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“Education should produce knowing
heads and honest hearts”
Thomas Jefferson
It is a general view that in addition to
academic development and professional training, higher
education should encourage personal growth and social
responsibility, educating students as citizens of global
society so that they uphold standards of civility and civic
responsibility.
Values, ethics and moral responsibilities
have for centuries shaped the European “idea of a
university”. They have also been part of higher education in
other regions. Nowadays, they again need to be reasserted in
the actual context of research, teaching and governance in
higher education.
The Forum will reflect on existing
experiences concerning the ways and means to complement
pragmatic dominant approaches to higher education with
humanistic concerns. In this regard it is going to reflect
on main postulates of the
Bucharest Declaration on
Ethical Values and Principles of Higher Education in the
Europe Region
which contains a call for suitable
and effective means “to assure the balance between the
nature of higher education as a public good and the
commercialization of its services that preserve the core
values of the academic ethos; to promote the system of
governance of higher education institutions that allows for
the assertions of the values of the collegiate model of
institutional management and administration; to elaborate
and enforce at institutional, national and European level
codes of ethical standards for regulating scientific
research that are both disciplinary and multidisciplinary
oriented and to promote international cooperation on these
kind of issues”.
During the Bologna Process Official
Seminar on The Cultural Heritage and Academic Values of the
European University and the Attractiveness of the European
Higher Education Area participants
stated clearly that “the core values of institutional
autonomy, academic freedom, collegiality/community and
cooperation/exchange among institutions should be affirmed
as necessary components of the European university’s
competitive advantage in the global market place and thus
the instruments at the service of society”.
The Forum will acknowledge
views and commitments made by the international community,
taking the discussions further and focusing on new values
built in and shaped by higher education institutions today
and the ways and means by which universities and academia
can contribute to building of wisdom society.
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