Calling for Better Education for All
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Alexandria, 14 November 2005— The opening of the Global Meeting of Associations of Universities (14-15 November) took place at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina today, under the theme of Sharing Quality Higher Education Across Borders: Role of Associations and Institutions. The meeting is organized by the International Association of Universities (IAU).
The opening session was chaired by Goolam Mohamedbhai, President of IAU and former Vice-Chancellor of University of Mauritius. He started the session with a speech about the IAU, its aims, activities, and relations with other universities. He pointed out the statistics that IAU carries out on countries, reflecting the economic, social and academic status of each country. He wrapped up his speech by confirming the IAU aim for the best education all over the world.
The opening presentation was given by Abdallah Barakat, Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Universities, Egypt. In his presentation, he spoke about the education in Egypt and how Egypt is moving towards more internationalization of education by the foundation of more international universities such as the German, French, Japanese and British universities. He pointed out to the proposals that they have for developing higher education in Egypt.
Following the opening presentation, Svava Bjarnasson, Director of Research and Strategy at the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU) and Director of the Observatory on Borderless Higher Education, gave a presentation entitled “Facts, Figures and Trends”. In her presentation, she spoke about e-learning and how the UK is undergoing the idea of education collaboration with the countries of the Commonwealth and it is willing to follow the same trend internationally. She stressed that countries should think ahead of finding more facilities to absorb the increasing number of students in the future.
The final presentation of the opening session was given by Dr. Ismail Serageldin, Director of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, under the title “Cross-Border Higher Education: Egyptian perspective: From Luxury to Necessity”. In his presentation, he called for education for all through training of young talents in science and technology and outreaching women and minorities.
He stressed on looking into and developing the content of curricula to comprise material that attend both sides of the brain. He also highlighted two issues; one is the continual transfer of technologies and sciences from North to South and not vise versa. The other is brain drain where most of the highly skilled, highly educated professional population migrates to other countries.
At the end of his presentation, he called for promoting centers of excellence as well as virtual centers of excellence and putting Information Communication and Technology (ICT) revolution in use.