It is imperative that higher education offers solutions
to existing problems and innovate to avoid problems in the future. Whether
in the economic, political, or social realms, higher education is expected
to contribute to raising the overall quality of life. To fulfil its role
effectively and maintain excellence, higher education must become far more
internationalised; it must integrate an international and intercultural
dimension into its teaching, research, and service functions.
Preparing future leaders and citizens for a highly
interdependent world, requires a higher education system where
internationalisation promotes cultural diversity and fosters intercultural
understanding, respect, and tolerance among peoples. Such
internationalisation of higher education contributes to building more than
economically competitive and politically powerful regional blocks; it
represents a commitment to international solidarity, human security and
helps to build a climate of global peace.
Technological advances in communications are powerful
instruments, which can serve to further internationalisation of higher
education and to democratise access to opportunities. However, to the
extent that access to new information technologies remains unevenly
distributed in the world, the adverse side effects of their widespread use
can threaten cultural diversity and widen the gaps in the production,
dissemination, and appropriation of knowledge.
Highly educated and trained manpower at the highest
levels are essential to increasingly knowledge-based development. Inter-nationalisation
and international cooperation can serve to improve higher education by
increasing efficiency in teaching and learning as well as in research
through shared efforts and joint actions.
The Confederation of Indian Universities at this point
of time thinks it proper to define the principle of Institutional Autonomy
as the necessary degree of independence from external interference that
the University requires in respect of its internal organisation and
governance, the internal distribution of financial resources and the
generation of income from non public sources, the recruitment of its
staff, the setting of the conditions of study and, finally, the freedom to
conduct teaching and research.
The CIU wishes to further define the principle of
Academic Freedom as the freedom for members of the academic community that
is, scholars, teachers and students to follow their scholarly activities
within a framework determined by that community in respect of ethical
rules and international standards, and without outside pressure.
Rights confer obligations. These obligations are as
much incumbent on the individuals and on the University of which they are
part, as they are upon the State and the Society.
Academic Freedom engages the obligation by each
individual member of the academic profession to excellence, to innovation,
and to advancing the frontiers of knowledge through research and the
diffusion of its results through teaching and publications.
Academic Freedom also engages the ethical
responsibility of the individuals and the academic community in the
conduct of research, both in determining the priorities of that research
and in taking account of the implications, which its results may have for
Humanity and Nature.
For its part, the University has the obligation to
uphold and demonstrate to Society that it stands by its collective
obligation to quality and ethics, to fairness and tolerance, to the
setting and the upkeep of standards - academic when applied to research
and teaching, administrative when applied to due process, to the rendering
of accounts to Society, to self-verification, to institutional review and
to transparency in the conduct of institutional self-government.
For their part, organising powers and stakeholders
public or private, stand equally under the obligation to prevent arbitrary
interference, to provide and to ensure those conditions necessary, in
compliance with internationally recognised standards, for the exercise of
Academic Freedom by individual members of the academic profession and for
University Autonomy to be exercised by the institution.
GOTOP
In particular, the organising powers and stakeholders
public or private, and the interests they represent, should recognise that
by its very nature the obligation upon the academic profession to advance
knowledge is inseparable from the examination, questioning and testing of
accepted ideas and of established wisdom. And that the expression of
views, which follow from scientific insight or scholarly investigation may
often be contrary to popular conviction or judged as unacceptable and
intolerable.
Hence, agencies which exercise responsibility for the
advancement of knowledge as too particular interests which provide support
for, or stand in a contractual relationship with, the University for the
services it may furnish, must recognise that such expressions of scholarly
judgement and scientific inquiry shall not place in jeopardy the career or
the existence of the individual expressing them nor leave that individual
open to pursual for delit d'opinion on account of such views being
expressed.
If the free range of inquiry, examination and the
advance of knowledge are held to be benefits Society derives from the
University, the latter must assume the responsibility for the choices and
the priorities it sets freely. Society for its part, must recognise its
part in providing means appropriate for the achievement of that end.
Resources should be commensurate with expectations -
especially those which, like fundamental research, demand a long-term
commitment if they are to yield their full benefits.
The obligation to transmit and to advance knowledge is
the basic purpose for which Academic Freedom and University Autonomy are
required and recognised. Since knowledge is universal, so too is this
obligation.
In practice, however, Universities fulfil this
obligation primarily in respect of the Societies in which they are
located. And it is these communities, cultural, regional, national and
local, which establish with the University the terms by which such
responsibilities are to be assumed, who is to assume them and by what
means and procedures.
Responsibilities met within the setting of 'national'
society, extend beyond the physical boundaries of that society. Since its
earliest days, the University has professed intellectual and spiritual
engagement to the principles of 'universalism' and to 'internationalism'
whilst Academic Freedom and University Autonomy evolved within the setting
of the historic national community.
For Universities to serve a world society requires that
Academic Freedom and University Autonomy form the bedrock to a new Social
Contract - a contract to uphold values common to Humanity and to meet the
expectations of a world where frontiers are rapidly dissolving.
GOTOP
In the context of international cooperation, the
exercise of Academic Freedom and University Autonomy by some should not
lead to intellectual hegemony over others. It should, on the contrary, be
a means of strengthening the principles of pluralism, tolerance and
academic solidarity between institutions of higher learning and between
individual scholars and students.
At a time when the ties, obligations and commitments
between Society and the University are becoming more complex, more urgent
and more direct, it appears desirable to establish a broadly recognised
Charter of mutual rights and obligations governing the relationship
between University and Society, including adequate monitoring mechanisms
for its application.
The Confederation of Indian Universities (CIU), being
founded to promote cooperation among higher education institutions, notes
that despite the universality of knowledge, which has always served to
affirm the nature of higher education, the level of internationalisation
remains low and uneven.
Furthermore, cooperation has had relatively little
impact of global wealth and resource distribution even in the realm of
higher education.
Worse, the external brain drain and other negative
consequences of poorly designed cooperative activities have, at times,
even exacerbated the conditions in developing nations.
In more recent times, commercial and financial
interests have gained prominence in the internationalisation process and
threaten to displace the less utilitarian and equally valuable aspects of
this enriching and necessary transformation of higher education.
Letters of invitation have been sent to all the
university level institutions in India for enabling them to send their
consent to be the founder members and sponsors of the Confederation of
Indian Universities (CIU).
The names of university level institutions from where
consent letters have been received are kept under this document as
Annexure.
GOTOP
Declaration of Name
The name of the organisation shall be
"Confederation of Indian Universities (CIU)". It shall be a
self-governing body having non-political, non-governmental and non-profit
making character.
Registered Office
The Registered Office will presently be situated at A 14 Paryavaran
Complex, South of Saket, New Delhi - 110030. The Registered Office may be
changed in future but will remain in the National Capital Territory of
Delhi.
|
