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EDUCATION: Expiration Dates and Refresher Courses for Graduates

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 25 2003 (IPS) - University degrees should have a sort of ”expiration date”, and professionals should be required to renew them every five years by taking refresher courses, to keep up in a world where knowledge is expanding at a dizzying pace.

That is one of the ideas that Brazil’s Education Minister Cristovam Buarque will bring up for discussion at the 21st International University Seminar, which is drawing local and international experts to Brasilia Tuesday through Thursday to debate the future of higher learning.

Knowledge today ”is advancing faster outside of the university than within it,” the minister told IPS.

New subject areas are constantly emerging, new areas of thinking and knowledge that have no place in teaching, because universities take so long in making room for them, said Buarque. The same thing occurs in the case of new professions, which are multiplying in number, he added.

But the way people study and graduate today follows the same model as the one used decades ago, even though the world has totally changed, said Buarque.

In the past, professionals could remain active in their fields for 30 years or more based on the knowledge acquired in their university studies, and were still considered capable and well-educated. Now, ”every five years virtually everything changes,” said the minister.

Buarque thus suggests ”structural changes” in universities and other centres of higher learning, which he said should be reorganised not only by departments, but according to ”subjects from the real world, or thematic blocks.”

The time students spend in learning should be shortened, he said, and they would graduate earlier, but with the requirement that they return periodically for refresher courses – every five years, for example – to keep up-to-date through continuous learning.

University degrees and other certificates of higher learning would have a sort of expiration date, perhaps five years, suggested the minister, who said he developed his ideas on the transformation needed in the educational system since he was rector of the University of Brasilia in the early 1990s, before becoming governor of the Federal District in the capital.

But not all problems have to do with the generation of knowledge and know-how, he said. Others are related to the social barriers standing in the way of access to higher learning.

Access to tertiary education remains low in many countries. While in countries like the United States and Britain, 45 of every 100 youngsters go on to higher education, the proportion is a single-digit figure in many African countries, according to World Bank statistics.

Buarque, education minister in the leftist government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, also spoke of an ”ethical crisis” in today’s universities, as well as ”an insufficient social commitment.” Universities remain committed to ”the rich part of society,” making a decisive contribution to ”the construction of a divided world,” he said.

Buarque mainly attacked the economy – which he said was today ”the science of the construction of apartheid on a global scale” – for allying itself with the rich, without any commitment to the poor.

Professionals and university graduates generally ”do not work for the poor, but for a medical and technological system that only benefits the wealthiest minority of the population,” said the minister. Although transforming that tendency not only depends on the universities themselves, that reality ”accentuates the ethical crisis,” he maintained.

In countries like Brazil, where a large portion of the population lives in poverty, it is necessary for some university disciplines, like medicine, to be committed to the needs of the population, he said.

The environment is another example, said Buarque. Universities rejected the issue for as long as they could, and when they finally incorporated it, they created a new area of study instead of including the question in all courses, which generated contradictions and conflicts. ”Engineers should study the issue, not biologists,” he argued.

The minister hopes this week’s seminar will provide new perspectives on the form higher education should take in the future. To that end, 70 foreign experts – including government ministers, university presidents, and representatives of international bodies – have been invited to attend.

In addition, 1,200 Brazilians will take part in the seminar, which is organised by the Education Ministry with the support of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

Buarque would like the initiative to be repeated every two years, in different countries, as a forum to reflect on the university of the future. His objective is to create a movement aimed at ”responsible intelligence.”

For three days, participants will discuss questions like ”the reinvention of the university”, ”the globalisation of knowledge infused with solidarity”, ”the role of the university in Latin American integration”, ”lifelong learning”, and the relations between knowledge in the areas of science, religion, culture and art.

To overcome the crisis facing university education, new directions and new approaches are required, said Marco Antonio Rodrigues Dias, former director of the Division of Higher Education in UNESCO, and currently a special assistant to the rector of the United Nations University.

In the late 20th century, the university ”lost its monopoly over the production of knowledge” and know-how, making it indispensable to ”reinvent the institution” with a more interdisciplinary focus capable of providing responses to the demands of society, said the Secretary of Higher Education in Brazil, Carlos Antunes dos Santos.