.3 |
We have concluded that the development
of the University in its new phase should proceed under its
existing Charter and Board. We assume that the Strategic Planning
Committee of the Board will add to its responsibilities in monitoring
the recommendations of the Medical Centre Committee similar
responsibilities for such recommendations of this Commission
as the Chancellor may choose to accept. As its present Chairman,
Professor Bell, has reminded us, these important monitoring
functions cannot be executive functions, which must lie with
the senior administration. |
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