| EXECUTIVE SUMMARY |
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| VIII |
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The Structure, Governance and Finance of the Future AKU
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We perceive AKU as now entering a new phase of its development,
expanding from its initial single focus on the Health Sciences
in Karachi to other fields and to locations beyond Pakistan.
We believe that AKU should spread internationally, adding locations
in at least two geographic areas to its original home in Pakistan.
Europe and East Africa beckon as likely future sites, with Central
Asia, India, and other places as further possibilities. International
universities with this sort of dispersion are not common and
there is not much helpful experience to guide planning of AKU's
future. |
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The future AKU will need governance at two levels, for the
University as a whole and for its individual parts. The Commission
believes that AKU can and should go ahead to develop internationally
under its existing Pakistan charter until such time as revisions
or change in its charter may seem necessary. We also believe
that the legal establishment of branches in different countries
may encounter less difficulty than appeared to be the case some
years ago. Advisory councils for branches of AKU should
possess the stature in their areas and in relevant professions
that will be needed to support and guide these branches. |
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The responsibilities of the central leadership of the University,
in the Board and in the senior executive and academic staff,
will grow apace with the University's growth and expansion into
new areas and fields. The composition of the Board will need
appropriate adjustment and the appointment of a fully empowered
Rector will be needed in the not-distant future. We also believe
that the senior academic and executive leadership of AKU needs
to be strengthened promptly by addition of an officer we have
called a Director of Planning. Rectors of AKU will need
to be persons with very high orders of-talent, energy, and experience.
We anticipate that, with variations depending on their backgrounds,
future Rectors will need to maintain collegial patterns of senior
leadership such as AKU has had thus far, in order to deal with
the many communities and contexts on which AKU will depend.
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The core financial requirements of AKU we project at
about 2025 have been roughly assessed by the Commission. In
constant 1994 dollars, we foresee the University growing in
annual core budgets somewhat more than four-fold from $ 10 million
at the present time to more than $ 40 million in 2025. These
estimates include provision for space and equipment but not
for major capital expenditures. We have also made estimates
of the larger budgets AKU will face if higher education costs
continue to rise at higher rates than general price levels.
We do not see these financial requirements as dismayingly large
in a world we expect to be richer in 2025 than it is now. AKU
has thus far benefited from very generous donors. We have been
encouraged by the results of recent fund-raising and project
that if recent levels of generosity are maintained over the
coming decades, AKU will by 2025 have received large gifts for
capital expenditures and for an endowment that will produce
income covering fractions of its expenditures comparable to
those that rich private universities elsewhere have. |
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| IX |
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Conclusion |
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In summary of our conclusions, we have found that the
"overall vision" of Aga Khan University as it was set forth
more than a decade ago does not need basic change : AKU should
be a private, autonomous, Muslim university, open without discrimination
to all qualified applicants, and devoted to the needs of the
developing and Muslim worlds. The changes since AKU was founded
and that we can anticipate in the next decades sharpen the need
for AKU and the challenges it faces as a Muslim institution,
and as a university of quality and creativity in research, instruction,
and service. We have proposed a future for AKU as a highly distinctive
international university; it will not have some conventional
schools or faculties but will seek through institutes that combine
different disciplines and draw on links to Aga Khan Development Network to address major subjects like Islamic civilisations,
human development and economic growth in creative ways.It will
be a university spread broadly both geographically and over
the fields of pure and applied knowledge from the sciences to
the humanities. It will have both spiritual and technocratic
elements for the needs of its own students and those of the
worlds it aims to serve. |
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The Commission was charged to consider the long-term future
of AKU but we have also necessarily given thought to the
start toward that future in the next decade. We are anxious
to see AKU's development go ahead promptly in an orderly, planned
way. To this end we have recommended the early appointment of
a Director of Planning to strengthen the senior executive leadership,
and extended responsibilities for the Strategic Planning Committee
of the Board of Trustees. With the support and commitment of
the Chancellor and the Board of Trustees and the active engagement
of faculty and staff we are confident of early progress toward
the goals we have proposed. |
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A rough sequence of new developments in AKU is indicated in
Sections VII and VIII of our report.. The Institute of Islamic
Civilisations would come first, along with the start of the
new developments we have proposed in the Faculty of Health Sciences,
and already planed developments in IED; following as soon thereafter
as financial and administrative constraints permit, would come
the Institutes of Human Development and Economic Growth, and
further growth in IED. The start of the Faculty or College of
Arts and Sciences would not come until after the end of the
first decade ahead, and the Institute of Human Settlements still
later. |
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We thus conceive that a decade hence AKU should be well started
toward being a more widely spread and diversified university,
while continuing to grow in the health sciences and education.
But we recognise that what can be done in the next ten years
will be subject to serious financial constraints. Existing commitments
and a slow rise of significant new income from endowment means
that developments in the next years ahead look more difficult
than in the longer-run. There may be disappointments but we
urge that they bring only delays, not abandonment of plans and
purposes. |
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Envoi |
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Realisation of the future we have proposed for AKU will require
talents and commitments far beyond the ordinary. But we see
them as balanced by the historic opportunity AKU has as a new
institution at a time when university education and research
are in disarray in parts of the world that particularly concern
it. The Chancellor is rightly proud to recall that his ancestors
established a historic university in Cairo a thousand years
ago. In the new century that will soon begin, we look forward
to AKU winning historic distinction in a world where universities
like it are too rare and sorely needed. |
