06.27.2011
A revolution is taking place in education. Education is becoming an internationally traded commodity. No longer is it seen primarily as a set of skills, attitudes, and values required for citizenship and effective participation in modern society-a key contribution to the common good of any society. Rather, it is increasingly seen as a commodity to be purchased by a consumer in order to build a “skill set” to be used in the marketplace or a product to be bought and sold by multinational corporations, academic institutions that have transmogrified themselves into businesses, and other providers. Nowhere is this trend more clearly exemplified than in the current debate about GATS, the General Agreement on Trade Organization (WTO).
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06.27.2011
Higher education is increasingly seen as a commercial product to be bought and sold like any other commodity. Higher education commercialization has now reached the global marketplace. The World Trade Organization (WTO) is considering a series of proposals to include higher education as one its concerns, ensuring that the import and export of higher education the subject to the complex rules and legal arrangements of the WTO protocols and free of most restrictions.
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06.17.2011
I stand honored by your trust, inspired by your charge. I am grateful to the Governing Boards for their confidence, and I thank all of you for gathering in these festival rites. I am indebted to my three predecessors, sitting behind me, for joining me today. But I am grateful to them for much more – for all that they have given to Harvard and for what each of them has generously given to me – advice, wisdom, support. I am touched by the greetings from staff, faculty, students, alumni, universities, from our honorable Governor, and from the remarkable John Hope Franklin, who has both lived and written history. I am grateful to the community leaders from Boston and Cambridge who have come to welcome their new neighbor.
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06.17.2011
A day of celebration generally is in the first place dedicated to retrospect, especially to the memory of personages who have gained special distinction for the development of the cultural life. This friendly service for our predecessors must indeed not to be neglected, particularly as such a memory of the best of the past is proper to stimulate the well – disposed of today to a courageous effort. But this should be done by someone who, from his youth, has been connected with this State and is familiar with its past, not by one who like a gypsy has wandered about and gathered his experiences in all kinds of countries.
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06.17.2011
Since 1961, there is a tradition at the University of Chicago to give an annual address to the incoming undergraduates on the Aims of Education. Three of these are available on the internet — the addresses of John Mearsheimer, a political scientist (1997); Robert Pippin, a philosopher (2000); and Andrew Abbott, a sociologist (2002). My judgment is that none of them understands what liberal education is ultimately about.
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The Research Program of International Education Institute, VNU-HCM is built upon the Center for Human Resource Development (CHRD) of Vietnam National University HCMC. It was established for the purpose of disseminating current research findings in the field of human resource development, and for implementing educational research aimed at finding ways to improve the quality of training in Vietnam. Its research and training functions aim to develop high quality human resources for the Vietnamese educational system and, through education, to improve the quality of the skilled work-force needed for socio-economic development.