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A look Back On What We Have Proposed |
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| 2.4 |
We have recommended the early appointment of a
senior officer, tentatively designated a Director of Planning,
to work together with the Acting Rector, the President of the
University Centre, and the Director-General of the Hospital
(when relevant), in the next steps of planning and development
of the University. In our view, it is clear that the many duties
now falling on the existing senior leadership make it imperative
that additional strength be available soon at this high level
if orderly planning is to occur. We have had lively debate in
the course of the Commission's meetings on the pattern of development
that might occur in response to this Commission's recommendations.
In one view, effort would be concentrated on a single new component
at a time; in the opposing view, the whole strategy of future
development should be kept firmly in view, lest it be lost or
over-powered by preoccupation with a particular new venture
and the continued development of what already exists. Though
in recommending that the Institute of Islamic Civilisations
be given first attention, we have proposed an order of concrete
effort, we also believe it essential that new developments be
kept in a strategic framework. |
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| 2.5 |
The concern the Commission has had that the existing
parts of the University in the Faculty of Health Sciences and
the IED might inhibit the development of new parts is one we
think has been justified. A glance at the sections of our Report
dealing with the future of the Faculty of Health Sciences and
IED and the large place we foresee for them in the AKU of 2025
will show ample reasons for this concern. If these parts of
the University are as lively and forward-looking as we hope
they will be, they will certainly be constantly pressing for
new developments. We have said that the Commission's concerns
of these matters have been eased by the broad outlook of the
new Acting Rector on the future of AKU ' and also by the views
we have found prevalent in the faculty, particularly as we heard
them at the time of our Karachi meeting in May of this year.
We still feel, however, that it will be necessary to have a
locus of initiative and planning for the University as a whole
if parts yet unborn are to have proper opportunities to develop.
Given the dispositions of the Acting Rector and President, we
are confident that the addition of the new senior officer we
are recommending, whose responsibilities would be precisely
to keep the general development of the University in view, will
assure the kind of strategic outlook we think essential. We
would hope that, working together and with the Strategic Planning
Committee of the Board, these officers may deal in a judicious
way with the flow of new initiatives that will come from the
existing parts of the University while advancing the planning
and development of new ones. |
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| 2.6 |
We conceive that new initiatives will involve
fairly extensive feasibility and planning studies, undertaken
by appropriate task forces. These will require recruitment and
organisation of the necessary talent and continuing attention
once such task forces are at work. Not many exercises of this
sort can be mobilised and supervised at a given time. Both for
these administrative reasons and for financial reasons the Commission
has given much thought to the sequence and timing of new developments
in AKU. A rough sequence has been indicated in Sections VII
and VIII of our report. It would have : |
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- the Institute of Islamic Civilisations in the
first starting position; |
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- some developments within the Faculty of Health
Sciences, in expanding research, in building Health Policy and
Management from the beginning already approved, and making first
moves toward a preliminary year, would probably fall next in
line with already planned developments in IED: |
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- the Institutes of Human Developniclit and Economic
Growth, and further growth in IED would be next to start, and
be no farther delayetl than administrative and financial constraints
would dictate; |
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- the start of the Faculty or College of Arts
and Sciences would not come until the end of the first decade
ahead, and perhaps even later, while the Institute of Human
Settlements would be deferred to a still later time. |
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| 2.7 |
We can thus envisage that after a decade or so
AKU would have become a distinctly broader and more diversified
university while continuing to grow in its original commitments
to the health sciences and education. But what can be done
in the next ten years or so will necessarily be constrained
by available funding. We recall that MCC found the Faculty
of Health Sciences still needing additional funding through
the remainder of the 1990s even without the additions we are
proposing, and its recommendation of a "realignment" of
the Medical College was recognised to involve additional costs
not accurately assessed. The additional senior officer and the
planning exercises we are proposing will add additional costs
before new programmes actually start. And there should also
be early movement toward the strengthening of the informational
and communication resources of AKU, its educational methods,
and its efforts in the advancement of women that we have urged.
We should suppose that as much as $ 500,000 per annum will have
to be found to provide for these purposes. |
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We have, in the immediately previous section of
this report made some fairly optimistic projections of growth
of' AKU's endowment and other resources in the long run. In
the short run, the prospects are distinctly more limited. Rcmembering,
the additional capital and endowment still needed by the Faculty
of Health Sciences in this decade, the build-up of income from
endowment for support of new departures in AKU (even within
the Faculty of Health Sciences) will be slow. It thus seems
evident that the start of new programmes in the first decade
ahead will have to depend heavily on consumable gifts, special
grants and other income. We have at various points seen encouraging
prospects for such support but we must recognise the uncertainties
in timing that dependence on such start-up funding implies.
The build-up of endowment and other income in the second decade
ahead should permit more vigorous expansion, and AKU should
be prepared toward the end of the first decade to move ahead
later at a faster pace; but it cannot trust to endowment income
to undergird growth in the years now immediately before it.
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We are anxious to see the programme of development
we have laid out for AKU's future be initiated promptly and
proceed as rapidly as possible. But we must recognise that there
are likely to be disappointments and delays which may mean that
AKU will not be as far along after 10 or 15 years as we had
projected. Our Chairman likes to speak of the "resistant medium
of time". We should hope that when AKU's leaders find the going
sticky they will not abandon one or another of the components
we have proposed but stretch out the schedule for launching
them. |
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| 3 |
Envoi |
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It is a sobering experience to review what will
be required, in the next few years and later, for AKU to fulfil
the vision of its mission that was set by its Founder and that
we have affirmed for it here. For AKU to become what we intend
and expect it to be will take talents and commitments far beyond
the ordinary. Starting new and high quality parts of the University
will require intellectual and educational vision combined with
entrepreneurial skills and energies. Those who launch the many
enterprises we see ahead will only be successful with wise and
faithful support of the Chancellor, the Board, the Rector, his
colleagues, the present faculty and staff of the University,
and those everywhere who put their confidence in AKU. |
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If the tasks ahead are large and demanding, they
are balanced by the extraordinary, historic opportunity that
now lies before this University. AKU is rising as a new institution
at a time when university education and research are in disarray
in the parts of the world that specially concern it. There can
be no question but that the developing and Muslim worlds need
better institutions of higher education and research than they
now have. They need these institutions not only to help bring
more prosperous and rewarding lives to their peoples; they need
them also to build the convictions of dignity and worth that
counter bitter descents into alienation and extremism. And the
world needs universities based in the Third World to which it
can turn for wisdom and authoritative knowledge. |
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The Chancellor of this University is rightly proud
to remember that his ancestors established a historic university
in Cairo a thousand years ago. AKU now has a historic opportunity
to serve the Muslim world, the developing countries, and indeed
the whole world in times of troubling need. In the new century
that will soon begin, we look forward to AKU standing forth
as a creative source of education and enlightenment in a world
where such institutions are too rare and sorely needed. |
