Asian – Norwegian partnerships at a crossroads

Professor Dzulkifli Abdul Razak, Vice Chancellor of Universiti Sains Malaysia was the key speaker at the conference in Dhaka, and linked education to sustainability and global challenges. He wants to strengthen social sciences and humanities in universities in the south.

– Sciences today are considered a tool for economic advancement. We do not teach the philosophy of science any more, the emphasis is on producing. Education is turning more into a factory. I would like to bring back social sciences into the sciences, because learning is about being, not about having. Market places are collapsing, now is the time to build a new model of what our universities should be, said Professor Razak.

- Institutional building is a slow process, Ishtiaq Jamil (back) says. Gitiara Nasreen from the University in Dhaka in the front.

Making local knowledge global

Professor Arefin Siddique, Vice Chancellor at the University of Dhaka and the Norwegian Ambassador Ragne Birte Lund emphasised the importance of relationships in academia, also related to global challenges.

– The future of our world depends on relationships and intellectual resources. We need to work for capacity building. Global challenges can be overcome if all stakeholders stay connected and support each other, Siddique said.

– In the future it will be even more important to ensure that research and education programmes are being developed based on local needs of communities in the partner countries. Synergy with other programs and initiatives should be sought, so that governments, academia and development partners are pulling in the same direction. It is no longer “we and they”. It is about “us”, and making local knowledge global and vice versa, said Lund.

South-South cooperation

Some of the issues that were discussed were South-South cooperation and joint degrees between institutions in the north and south. Professor Rowshan Ara Begum at the Bangladesh Institute of Health Sciences is participating in the NOMA programme in the field of public health.

– To develop joint degrees, we must have a common course curriculum between the universities. We need to consider which course we are offering, and our countries’ own needs. Many students want to go abroad to universities like Cambridge instead of studying here, because of prestige. These universities are prestigious because they have high quality. We have to work on developing the quality of our own universities, Professor Begum thinks.

- We have to work on developing the quality of our own universities, Professor Begum thinks.

Slow process

Associate Professor Ishtiaq Jamil from the University in Bergen is one of the Norwegian project coordinators. He addressed the added value and added challenges with regional cooperation projects in academic capacity building.

– The major gain is capacity building and development of partnerships in the South, with an international network of researchers in India, China and Thailand. But no collaboration is free from challenges. Institutional building is a slow process. It needs continuous interactions, trust and openness between partners, Jamil pointed out.
NORHED (Norwegian Programme for Capacity Building in Higher Education and Research for Development) will replace the NOMA and NUFU programmes.

The new cooperation programme will support mutual partnerships between higher education instiutions in low- and middle income countries (LMIC). Senior Adviser Tove Kvil from Norad underlined the importance to base the future projects on the needs of the educational institutions in LMIC countries, and the national strategies in these countries.