Abstract
The Association of the Commonwealth Universities (ACU) is 100 years old. During this period, it has changed its name three times. It was originally established as the Universities’ Bureau of the British Empire when it was set up in 1913. At the time of the emergence of new universities in 1948, the name was changed to the Association of Universities of the British Commonwealth. When many British colonies gained freedom and universities became independent of British control, the name was again changed to the Association of the Commonwealth Universities. These three names reflect three distinct phases in the history of Great Britain and the global network of higher educational institutions, on the one hand, and in the history of universities across the world, on the other hand. During each phase, the objectives of the ACU were different. During the first phase, that is, during the phase of the Bureau of the British Empire, the universities in many British colonies and dominions were dominated by people of British origin. As E. Nigel Harris, who is currently the Chair of the ACU Council, notes in the foreword, the activities of the bureau were marked by ‘overtones of Anglo-Saxon supremacy’ (p. xxii). The purpose of the bureau was to strengthen ties among people of British origin located in different countries and continents. During the second phase, that is, between the world wars, the Association of Universities of the British Commonwealth concentrated on the exchange of information, and on the publication of reports, booklets and surveys, with a view to developing a common response to changing circumstances. As Thomas Pietsch observes, ‘An older, affective and expansive vision of the British nation remained central to the Bureau’s sense of its role between the wars’ (p. 25). The third phase, and the change in the name, was responses to the anti-colonial sentiments of the time.
The ACU has been visible during the last 100 years in many ways on the higher education scene in the Commonwealth countries. The scholarship programme benefitted many students in the developing countries of the Commonwealth, allowing them to pursue higher studies, mostly in the UK. Second, its annual publication, Commonwealth Universities Yearbook, published since 1958, has been a rich source of information on many universities in the Commonwealth countries. (Before 1958, it was published under different titles, viz., The Yearbook of the Universities of the Empire and The Yearbook of the Universities of the Commonwealth). The reference volume, which provides information on various disciplines of study, student numbers, faculty and their research profiles, etc., has been a much sought after volume for several years. It was only later that the International Association of Universities became popular, with its annual publication International Handbook of Universities.
The ACU, through these and other activities, could influence, and even control, the development of higher education in the colonies of the British Empire, and continues to build goodwill among many scholars in the former colonies. The loose network structure also helped in developing, to some extent, common values and an understanding of the role of universities in the area of development. As noted by John Kirkland and Nicholas Mulhern, the ACU performed multiple roles and key functions of the network—as an information source, as a facilitator, as an advocate, as a service provider and as a funder. The age of the British Empire ended and the Commonwealth underwent serious changes after the end of the Cold War. But the change was not sufficient in relation to the changing needs and aspirations of universities and of the countries of the region. Peter Williams recognises the need for revising the agenda of the ACU in the light of changing circumstances. He calls for a new ‘Commonwealth higher education agenda for the twenty-first century’ (p. 210). The ACU has to address, according to Williams, the international concerns of tertiary education, assist tertiary education systems in conducting international operations, promote a better world order in tertiary education, and address the Commonwealth’s development agendas.
Commissioned by the ACU and published on the occasion of the centenary of the ACU, Universities for a New World, edited by Deryck Schreuder, focuses on a few selected issues related to universities in the Commonwealth countries. The four chapters in the first part of the book offer a historical account of the first and the oldest network, namely the ACU, describing how the network of an ‘Imperial Bureau’, with a membership of about 50 universities in Africa, Asia and Europe in 1913, developed during the last century into an ‘international network’ with a membership of more than 600 universities located in 54 countries and jurisdictions. The historical narrative accounts are highly informative, interesting and analytical. The ‘London Model’ transformed universities in most of the British colonies during the interwar period, and a global university ‘revolution’ was created, leading to the emergence of knowledge nations, as described by Graeme Davis and Svava Bjarnason in two separate chapters.
Part II consisting of five chapters concentrates on a few major themes in higher education such as e-learning and the impact of technology on the development of higher education systems (John Daniel and associates), quality assurance (David Woodhouse), and international student mobility (Hillary Perraton), and how the universities in the Commonwealth countries are undergoing transformation with respect to these aspects. Perraton analyses how the Commonwealth scholarship and fellowship plan helped in improving international student mobility. Jasbir Singh and Dorothy Gaarland of the ACU present an account of how the ACU provides leadership to universities through important gender- and equity-related initiatives; and Peter Williams also of the ACU describes the changing policy priorities of the organisation.
Part III has four interesting studies on Africa (Michael Omolewa), Asia—Pakistan and India (Pawan Agrawal), Australia (Julia Horne and Geoffrey Scherington) and the English-speaking Caribbean (Nigel Harris). These studies offer critical insights on how these regions conform to and confront or oppose the Commonwealth policies. The three last chapters in Part IV ‘look forward’, offering scholarly assessments of the future of the universities—the power of innovation in modern universities (Michael Gibbons), the challenges faced by post-modern universities in the twenty-first century and the new pressures confronting universities that affect the very institutional character of these bodies (John Wood). By concentrating more on these Commonwealth universities and their future than on the ACU, the chapters make for compelling reading on the future of universities in general. Highlighting the importance of protecting the essential functions of the production and transmission of knowledge, Colin Lucas writes, ‘Ultimately, universities alone can protect their own importance. No one much from outside is going to help…. It requires intelligent, principled and firm leadership….’ (p. 372).
There are also two succinct forewords (by Thomas H.B. Symons and E. Nigel Harris), a preface and a short introduction, both by the editor. This interesting volume was published to mark and celebrate the centenary of the ACU, a purpose it serves very well. The majority of the contributors are those who are or were associated with the ACU.
Readers may not completely agree with the editor’s claim that while the social sample is the Commonwealth, the commentary is necessarily global. The chapters are mostly focused on the experiences of the Commonwealth nations; most of the contributors are or were associated with the ACU at some time or the other; and there are not many references to the experiences of countries and universities outside the Commonwealth. For instance, the experiences of US universities, or of universities in Scandinavian counties, not to speak of universities in Japan, Korea and China, or of universities in Latin America, do not figure in the narratives, while many Commonwealth countries have a lot to learn from them. It is strange that a study on such a global network does not make any reference to another network, namely the International Association of Universities, which is perhaps more global in its coverage than most other such networks.
The selection of issues for discussion is somewhat narrow. Apart from technology, three important issues in the contemporary period dominate policy discourses on higher education in developing countries. They are growth of private education, resulting in the diminution of the relative size of the public sector; the changing role of the state vis-à-vis markets in higher education; and governance of university systems and the maintenance of quality standards in higher education. It is surprising that no significant references are made to these issues, although the editor does make a few passing observations in the introductory chapter.
While the Commonwealth programmes might have had an effect on certain aspects, such as international student mobility, quality and gender equity, as the authors of various chapters in the book argue, it should be noted that the contribution of these programmes, and thereby of the Commonwealth, is quite modest. One example is that of student mobility. The Commonwealth has set up a Commonwealth Universities Study Abroad Consortium for the promotion of student mobility. International student mobility has surged during the last two or three decades, even from the developing Commonwealth countries. But the most important destination country is not a Commonwealth country, but the USA, the number of foreign students moving to the USA every year being higher than the total number of students going to the three largest destination countries of the Commonwealth, namely the UK, Australia and Canada. As Perraton notes, ‘International student mobility has never been simply a function of scholarship programmes’ (p. 194). But scholarships did play an important role in the earlier periods. Similarly, can one attribute the progress in gender equity in higher education—the balance between men and women in leadership and management in higher education—in the Commonwealth countries to the gender initiatives taken by the Commonwealth, including specifically the ACU’s programme relating to women in higher education management? Also, despite some of the programmes and initiatives taken by the Commonwealth, it should be noted that most universities in the Commonwealth countries are based on the University of London model, and that few universities in the developing Commonwealth countries figure in the global university rankings. No university fits John Henry Newman’s classic idea of a university (Newman, 1852; see also Tilak, 2010). In addition, they also could not expand to the levels required for meeting global economic and political challenges, with low gross enrolment ratios. All these weaknesses or deficiencies cannot be attributed to the ACU exclusively. Nevertheless, they need to be acknowledged.
It is the British Empire that has to be credited for the establishment of modern universities in many of its colonies. The model of the University of London was implanted in the colonies. The objectives of the establishing these universities, which were essentially meant to serve the political interests of the British Empire, are well known. The curriculum in the universities was set in England by the overseas extension board of the University of London; the examination programme of the University of London was introduced in many universities; the External Degree Programme of the University of London was made popular in many countries, and so on. In brief, the higher education systems in these countries are heavily influenced by the model of the University of the ‘mother country’. But even after independence, probably no university could jettison the colonial legacy, despite finding serious problems with the imported model. Very few contributors look at these and related aspects of the everlasting and damaging impact of colonial policies on higher education. Only three out of the 16 chapters in the book are written from the perspective of the developing countries. Of these three, the study by Michael Omolewa on Africa is the only one that makes an attempt at presenting a somewhat critical, although not a thoroughly comprehensive, look at some of these dimensions. Of course, it could be argued that this is not the purpose of the book. The objective of the volume is to celebrate the history and the continued relevance of the ACU. After all, the very survival and success of the ACU ‘has been a singularly significant accomplishment’ (p. xxi), as noted by Harris in the foreword.
Does the book serve this purpose satisfactorily? The answer cannot be a clear affirmative. By design, the book is not a volume on the history of the ACU, although substantial parts of some chapters are devoted to presenting historical accounts of the ACU. Like Erich Ashby’s (1963) study published on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the ACU, which may be considered more of a scholarly contribution to the history of the ACU, Schreuder and his contributors use the occasion not only to present a brief history of the ACU, but also to reflect on the changes taking place in higher education, and to consider how the universities, ‘the most ancient survivors of the medieval world’ (p. xxxi), will survive in the turbulent present and in an uncertain future, where change is the only certainty.
On the whole, this volume makes a highly interesting and useful contribution to the literature on higher education, thanks to the involvement of as many as 24 individuals with a diverse range of backgrounds from across the Commonwealth countries and their institutions. However, it has a somewhat narrow scope, which could have been expanded to ensure that its contribution was much more valuable.