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