PARIS ― Universities don’t have to solve the social and practical problems of the day, but should rather focus on equipping students with the critical and analytical thinking skills that will enable them to do these things themselves.
That was one of the major themes to emerge from several scholars during the final day of the three-day Princeton-Fung Global Forum on the Future of Higher Education held here at the historic Hotel de Villle.
The institutional soul searching comes at a time when universities are being pressured by factors that range from efforts to rank the institutions to those who have pushed universities to adopt the jargon of business.
“We made a mistake the first time we decided to use the metaphors of companies in our enterprise,” said Bernard Ramanantsoa, dean of HEC Paris, who acknowledged that it was initially “provocative” when universities were influenced to use terms such as “market share” and “customers” to describe students.
But Ramanatsoa said universities should resist the urge to view students in such a way.
“Students are not customers,” Ramanantsoa said. “Students are students.”
