TIESWeb
exclusive interview of Charles KARELIS, President, Colgate
University
Brussels,
Belgium, January 30th, 2000
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Which
is the statement of your action, within the FIPSE ?
Erasmus represents a possible workfield at the continental
level. It's, I think, a marvelous and appealing model
and Americans have a good opportunity to get to know
this new structure and the new Europe, which was, for
most Americans a sort of concept. Besides, Erasmus gives
the opportunity to junior members to participate, in
an active way, to exchanges themselves. In this way,
Erasmus works for preparing the New Europeans for post-Maastricht
Europe.
We
were able to acknowledge more experiment, which in fact
allowed American universities to find consortium withe
the European ones to do something like was done in the
Erasmus. That was looked out on some scepticism on both
sides, of course, with probably more scepticism in Brussels,
because naturally it had been invented to an interior
European model. So we found money at both sides for
the first few years, and nothing attracts money like
success. With the first years we had around 500 institutions
that applied voluntarily. And at the present time, things
follow their course.
What
can be the role of education in the New Transatlantic
Agenda ?
I think It's very important to rebuild the whole transatlantic
concept, which is, in a historical point of view, a
very important concept. With the decline of the Soviet
system and the threat that they represented, the question
of what else they would resize their strategical lines
becomes a crucial question.
And obviously there are two things:
The
reality is that the future leaders on both sides of
the Atlantic have to know each other, which would represent
a great advantage.
Another thing which is also very important, is that
we do things differently on both sides of the Atlantic
and yet we have common problems : environmental problems,
teaching problems, trade issues.
But contacts make it valuable for people to know about
the practices on both sides of the Atlantic. Some fields
where American practitioners and European ones should
interact are very important.
Besides
the exchanges of students, staff or professors, do you
see any other kind of co-operation between universities
or education systems between the US and EU ?
Probably the most important one that matters is research
cooperation. There is only something like 35 or 40 thousand
Americans that study in Europe, which is small. There
is an urgent need of developing all kinds of exchanges
in a Transatlantic level. At the present time there
are a lot of Joint-Ventures projects and we need to
develop them.
How
do you see the development of international education
in the United States ?
I think that it's quite popular. More than a half of
the students
of Colgate University have studied abroad, which is
very common in the American educational system. Actually,
it seems to be a kind of coincidence between the European
interest in vocational training and American interest
in using federal money to democratize opportunities,
and they come together in the fact that there are massive
experiences to communicate. There is also a development
of technical schools on both side of the Atlantic, which
are promoting students'exchanges, who never, in a previous
generation, would have been involved in foreign studies.
What
do you think about the situation of teaching foreign
languages in the United States ?
I think it's on a decline, and there are many reasons
for that : English is spoken more and more around the
world, but in fact, the only place where people don't
seem to learn english very well is in the United States.
Everywhere else in the world people are learning English
at a great rate, and in the United States we have plenty
of people who don't.
How do you see the impact of Internet in the internalization
of the area of education, in the next coming years ?
I
think that this one of these things that doesn't need
any government help. The fact that you have instant
e-mail for free anywhere in the world, will be very
usefull for foreign studies, for example. Thanks to
Internet, exchanges between students can be increased,
without any worry of frontieres.
What are, in your opinion, the abilities which the future
leaders will have to control in various sectors ?
I think, that we need to prepare people for multinationals
corporations like architecture firms, engineerig firms,
while maintaining a common skill of values and cultures
and prospective. That is essential, because we had two
world wars and the that we are in perpetual peace is
vague; so it is terribly important that in the future
time, for both sides, that there will be sustained network
of cultural and value relationships.
What policy is followed in the matter of cultural
diversities ?
The United States needs to understand the new
Europe, because the issue of the challenge of cultural
diversity is the basic American challenge today. I believe
there should be a boarder study of models that have
worked elsewhere and models that haven't worked elsewhere.
In the Stalinian system, there was was a response to
the challenge of cultural diversity. Colonialism was
also a response to the challenge of cultural diversity.
The United States needs to know about the European model
and to study its successes and its failures.
What about the complexity ?
I think that the danger is overspecialization,
even for people with many specialities. They may not
be able to see how these specialities speak to each
other. So I think that synthetization is very important
for the leaders. I fear that the Americanization of
education is not the right direction, because I believe
there is a tendancy of American Colleges to modulize
the education. I'm worried a little, because that may
happen in Europe.
