Working Group 1 Role of Academics in UCE Members Giuliana Maraviglia (I), Alfredo Soeiro (PT), Maria Platsidou (GR), Marinela Garcia Fernandez (E) The main idea is about incentives and motivations in universities. A special effort in communication and reserach was done due to books, articles, proceedings of conferences and basically web sites. These activities based on e-mails and faxes have been sent between partners trying to identify incentives and motivations, which are actually more needed to solve the problems of university teachers. A special document is the excerpt of the debate of the Proceedings of the VI EUCEN Conference "Motivating Academia for University Continuing Education" held in Porto in October 1993. Round Table Novais Barbosa ( Chair), Susan Kinsey, Mitschke -Collande, Edward Thomas, Karel de Witte Good afternoon. First of all, I thank you very much for your coming. The University of Porto has a problem, which is to develop an institute for continuing education and, as we have he re a group of international consultants, we can ask some questions. Now, I will tr y to ask these questions. The first question is a general question about motivation. I think that it’s possible to consider two or three kinds of motivation: one we can call it intrinsic motivation, which is related with the salaries and other material benefits one can reach in some activities. The second aspect is sometimes called extrinsic motivation, as a personal upgrading through the increase of knowledge or increase of p ower within an organization. Sometimes, we can also consider the transcendental motivation, which corresponds to do some thinking — primarily what it represents to other people in one community. I think that in the university all of these types of motivati on are present, more or less, but here in Portugal, with the level of our salaries, I think the first kind of motivation is yet the most important. My first question was — what type of motivation must we try to develop regarding continuing education? Susan Kinsey I wonder if I can take that question back one step, to something you said a moment ago about the problems that might be inherent in the establishment of an institute for continuing education. I think this impacts upon the question of motivation, both for faculty and learners. I think one of the first questions your staff and faculty here will have to ask itself, is indeed why establish a separate continuing education unit. Is this the best way to go? I think that’s the question that first needs to be examined. The pros and cons of such a step need to be considered. Personally, I think, and m y experience is largely an American experience, that adult learners have ver y special problems. I think that, as we’ve heard in other presentations in the last few days, faculties are certainly not always at ease in moving into the instruction of adult learners. I think the problem goes beyond that. I think adult learners experience tremendous trauma when confronted with the need for change. That, in m y judgement, would be one of the primary reasons for establishing a separate unit, where adult learners could be cared for — if I can use that word — received, counselled... And I think that’s a very important element of an adult education programme: the counselling c omponent. Individualized counselling has to go along with easing the way towards career change or career development. Edward Thomas Maybe I can follow on from there, after what Susan has said there. W hat we’re doing, in fact, is to say things which will s timulate the discussion that will come later in the afternoon. And what we agreed amongst ourselves, when we were talking about this, was we would say really quite outrageous things, so that we would then provide you with statements against which you could react to in the rest of the afternoon. It’s in that spirit that I make my comment now. Thinking of the question, Prof. Barbosa, that you asked — what type of motivation should it be that we should use as far as your colleagues are concerned — can I first of all say that, while I don’t know your colleagues particularly, I assume that they are much the same as all our colleagues in the European universities that we’ve come across, which means to say that they are remarkably high minded, they are remarkably serious, they are remarkably keen to help the world and to help their colleagues and to help the population of Portugal. So it is absolutely essential that you provide them with the opportunities to meet that particular motivation. That is immensely serious, that’s immensely important. However, having said that, if in fact you only provide them with the motivations that follow from that, you are doomed to failure, because although they are remarkably high minded, it just so happens that on the day that you ask them to do something, and on the day that you happen to suggest that there is something which is particularly needed, they will just happen to be terribly bus y doing something else. And most unfortunately they will not be able to help you on that occasi on, however much they wanted to do so. I think we have almost had an answer to your question, and it was given to us earlier in this conference by the representative from SONAE, Edgar Pinto Ribeiro, when he was talking about how to implement human resource development within a firm. W hat he said was that you had to have a clear polic y which everyone knows, and then you had to have encouragement from the top. But then, what you had to have are two absolutely crucial things, I suggest — one is that you have t o make sure that people’s promotion is going to be accelerated, if in fact they’re involved with continuing education and they do it well. And the other thing that they need to know well is they’re actually going to be rewarded with money, if they are goin g to take part in continuing education. Karel de Witte If I may continue further, looking at the experience of our own university. The question of motivation is mostly a question that we are raising about other persons. So m y point would be: would please the Rectorate of the University of Porto first look at how motivated they are themselves? To put it in a concrete way, you could test if the Rector and Vice-Rectors of your own university are willing to spend time on a two-day seminar, reflecting on what’s the purpose of the continuing education centre together, for instance, with some business leaders, or community leaders, or leaders from different professional fields. The complaint that we have in our university is that there is a reluctance amongst some of our colleagues to do that; their complaint is that there is a lack at the top of the university to be clear and precise on what should happen. That’s one of the points we have been involved in the project, which is reflecting on continuing education in the universities; and one of the main points, one of the central points for the leadership of the universities, is that the leaders themselves be clear about that point, and be motivated on that point. Max v. Mitschke Collande If I may add, I’ve given some advice some weeks ago to another university, and I opted ver y strongly that motivation also will be given by the infrastructure of the universities. For example, I think you have to encourage your colleagues to go into continuing education, because you can easily point out the benefits which this has for research and teaching. Of course, at the beginning, every professor will fail when he goes into continuing education because he is used to speak for hours, and to people listening without interfering. An d the first experience will be: after half an hour they say “please stop now, we want to pose questions, so that this becomes clear”. In the end, he will realize that he not only has to give something; he will receive. He will receive from these part -time students representing the industries of your region. He will receive the transfer of their recent problems, and this again will lead your professors to some detailed questions — “what can be done in terms of research”, or “what can be done in terms of the revision of curricula for teaching”. So these benefits are obvious. But again, I think, for motivation, your colleagues have to have the feeling that the university really fully wants to go into it. Of course, it is usually written in the constitution of the universities that you have be involved in teaching, research and continuing education, but that’s just for paper, if you don’t make use of it. So, for example, I would advise you: establish a commission to Senate, which is called the Continuing Educatio n Commission, because that shows inside and outside the university that you give a lot of weight to this new kind of task of your university. And at the same time, of course, there has to be some sort of a strategy. And I would advise you to outline someth ing like a five page paper which can come out of the staff meeting, where you make very clear the spectrum of your subjects and the possible activities which you can offer. Of course, you have to include some sort of marketing, because you have to find out what are your strong areas, what are the needs of your environment; you have to match the needs of the region and your university’s potential. And if all these activities are really coming from the rectorate level, and if they are carefully discussed in y our different boards then, bit by bit, I’m sure this thing will work. Susan Kinsey If I might disagree with m y colleague, I think that at the level of mission statement, which is certainly what Max was just describing, I think a university -wide, carefully constructed dialog would be very useful. I think a mission statement for a continuing education unit is not necessarily the same mission statement that the university as a whole might have, and by that I mean, for example, on the philosophical level. Ques tions need to be addressed, such as: “do we offer competencies which are only relative to our own faculty expertise, or do we reach outside?”, “are we meant to be an institute which will further the notion of new careers and therefore reach out specificall y to industry to generate and think forward in terms of what people can be trained for?”. And, on the pragmatic level, the discussion “are we self -financing?”. This is a very important question: as a continuing education institute, is our mission profit, i n a pragmatic way, or is our mission really one of community service? Then, when you move on to the level of marketing and initiatives like that, I think that those are the discussions which can take place during the strategic planning initiatives within the continuing education unit. I think the first question is for the university as a whole, to declare and clarify that mission, and then to implement the continuing education unit. And then the process of more specific questions, such as marketing and target audience can be handled in strategic planning within the division. Max v. Mitschke Collande I have a different opinion on that one. I believe, for example, in pilot projects. So, I wouldn’t start immediately with a big heart, setting off this whole set up. I would rather try to convince a few departments to go into small, modular trial periods. Just to get started, and to find out what kind of possible fields there are, or what kind of customers may be there. And then, step by step, try to widen the acti vities. To set up the institute — we haven’t been told, I don’t know what kind of a range of activities it is supposed to have — but I would start with a small activity as such, and later on talk about organization, structure, finance and things like that. José Novais Barbosa The University of Porto approved the constitution of a continuing education institute, as a small institution with the functions of coordination and of an advisory organism, and also as a place to discuss and study some solutions to t he main problems of continuing education in the university. The University of Porto is a classic university with thirteen or fourteen faculties, each of them with their problems, their autonom y... Sometimes it’s difficult to establish the frontiers of the work of the continuing education institute and of the faculties. So, we thought to create the institute as an organism that will enable the exercise of the continuing education activities at the university in a flexible way, concerning the nature of the actions, and enable also the decentralization of these actions in the faculties, when they can be developed in the faculties. Is this a correct point of view? Edward Thomas I was about to support you, Prof. Barbosa, in setting up your institute, because I think setting up an institute is exactly the right thing for you to do. I had a feeling that two of m y colleagues here disagreed. They are of course immensely experienced consultants, but we have different experiences... I would like to support you strongly in setting up your institute, and I’ll tell you why: it’s because if you have a centralized division within your university that is responsible for continuing education, that division will allow you to centralize, it will allow you to concentrate your eff orts, it will allow you to coordinate your efforts, it will allow you to plan your efforts, it will allow you to develop your efforts in continuing education. It will give you more autonom y, it will give you greater curricular freedom, it will give you the ability to initiate, it will give you flexibility to meet your clients’ needs more effectively. It will allow you scope for greater specialization, it will give you the opportunity to increase the experience of your staff, it will give you a special subdi vision which will be more experienced and more enthusiastic and more committed to continuing education. It will help to promote interdisciplinarity, which is ver y important with continuing education. And it will help to avoid duplication of effort in your university. I’m convinced by those arguments. Max v. Mitschke Collande But I’m really afraid you will use the faculties — they don’t feel represented in your kind of centralized organization. That shows a lot of power, which you are more or less monopolizing, and I think every department will really get frightened of this kind of organization. W here do you get your substance for teaching from, if you are centralizing? You’re losing the contact to your subject areas. Susan Kinsey No, that’s not necessaril y general, Max. If I could just interject an interesting example, which is the American experience again. Some of these data comes through the organization that was referred to this morning, NUCEA, which is the largest continuing education organization in the United States. 33% of all United States universities are academically centralized and administratively centralized, while 50% are academically decentralized and administratively centralized. W hich means both models work ver y well; you can indeed have a n administratively centralized unit tapping the faculty from various divisions and still leaving yourself the flexibility, as a continuing education institute, to reach outside the university if you lack the expertise to mount a certain programme. Karel de Witte At our university we differentiate between updating, specialization and broadening the scope. In these things, what you find at most difficult is, if you’re going for very specialized courses, to centralize that. The faculties are really looking at their own competence and not willing to get away from that, while for the two others, I would agree going for first point, that the mission must be clear. W hat comes under the cover of continuing education? You have different kinds of programmes, which g enerate different kinds of motivation. But, really, for the real research -based specialized things, there I would agree rather with Max than with m y two other colleagues. W hile for the other ones, I think the other possibility is quite feasible. Susan Kinsey If I might say one thing in response to part of what you said — at the risk of sounding extreme, which I understand we’re supposed to, up here — one of the ways to avoid the marginalization, which is often the problem of a continuing education division, is to set a mission that is profit -generating. The division becomes a revenue centre. Now, that has its own problems, but it certainly is one way of creating an essential continuing education unit, which the university then begins to regard, and the faculties as well, with a ver y different eye. That’s something to think about, at the same time that one considers the nature and range of programmes that are to be offered — the possibility that this unit, Mr. Vice -Rector, might indeed have as part of its goal the generating of profit for the University. Max v. Mitschke Collande I just want to make a quick response to m y lady colleague. I have nothing against profits, but I think you have to treat this whole thing as an organization development process. W hich means you have to start to convince all the members of the University that this is a good thing for the whole organization. I would advise the Rector to start, maybe with an institute, but first of all it should only have a supporting character: that means supporting those initiatives which start at the faculty level, with subject -area oriented small programmes, which are administratively supported by this institute. Then carefully start staff development. That’s a very important issue. If you want to chan ge your structure, it cannot be done without educating the people. That means you have to make sure that these people in the different faculties who are going into continuing education have the competence to do that. In particular your education department should try to set up some training programme on adult education techniques, and then, step by step, you gain a potential of staff members, who can go into this question. And then, profit or not, you should see something in five years time. Pieter Vroegroep W hat I would like to put forward is exactly what Max started to say: is that you should took at this from an organizational development perspective. It struck me that the discussion ver y quickly narrowed down to only two components in the whole organizational picture that is mission and structure. And a lot of time was spent with structure, while the other components to be taken into consideration, like culture and systems, for instance, which are two very important components, were not considered. If you want to change something from the organizational development perspective, then the whole s ystem, the whole university, is the unit of change. You have to take into consideration that if you start changing one aspect, then you have constantly to look at all the other aspects, and try to find some strategy which, in some sort of ever-recurring process, pays attention to all the different components of the s ystem. And I think I would start by the approach advocated by Max, in just supporting those of the staff who are already willing, who are already allies, and then building on that. The core of m y message is that you should choose a s ystemic approach to change. David Bull W ithin our university, the University of Bristol, one of the things which we’re seriously lacking, which I think could be put right and would be an aspect of institutional commitment at the same time, is that the contribution to continuing education be regarded as a natural part of the staff member’s work profile within the university, and not, as seems to be the case at the moment, always regarded as an add-on. The question of financing this, I’m not sure about: in what circumstances is finance to the individual which matters? Certainly it brings finance to theuniversity. The department which is donating that part of staff time to the institutional commitment to continuing education also needs to get the compensation to encourage this to take place. But once it becomes a natural part of a person’s work profile within the university, and that, after all, can var y from individual to individual — and needs to — then I think that would underline the institutional commitment, which sometimes seems lacking. Susan Kinsey W hile we are waiting for the next question, I might just add to that remark that I think certainly it has to be recognized that it depends on the country, the institution, the individuals, I think not ever y faculty member is inclined to learn the skills or engage in the particular kind of education that is required, and the approa ch that is required, in teaching adults. I suggest, instead of making it an integral part of a faculty members’ commitment, that there should be a clear and obvious way in setting up this institute for the faculty to receive extra compensation. I understan d that’s one of the problems. Perhaps it means setting up a separate non-profit entity attached to the university, but not quite within it. There are other ways to reward the faculty or to provide incentives that may not have to do with direct monetar y com pensation. It has to do with contributions, for example, of collections to the library, that could be contributed by the continuing education division for a given area of expertise that they may be trying to develop, or a certain department. Travel grants — what faculty member wouldn’t welcome the opportunity to have additional travel grants provided? That could be something of a remuneration in kind, if you will. Max v. Mitschke Collande But sorr y, I have strongly to reject this point. That won’t solve th e structural question, because the major problem is that you have already a heavy load of teaching and research, and now you add to this with continuing education. Of course you want to give them some material reward for that, but that doesn’t solve the workload problem. I would strongly advise that the promotion schemes have to be changed, that maybe parts of our research funds are taken and reallocated to continuing education, and maybe teaching load may be reduced if somebody goes into continuing educati on. Now, that is a re-balancing of the whole thing, because your proposal only puts more load on people; it gives them of course some money, but it won’t solve the load question. Frank Baert I would like to tell you that setting up a service of continuing education is something that you, as a university, cannot do alone. And as a faculty, you cannot do it alone, either. I think that it is very important to involve — from the very beginning of setting up the service — the alumni, the people who are in profe ssional life, and to take their advice to see what they say about what they want, and involve them for the planning, for the defining of the contents, for the evaluation, and — why not? — for the fund-raising. I think that’s a very important element and, m oreover, it is an element that can motivate the colleagues from the university, because they like to have contacts with people in professional life. So, when you create a steering group to set up continuing education, m y advice is: use the network of the a lumni. Karel de Witte I would like to add two things... One is a cultural problem: when I ask in the corridor m y colleagues what’s the market of the university, most professors say: “the students between 18 and 25 years” — they are not thinking of the eld er people. As long as they are not thinking about that, then separate structures will not solve the problem. They don’t perceive that this is an audience that should be addressed. The second point is, if you ask what’s the knowledge which has been produced , and what is the marketing and transfer of that knowledge towards the community, then they say: “well, we’re publishing in international journals, so we know our job”; so the knowledge is spread all over the world, not just in the own country. There are quite a lot who have that view, and I agree with Max that you will not solve those things by setting up another structure. My field is organization ps ychology, and the discussion about whether to have first the structure and then the culture or first the codes and then the structure is about different ways to go. Ted and Susan are not denying that the other points are not important. It’s more a question of proceeding by one way or another, not forgetting the other point. Anna Hughes I’m Anna Hughes, from the University of Bristol. I’m wanting to support Susan Kinsey. Using an experience from her adopted country, which is France — the University of Paris-Sud, which is in Orsay, which has precisely the institution which she has described: a separate instituti on, which has evolved for twenty years. I want the avoid here, in this discussion, reinventing the wheel. Because the experience of Paris-Sud is exemplar y — they took eleven years to work out how they were going to organize the separate institutions, eleve n years of arguing about where the power should be, about where the faculty should be, who should provide the teachers, the administration. The way they have evolved, which works perfectly for them, they have an enormous amount of continuing education, a h uge percentage, and of course, they’re in the technological belt, with the equipment of IBM, and they supply twenty five thousand people who work with the equipment of IBM in Paris with courses. They are solely an administrative block. So, coming to my illustrious colleagues point, they are reproducing their university. This comes back to Max’s point as well: the faculties feel completely involved, because it is they who are doing the teaching. Now, I can’t actually remember how they mentioned, but I would advise you to speak to the University of Paris -Sud, because it seems to me they have got this beautiful model, and they’ve been through the whole organizational change thing, which we could all avoid if we just looked at them. Use their example. Max v. M itschke Collande You can’t avoid suffering. Edward Thomas Prof. Barbosa, I gave you the answer that I did at the beginning, supporting the setting up of the institute, because of course you had already set up an institute, you had made that decision. And one of the functions of the consultants is in fact to make the people who hire the consultants feel better, it’s to reassure you. Having done that, of course, another function of consultants is to be omniscient — we must know everything that there is that one can possibly k now about a subject. So, maybe I ought to show the flexibility that’s required of a consultant by now telling you what all the difficulties are in setting up your central institution. And we’ve already heard some of the solutions to these . And we’ve also heard that if you go to Paris -Sud, then you can get the answers to all the other problems as well. But I’ll tell you what the difficulties are, anyway. The disadvantages of setting up your separate organization are that setting up a separa te organization is more costly. Because it’s more costly, it is then exposed to budget cuts. And, of course, Susan has already told how to get over that problem: you get over it by telling your separate organization to become financially self -sufficient. If it does that, if it succeeds, then the university is not going to cut it. Another disadvantage is that it may duplicate the other functions of the university, and I’ve heard from your colleague, on the campus of the University of Porto that this is a pro blem that you’re aware of it. You can avoid it. It’s also a problem that your centre may become isolated from the main university programme, which is a problem which has been mentioned, and certainly that must be avoided. It may well create more administra tive work, and it could increase on the bureaucracy — that’s something which I don’t think has been mentioned anywhere else, but you certainly need to bear it in mind too. It’s sometimes said to be a disadvantage that once you have a centre, you have a per manent commitment. I must say, speaking as somebody who’s committed to continuing education, I regard that as an advantage, because it’s going to be more difficult for you to get rid of continuing education from the University of Porto now that you have yo ur centre. But maybe your central administration might not always feel that . There is a problem that your continuing education, your centre, may lack polic y support, and it might have weak status within your university. That is certainly true in some universities, as far as centres of continuing education are concerned. From the centre, you’ll have to make sure that that doesn’t happen. And the last problem that a centre has is that it may well be difficult to persuade one’s colleagues, academic colleague s elsewhere within the university, to become involved in continuing education. But the answer to that lies in Paris Sud. Pierre Dominicé I’m Pierre Dominicé, from the University of Geneva. It’s very hard to speak in general terms, but I would like to add a point which was not raised before in the discussion. In terms of motivating m y colleagues, I feel that one difficulty has to do with the way we produce knowledge within the university. And that can not reduce the problem to a problem of structure or mana gement. Most of m y colleagues feel that the knowledge they have produced is not recognized by professionals, when they get involved in any kind of programme of continuing education. W hat I mean is, maybe there’s not only a problem of knowledge, but there’s a problem of culture as well. W hen you work at the university, you work with doubts, you work with questions, you work with unknown fields, and when you have to face people in a structure of continuing education, you have to find quick answers, you have t o deal with what’s actual, and sometimes has no past and not put it into the perspective of the future. You have to be efficient in the norms of the system, and the university people don’t work necessarily this way. Sometimes they make me very furious abou t the way they talk about the world, and the way they distance themselves from what I consider, like you do, real challenges for our society. At the same time, most people I know in the banking area, in the insurance area, in the political field, don’t rai se questions, and there’s a gap which is not too eas y to solve. As people working with the development of continuing education, maybe we have to talk about mediation more than we do. How do you relate basic questions with contemporary questions? I have a p rogramme which is focused on ethics, and it’s a typical problem to have a businessman in front of somebody who has done research in political econom y. They don’t talk the same language. And it’s not only a matter of structure, it’s not only a matter of fin ding the right setting for the dialogue: there’s a conflict of culture, of values system. In order to convince our colleagues, we have to prove that this conflict can be part of continuing education. José Novais Barbosa W hat do you recommend? Pierre Dominicé W hat I do recommend is to be very serious with our heritage. W e shouldn’t sell the university to convince people who don’t know what kind of future they want to build. This is a real challenge for us, and I would like to know how you motivate colleagues for this challenge. W e can go in a group discussion, but I don’t want to make m y point too long. Susan Kinsey I just want to respond quickly. You said several very important things there. One of them is from m y own experience of twelve years as a conti nuing education administrator in the United States and now in France. I don’t think that problem will ever be resolved — I think that the particular tension that exists between the traditional academic faculty and the possible mission of a continuing educa tion unit will always be there. I’ve never seen it otherwise in any university I have ever worked in with a continuing education unit. W e could spend a long time, many years, trying to figure out how to resolve that. I don’t think it will ever be resolved. I think, to the contrary, a mission — that’s why I think the mission statement of a unit like this is so important —, a mission statement of a continuing education division within a university has to state very strongly a commitment to liberal learning, w hich is what universities stand for, in the main. All training and education can somehow be reconciled, can exist side by side. That dichotom y of training versus education that seems a great problem, provided that the mission is clearly stated, can be reconciled, the commitment to liberal education infuses everything that’s done within a continuing education unit. Pieter Vroegroep I think I didn’t made m y point very clearly, five minutes ago, because the colleague of Geneva repeated, for the larger part, w hat I was trying to convey. And I want to stress again that it’s very important that the culture is taken into account, if you want to change something. If you’re in the process of change, then there are these things which have to do with culture, with bel iefs, with visions on what science is or what the university is, etc. And that means that this is part of the process, and that’s why — although it was very convincing what Anna Hughes was saying — that it’s never possible to simply copy a s ystem elsewhere , because — that’s again m y point — if you want to change, you have to go through the whole process. You cannot simply copy what worked elsewhere. End of Round Table