The New Bulgarian University
Award Ceremony, Sofia, 8 March 2000
Remarks by Sir John Daniel
on receiving the
Honorary Degree of Doctor of the University
Introduction
President, members of the New Bulgarian University, Ladies and Gentlemen:
Thank you very much for the honour that you have bestowed upon me today. Since I became Vice-Chancellor of the Open University nearly ten years ago I have taken particular pride in the partnerships we have developed in the countries of central Europe. Very good things have happened as a result of these partnerships. Thousands of people have been equipped with knowledge and skills in management that have enabled them to develop the economies of the their country and improve their own lives.
Among all these partnerships I am especially proud of the partnership with the New Bulgarian University. For most of the 1990s you had to develop and operate your academic programs in the most difficult economic circumstances. I pay tribute to all the staff of the University for the courage and dedication they have shown. I look back on my visits here with particular pleasure. I remember being here when you made the e-mail link with the Open University work for the first time and what a big difference that made to communication with colleagues.
I recall with pleasure visiting one of your country’s beautiful monasteries and attending mass in the great cathedral here in Sofia during one of my trips here. All this makes it a special privilege to become a honorary member of your academic community today and I shall treasure that membership. I congratulate you all for the great things you have achieved in difficult circumstances and I am delighted to observe that the economic situation is now getting slightly more favourable to your important work.
The New World
You have asked me to make a brief address on this happy occasion and it is a pleasure to do so. I have taken as my title A New University for a New World. I want, first, to think with you about the changes that have taken place in the world in the short time since the partnership between the New Bulgarian University and the Open University began. Then I shall comment on the challenge and the opportunity of being a new university in this new world.
When our partnership began the Berlin Wall had only just come down, bringing to an end a long period of division between east and west that we called the Cold War. For most of the 1990s we talked about the times we were living in as the post-Cold-War period. Some tried to refer to it as the new international order, but since it seemed to be characterised by plenty of disorder in both politics and economics, that name didn’t seem very suitable either.
Today you hear more about the new international system and about the driving trend of globalisation that seems to define it. Under the disorderly surface of the 1990s things were happening which have created a world very different from the world of the Cold War years. In those Cold War years you in Bulgaria and we in the United Kingdom shared a common humanity but most other aspects of our day-to-day experience, whether economic, political, or technological, were very different. Today we share a much wider set of experiences and attitudes. What has made the difference?
It seems to me that the fall of the Berlin Wall was a symbol of a process of democratisation that was already moving, that picked up much greater speed during the 1990s, and that is still going on. Let me identify four areas.
First, there has been the democratisation of finance. As barriers between countries came down capital flowed in every increasing volume and with ever increasing speed around the world. Individuals in all countries became much freer to invest their money as they chose. A corollary of this trend was that governments lost power to determine the shape of their economies in a unilateral way and I don’t need to dwell on the problems that created for you in Bulgaria.
Second, there has been the democratisation of technology. Again, this is a long-term trend that creates technologies that can be controlled by the individual. As well as trains, on which we travel in groups, we now have cars that we can drive ourselves. As well as the cinema, where we watch films in groups, we have television that allows us to select our own viewing. Computers used to be big expensive machines that only governments and big firms could afford. Today they are devices that individuals can own and use.
Technology has helped to drive a third process of democratisation, the democratisation of information. It is now much more difficult for powerful people to control what people can know. Freedom of information was already growing with the spread of newspapers, radio, television and telephones. Today the Internet and the World Wide Web have made it easy to spread information, whether true or false, all over the globe.
The fourth process of democratisation, in which we are all engaged, is the democratisation of education. This has travelled a very long way in the education of children. There are very few states which do not have as a goal to allow all children to attend school free. However, democratisation still has a long way to go in higher education. Universities in all countries still restrict entry to relatively small numbers of students. I am proud to lead the Open University, which has made openness to people its fundamental ideal. And I am proud to work with the New Bulgarian University that is also dedicated to giving the opportunity of higher education to more people.
Those are four processes of democratisation: of finance, of technology, of information and of education, that have advanced rapidly during the 1990s and which continue in this new century.
With all this change it is interesting to do a ‘before-and-after’ comparison. What are the key differences between the Cold War era and this first year of the new century? Thomas Friedman of the New York Times makes some interesting contrasts.
First, the central fact of the Cold War era was division between east and west, symbolised by the Berlin Wall. Today the central fact is the integration of all parts of the world, symbolised by the Web.
Second, another symbol of the Cold War was the hotline linking the red telephones in Moscow and Washington. We trusted the two presidents to remain in charge and avoid blowing up the rest of us in nuclear war. But today, in the integrated world of the web, no-one is in charge in that way. The Internet lets everyone communicate with everyone else.
Friedman compares the Cold War era to sumo wrestling. It was a slow contest where what counted was weight and size. Today the best sporting analogy is a series of sprint races over 100 metres. What counts is not size and weight but speed and fitness.
Finally, one powerful symbol of the totalitarian state in the Cold War era was the phrase taken from George Orwell’s book 1984, that ‘Big Brother is watching’ you. This expression summarises the role of the state in maintaining an atmosphere of mutual suspicion and distrust to ensure that citizens did not dare to create alliances against the power of the state. Today Big Brother has gone, but has he been replaced by lots of little brothers who can use the Internet to invade our privacy in new ways.
All these examples show how much the world has changed in ten years. I am sure there are many people in Bulgaria – as there are in Britain – who wonder whether it has all been a change for the better. This new world is more challenging to individuals. We may not have liked all aspects of the role of the state in our lives but it was predictable. Work may not always have been exciting but we could rely on it. Today everything is much more uncertain. The role of government is smaller. Innovation is constantly changing the devices and tools that we use in everyday life. We have constantly to learn new skills. The forces of change are not under anyone’s control, rather it seems as though we are all being stampeded along in an electronic herd.
All this puts a special responsibility on universities, and nowhere more so than here in Bulgaria where change has been so dramatic and the results of change so ambiguous. What is the role of universities? How should universities be set up?
The first universities, the historic establishments of medieval Europe in places like Bologna, Paris, and Oxford were created by the students, who got together as a community and paid the professors to teach them. Over the years the churches and the royal households of Europe played a larger and larger part in establishing and maintaining universities, many of which became independent, self-governing foundations.
Then, in the second half of the last century, most universities in Europe came to have a very close relationship with the state, which provided most of their funds and gave them direction through the Ministries of Education. Today, as a result of the increasing demand for higher education and the changes I have outlined new types of universities are springing up and the New Bulgarian University is one of these.
These new universities are of various kinds. Some, called corporate universities, are being set up by large companies for the training of their staff. Others, particularly in the United States, are being set up as profit-making ventures. At the same time many states are reducing their financial support to the public universities, so that they too have to pay more attention to the market.
So there are many kinds of university today. Do they have a common purpose? Should they have a common purpose? All universities teach students but there is great variety in what they teach, whom they teach, and how they teach.
What do universities teach? The old universities are proud to teach across a wide range of disciplines whereas the new universities, particularly the universities set up for profit, teach a much narrower range of subjects related closely to employment, like management and information technology.
Whom do universities teach? The old universities usually teach young students who attend full-time and they often select these young students carefully from those who have done best in their school exams. Many newer universities, and particularly the for-profit universities, teach older students who are studying part-time. Because these are students who come with experience of life and work and who are highly motivated there is no need to select on the basis of performance at school.
How do universities teach? For a long time teaching took place mainly in the classroom or lecture hall, but that is changing fast. The Open University is proud to have pioneered modern methods of distance education and proud that the New Bulgarian University, which teaches in a variety of ways, is also bringing our methods of distance learning to Bulgaria.
The examples I have given show that today universities have a great variety of approaches to what they teach, whom they teach and how they teach. Nevertheless, I believe that there should be a common purpose behind the work of all of them.
The role of universities is ‘to help people maintain an independent understanding of their world’. What do those words mean?
The word independent is there to capture the unique role of universities as creators of understanding. In a knowledge society many claim the right to help us interpret and understand the world. However, most of those claimants such as the press; television; and governments cannot be independent of commercial and political interests. The individualistic and impartial nature of the true university remains unique.
The word understanding means going beyond information, it means going beyond knowledge, it means knowledge acquired with the sense of responsibility for how it comes to be known that can make it the foundation for action.
Universities help people to understand their world. Today our world includes our local community, our nation and the earth as a whole. These components of our worlds – and the relationship between them – are constantly changing so our understanding needs to be constantly renewed.
And the focus is on people. All people. University education can no longer be limited to an elite. Everyone needs to understand their world in order to take effective action. I am very proud that the first goal of the Open University is to be open to people.
How do universities help people maintain an independent understanding of our world? My final point is that good universities do not do this by giving people answers. They do it by teaching people to ask questions. It is by asking questions and testing the answers against further questions that people come to an understanding.
That is a key principle of Open University teaching. We always try to give students several perspectives on an issue and lead them, through asking questions, to decide which perspective is most satisfactory, or whether none of them is convincing. Most students being by finding this frustrating but end by finding it liberating.
I end by congratulating all of you here who have studied with the New Bulgarian University and especially those who have taken Open University courses. We are very proud of your achievement. I hope that you have gained understanding which you can use effectively in your life and work.
It is a great privilege to become an honorary member of the academic community of the New Bulgarian University.