NN41, December 2008
The New Politics of Partnership: Peril or Promise?
The Politics of Partnerships: Moving Targets, Changing Tactics
By Ad Boeren, Nuffic, The Hague
Email: aboeren@nuffic.nlKeywords
Partnership, North-South, Netherlands
Summary
This article examines the changing nature of university partnerships between institutes in The Netherlands and those in the South. It notes that the situation in The Netherlands is not unique but signifies an international trend in the divergence of national education interests and efforts to accommodate global capacity needs.
The classic concept of partnership usually refers to shared interests, common understanding and long-term relationship. In a sense it resembles a sort of marriage; the partners complement each other and together they achieve more than by staying alone.
Partnerships exist at all levels of society, individual, family, organization, institution and even state. The principles of engagement are similar for all, but the rule seems to be that the opportunities and conditions for engagement at each level are determined by the next higher levels of society. Individuals tend to be more successful in their marriage if both families and society at large approves and supports the arrangement.
Partnerships between academics and educational institutions in the North and the South are governed by the same principles. Individual academics and researchers may want to start collaborations with international colleagues for exchange of professional knowledge and the conduct of joint research. For this, however, they need funds from their own institutes or external sources, and the approval and academic support from the institutes where they work.
Likewise, academic institutes may be inclined to start partnerships with other international institutes to further their own institutional and academic interests. In this endeavour they are looking for best matches and strategic alliances. However, their strategies and choices are heavily influenced by international trends, like globalization and commoditisation of education, and by national policies of quality improvement of education through internalization and international competitiveness.
The strong internationalisation agendas of the Ministries of Education in Northern countries tends to have a discouraging influence on the collaborations between Northern institutes and institutes in developing countries. Simultaneously, development partners increasingly insist on strict forms of demand-drivenness in the South, and in doing so have created a parallel process of demotivating Northern institutes from forming partnerships with Southern counterparts.
The situation in The Netherlands may serve as an example: less than twenty years ago most universities in The Netherlands were involved in capacity building projects with universities in developing countries because they regarded this to be one of the mandates of the university. The education funding allowed them to use part of the regular budget for this purpose. The bulk of the money was provided by the Minister for Development Cooperation who saw the universities as allies and valuable collaborators in his development policies. These conditions favoured the development of longer term collaborations between Dutch institutes and their partners in developing countries.
Since then the tables have turned drastically. Education funding is now more strictly confined to serve education in The Netherlands, and the role of the Dutch institutes in development cooperation programmes has been drastically revised by the Minister for Development Cooperation.
As reported earlier,[1] in the new generation of capacity building programmes [2] funded by the Minister for Development Cooperation, the role of the Dutch universities is restricted to that of provider of services to solve a capacity problem of the client (i.e organization) in a developing country. Partnership is no longer a term being used: collaboration is defined as a professional client-service provider relation.
The recently released internationalisation agenda of the Dutch Minister for Education, Culture and Science [3] defines four strategic activities: 1) increasing the mobility of Dutch students, 2) stimulating the international orientation of Dutch universities, 3) increasing the so called brain circulation, and 4) improving the working and living conditions for foreign academics and researchers in the Netherlands. These activities are meant to achieve one thing: quality improvement and increased international competitiveness of the Dutch education system. Despite the opportunities which developing countries offer to Dutch institutes in terms of increasing mobility, international orientation and brain circulation, collaboration with (institutes in) developing countries is not mentioned once in this document.
The situation in The Netherlands is not unique but signifies an international trend in the divergence of national education interests and efforts to accommodate global capacity needs.
The evolution, or devolution, of international cooperation in higher education with developing countries in The Netherlands demonstrates that partnerships as we used to know them are dependent on supporting schemes and policies from government. Now that the conditions have changed, the partnership model may have to be revised in form as well as meaning.
Fortunately, still a great number of collaborations do take place ? also with institutes in developing countries ? especially at individual level. These collaborations are sometimes made possible through very creative means. Maybe these collaborations signify an alternative model to the classic partnership arrangement which better suits the current academic, institutional and financial contexts. It would be interesting to look into these arrangements and how they work in practice.
Whatever form of collaboration is adopted, the crux of the matter seems to be that it should avoid short-term and parochial interests and that it be based on more open-minded and long-term visions of international collaborations between all parts of the world. This certainly releases new forms of innovative thinking that are desperately needed to face the vast global problems we are experiencing today.
Footnotes
[1] Ad Boeren, Towards best practice in North-South academic links? In: NORRAG News 39.
[2] The Netherlands Programme for Institutional Strengthening of Post-secondary Education and Training Capacity (NPT) which started in 2002 and will be phased out in 2012 and, the Netherlands Initiative Programme for Capacity Development in Higher Education Institutions (NICHE) which will start on 1 January 2009 for a period of nearly four years.
[3] Ministry of Education and Culture and Science, Internationaliseringsagenda ? ?Het Grenseloze Goed?, November 2008.
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