Abstract
The participation of developing nations in the globalization of research and development has so for been ensure some developing nations with robust in restructures highly trained work force reasonable intellectural property productions and applying local markets especially in asia and the pacific nations wave attached FDI in research and development. In this contest the present study constructed impact of globalization of research development.
Keywords: Current education system, General agreement of trade services, educational institution in western society, Factors favour linguistic cultural Darwinism.
Introduction
For decades, technological transformation and innovations drives by research and development have been the sources important somas of productivity growth and increased welfare of Nations. As a result, there is a high positive correlations between these countries that have evidenced signifient economic development in the past and those nations that have made substantial investment in research and development to improve research and development foreign direct investment can serve as a yehicle for caring tacit knowledge as well as assessing entered prices of the traciers and global technological learning. In the contest the presence studies analyses role of research and development of economic development.
By contrast with most industrial sectors, the area where globalization seems uncontested is in the sphere of knowledge production. Global flow of information and data seem to be inherent feature of the emerging knowledge economy. It is in the area of knowledge production-of research-where globalization is most likely to affect higher education because universities have successfully styled themselves as producer of ‘primary knowledge’ and taken the high ground of basic research as their own. But even here there is a tension. Pavitt and others have shown that while ideas, methods and technique may be produced globally, the innovative process-the development of new products and processes-still take place locally. While it is true that in the innovation process the required knowledge may, indeed have been generated in a variety of places, local capability is stull essential to be able to bring the various elements to bear on the kinds of concrete problem solving that leads to new products and processes. It is the need to acquire specialized knowledge of all kinds that lies behind the current growth of networks and the proliferation of research and development partnership and alliances.
These new forms of organization are ostensibly about sharing risk and cost but there are also about getting access to research being carried out by others. Firms want to get value for money out of their expenditures on research but they know that they cannot expect to hold in-house all the knowledge resources that might be needed to maintain their positions in international competition. Therefore, the most efficient way for them to ensure access to new knowledge is by participating in collaborative arrangements of various kinds. Globalization is taking place in the higher education sector but is doing so by absorbing universities into a distributed knowledge production system. This will involve the universities in many more alliances and partnerships and will in turn call for new institutional forms including new forms of research organization.
SEAMY SIDE OF GLOBALIZATION
Globalization is a complex reality. Like capitalism, as described by Joseph Schumpeter, globalization consists of a process of “creative destruction” in which there are economic winners and losers. Globalization stimulates economic growth and social improvement for some, while at the same time it lays economic burdens on many people and disrupts human development. The harms and benefits of globalization are not evenly distributed either among nations or within them. Given the economic gap between the First World and the Third World the process of globalization from the perspective of the world’s poor inevitably means that it does not remain neutral. There are several concerns for the victims of the process. The globalization of the world economy and society proceeds at a rapid pace, fed by developments in technology, communications, and business. While there can be many benefits from this phenomenon, it also creates injustices on a massive scale.
In fact, the current education system as it is highly influenced by the process of globalization, is in very bad shape for serving the needs of the poor. The governments, both central and state, point the process of globalization as a convenient scapegoat for the existing ills while slighting their responsibilities to get on with the important development tasks that lie ahead. In fact, the lack of coordination between governments and communities lead to failures. If government and communities can work together on these issues, there are many things that can be done, even within the very significant global constraints. And if such collaboration takes place to effectively deliver education to the poor, the latter may have the opportunity to harness the benefits of globalization after all.
GOVERNMENTS MOVE TO RELINQUISH ITS ROLE
As the International Monetary Fund has imposed the SAP, there is a sharp reduction of state expenditure on infrastructure, education and health. That has resulted in the privatization of public assets. The policy of downsizing must be seen as a component of overall government policy of privatization and commercialization. As the mechanism followed in case of disinvesting of the public sector cannot be directly applied in case of public funded higher education, an alternate route has been adopted-banning the starting of new courses and opening of new educational institutions, mandating ceilings on the student strength in the existing institutions, freeze on recruitment as well as hoc reductions in staff strength and so on. Related measures adversely affecting on the accessibility and educational standards include attempts to raise fees, autonomy to institutions with practically no controls but wide ranging powers to managements, funding linked mandatory assessment and accreditation, and conditionally-laden students loan schemes that will primarily benefit the affluent students.
A driving factor underlying this policy of downsizing is the overall need to liberalise even publicly provided no-traded services such as education and health under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). The formal state education sector in India is seen as a major obstacle to the entry of the informal systems of education sponsored by foreign educational institutions and, potentially, a formidably adversary to their expansion. Substantial downsizing of the higher education sector will not only create space for projected alternative form of education such as transnational cyber universities, institutional franchised by foreign universities, etc, all of which will operate within purely commercial parameters, but will also generate the necessity of ‘importing’ knowledge-technical knowledge that is being increasingly protected and restricted under the intellectual property rights regime. Further, the technology to be accessed (after due payment) is likely to be dated, enabling the developed countries to continuously profit from their high levels of investment in higher and technical education. A related aspect of ‘opening-up’ of the education sector under the auspices of the WTO and GATS regime is that it might “result in draining of resources of receiving country as well as strong cultural and political influence by one set of countries on other set of countries.
In India, on the road of the decentralization of higher education, the UGC has forwarded certain recommendations based on the Expenditure Reforms commission’s (ERG) fifth report that was submitted on March 7, 2001. The recommendations include a complete freeze on recruitment in all autonomous organization, ban on creation of posts at all level, an adhoc cut of 10 percent in total strengths of staffs and abolition of all vacant posts which are older than one year.
The Tamil Nadu Government has passed the Tamil Nadu Universities Law (Amendment) Bill, 2002. According to this bill all the government Arts and Science Colleges (67 in number) are converted into Constituent Colleges of the universities to which they are affiliated. The government on it’s part says this move has been taken to provide quality higher education in the government colleges. By becoming constituent colleges they can get substantial financial assistance from the Government of India through agencies like University Grants Commission, Department of Science and Technology etc. which will enable them to improve their infrastructure facilities, laboratory and library facilities in the colleges and upgrade their teaching modes, etc. Because of the government move to relinquish its role and hand over its colleges to universities has provoked unrest among the college teachers, students and others as they see the move as part of a process in which the state lias been withdrawing from the vital social sector, bowing to the demands of a neo-liberal regime.
DIVIDE BETWEEN HAVE AND HAVE NOTES:
While technology and communication developments have been presented as beneficial to education environments, the cost of equipping every student and educator with today’s technology is staggering, especially when facing increasingly tight constraints placed on education budgets. However, it can be argued that technology is becoming a lot cheaper when compared to the past, with falling prices making technology educational resources cost competitive with printed materials. Just as technology and communication seems to be creating a divide between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’, resulting in a bifurcated society of those who can afford such information technology and those who can’t, so too does globalization.
While educational institutions in western societies are embracing technology, developing countries are once again left behind, too weak and fragile to implement development programs for education, let alone introduce technology as well. While the Third World states encourage their citizens to seek more education, severe limitations in delivering basic services are problem. A lack of infrastructure and funding makes it difficult to implement any technological and communication advancements into systems that require substantial financial resources, where a majority of technology and resources must go to disease prevention and health care. However, despite differences in economy, polity, culture and society, second and third worlds have adopted educational ideals from western thought and are anxious to appear modern and therefore promote education as a symbol of modernity and development to their own population and the foreign countries.
Higher education has become a costly affair with raising fees and government coming out of this sector with diminishing government funds. This is becoming like if you have money you have the access to the commodity i.e. higher education if not then you are deprived of it. Sadly, the resource flow from western countries into higher education systems of the underdeveloped states in the 1990s has been drastically reduced. This raises one interesting question. In a rapidly expanding education system, how affordable can higher education be? However, access to higher education is a right and it should not be limited to ‘the better off due to inability to pay.
GLOBALIZATION OF LANGUAGE
At the language level, it is an accepted fact that English acquired the status of global domination as a consequence of the economic domination achieved by the English-speaking world. Apart from this, the globalization process leads to the growth of metropolitan cities arid business, capital, and industrial cities with mosaic-like distribution of people from different regions. The lingua franca of these people is usually English and other languages are used only as supplementary. These factors favor linguistic homogenization through English. But, each nation has its own language selected by the people for their symbolic and instrumental purpose. Though linguistic homogenization is possible to certain extent, the national languages and the uneducated people in a nation like India are at linguistic disadvantage. The regional languages are at the receiving end. Domination in the form of economy and marketing penetrates into the regional languages. The industrialists, traders, and their marketing techniques play a major role in shaping the languages.
It is observed that “a lost language is a lost culture, a lost culture is invaluable knowledge lost”. Under normal circumstances, it is important to develop and sustain languages and protect them from being adulterated and overwhelmed by outside influences, as happens when one culture dominates another. But in the context of globalization, promoting English as the language of globalization and the trend of using unfamiliar foreign terms have become the order of the day mostly at the cost of foreign terms have become the order of the day mostly at the cost of indigenous languages. We find the increasing use of English and other meaningless words and phrases in the global media. Even in the academic circles and government organizations, vague and new English terms are used to express an old thing or nothing. In fact, post-post-modernism has been currently ruling supreme and we are also speeding up with trends of time.
GLOBALIZATION OF CULTURE
The process of globalization has opened the floodgates through which the “transport” of “global culture” is done on a massive scale. Technology is not only transforming the world; it is creating its own metaphors as well. Satellites carrying television signals now enable people from all corners of the globe to be exposed regularly to a wide range of cultural stimuli. Television has been identified as the chief culprit because it has privatized the leisure time, misshaped social perceptions and above all reduced achievement levels in children. Television plays a significant role in the development of aggression in adolescents and adults.
Today, it is the media that remain the primary channels for cultural globalization. It is claimed that there are vast new possibilities for the enrichment of different cultures. But these possibilities cannot be realized in a situation where the imbalance in cultural exchanges is too large, it is impossible to ignore the threat of “Cultural Darwinism” promoted by a market controlled by a few groups operating on global level. Further, it might lead to domination by a globalizing hyper culture. Genetic engineering, the ‘bio-wing’ of turbo-capitalism, is even speeding up the ‘natural world’. Many crops are made to grow and ripen faster. Turkey, cattle and other farm animals like broilers are fattened within a short period through gene manipulation, special feeding programmes and the use of anti-biotics. The way we use, and misues, water provides plenty of other examples. After all it appears that we are well accustomed to the fast-growing culture of drinking bottled mineral water, even without minding the recent reports on adulteration in mineral water.
The most important far-reaching effect of cultural globalization is the commercialization of culture. Almost every aspect of culture-whether it is music, food, clothes, art, sport, images of age or youth, masculinity or femininity-has become a product, sold in the market place. Production and consumption of cultural goods and services have become commodities, along with the essentials of social life such as marriage and family life, religion, work and leisure, which are the crucibles of cultural creation. The commercialization of culture has a disturbing impact on people. An element of one’s way of life in the past has now become a product. People are increasingly supplied with new images, new music, new clothes and new values. It appears rather cynical that brand-name products increasingly connect people around the world.
Dr. R. DHANABAL, Assistant Professor in History, Government Arts College for women, Salem – 636 008.
REFERENCES:
- Michael Gibbons, The Globalization of Higher Education. P.72-80
- G.D. Shanna, ‘Internationalization of Higher Education and Operation of Foreign Universities in India’ P.9-15
- T. Ravikumar, ‘Downsizing Higher Education
- S. Viswanthan, “Letting down the less privileged’. 2002 P. 5
- Kate Francis, The Effects of Globalization on Education P.70-74
- Ibid.
- L. Ramamurthy, “Language of Globalization. P.15-20
- C. Thiruvenkadam, “Globalization and the Emerging Trends in Indian Culture”. P. 45-50