The Role of University in Society
Today's societies need active involvement of their universities (through their academic programs) for: (i) fashioning their universal outlook, (ii) providing social, living and healthcare security, (iii) instituting civilian governance system with a constituitional charter of human rights, (iv) enabling scientific, technological and medical advancements, (v) providing for industrial development, while utilizing clean energy and protecting the environment, (vi) ensuring people of requisite purchasing capacity for their basic needs, while providing scope for total cultural and aesthetic expression, and (vii) promoting the concept and framework of collective welfare.
In this globalisation era, we also need university education to have a global outlook. Today, the gap between the living standards of developing and developed countries is ever widening. Hence University education world-wide and particularly in developing countries also needs to take the responsibility for addressing the deteriorating quality-of-life in developing countries, in terms of depressing living conditions, deinspiring educational ambience, and incompetent societal governance. In the context of Third-World transformation, University education needs to provide a clear vision of a progressive & eclectic society and a distinct mission for its implementation through education and research.
All the learning of today's university students and all of the research conducted by its academics can have its proper impact in society when first of all no one in the world is starving or is neglected without any means for shelter and medicine, and then when no one is deprived of learning and education. Only then can human enquiry progress into higher cognitive realms, in order to fullfill the ultimate purpose of human life.
For more insight into the role of University in Society, please read "On the Role of Universities in Building Knowledge and Human-centred Societies".
For more information on the Role of Engineering Education, please read "Engineering Education Vision 2020"
