ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT ROBINSON ON THE CONFERRING OF AN HONORARY DEGREE, NORTH EASTERN UNIVERSITY
ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT ROBINSON ON THE CONFERRING OF AN HONORARY DEGREE, NORTH EASTERN UNIVERSITY, BOSTON, U.S.A., 12 MARCH 1994
I am delighted to have this opportunity to visit North Eastern University and to accept the honorary degree which you have so graciously conferred on me.
Having studied both at Trinity College in the heart of Dublin and at a nearby institution in Cambridge, I am happily aware of the benefits of locating a campus in the heart of a thriving city. The world of academe and the hustle and bustle of city life tend to intertwine in a rich and mutually enhancing way.
North Eastern University has itself admirably demonstrated a commitment to the wider Boston community. We can learn much from its openness to new ideas, its responsiveness to the changing needs in society, its integration of work and education and its dedication to excellence in education. They are hallmarks of a dynamic and confident institution.
Successful development can often mean anticipating changes. It was, for example, particularly gratifying for me to see that North Eastern University was well in advance of the women's movement in offering courses for women who wished to re-enter the work force or simply take up their education where they had left off to begin families.
The expansion of the role of the university reflects both the pace of change in society itself and the consequent development of our ideas about higher education and its responsibilities.
Education is a formative influence. At its heart is the idea, a wise and good one that knowledge leads to greater understanding of us as individuals and of our responsibility as members of society. If ignorance is the closed mind, education is the key. It unlocks our potential as individuals and as a society. We benefit collectively from the honed talents of our individual members.
In today's world, higher education is no longer a privilege, nor even a luxury. It is a necessity, an essential tool to deal with the world and its new, often confounding, and complexities. Higher education today is faced with a challenge to adapt to a new responsibility to make available an ever widening range of the skills we need in today's world.
Cooperative education is a model which has proven its adaptability in the face of change. Because of its emphasis on applied learning, experience, and the input of employing organisations, it responds quickly to changing social and economic needs. In allowing for an exploration of the traditional boundaries between the work of a university and needs of society, cooperative education points to a future of education structures which are dynamic, imaginative and open to change.
The 'Information age' offers fresh opportunities to higher education to extend its resources into the wider community. Indeed the arrival of the 'information highway' reinforces the efficacy of cooperative education by allowing unprecedented and immediate access by households, companies and amongst universities to the latest advances of knowledge. Often, the university is the sole repository of such advances. Arguably, it is only through cooperative education that the full potential which the information age presents can be realized.
The tools of the information age are altering profoundly how we live our lives. As we learn more of the world and as we learn it at times instantaneously, we are increasingly aware of our responsibilities as members of a broader society. The lines between work, education and indeed leisure have merged. Our skills and professional training are called upon to change in the face of advances in knowledge and technology.
We in Ireland are assessing these new demands and the readiness of our educating structures to meet them. Through the vicissitudes of our history, education was at times hard to acquire. Often the hard codes of grammar and arithmetic were learned in closer proximity to nature than was comfortable. The tradition of the hedge school, literally a class sheltered by a hedge, is well remembered in Ireland today.
Now education in Ireland has moved emphatically from hedge schools to software. With a large young population, restraints on employment opportunities and a tradition of going abroad for work and experience, our education structures face many demands. Interfacing, to use a word from the lexicon of computers, between high-tech business established in Ireland and our institutions of higher education is an increasingly important factor in educational development.
Cooperative education provides further opportunities for a growing proportion of our young people to seek access to higher education. This is a response to the realization that higher education is a necessity, indeed a right, in today's world. But it is also a response to the restricted employment opportunities and the realization that securing an economic place in society depends in large measure on educational attainments. In this area, the potential of and need for cooperation between our institutions of higher education and the business community is heavily underscored.
The debate on education in Ireland today encompasses many issues with strong cooperative dimensions such as education partnerships, management systems and structures, the role of technology and telecommunications, of enterprise culture and the power of education to enhance the quality of life. As the range of issues which confront education in Ireland today expand, so does our consideration of how different interests - commercial, governmental and cultural - can be mobilized in cooperative effort.
The exposure to events beyond our shores, the internationalization of life through quick and economical travel and the intensification of international trade in the service sector, are factors which mould both the needs of our student population and our response to them. And as our young people rightly look at their futures and careers in an international context, so too our educational structures must embrace an international dimension through student exchanges and international study programmes. Such programmes offer a powerful force of human understanding of our world, its global systems, cultures and its needs.
In this context, I would like in particular to commend and encourage North Easter’s Ireland-North and South programme. As part of the International Study curriculum, it offers an opportunity to students to experience Ireland, North and south at first hand. In exposing them to the complexities bequeathed by our history and most tragically evident in Northern Ireland today, the programme provides students with a deeper understanding of the issues, issues of history, identity and above all of the irrepressible force of hope. In so doing, their experiences enrich their contemporary awareness of modern Ireland and their appreciation of issues which transcend our island.
Indeed, the issues we face in Ireland are often similar to those faced on this side of the Atlantic; issues of the distribution of resources, the extension of equality of opportunity, fair and equal access to education. We have come to realize that this world we share is one world, that our fate is a collective one and that education defines not just what we are but how well we live as individuals and as a society.