A GROUNDBREAKING programme of closer university integration on a European scale is getting under way.

The project to create a European higher education area (EHEA) by 2010, is supported by 38 countries. They have agreed to institute such important features as a common pattern that distinguishes undergraduate and postgraduate courses — not the case at the moment; systems of credit and credit transfer; diploma supplements that make every qualification “readable” in other parts of the EHEA; a structure for quality assurance and such features as joint degrees and integrated programmes of training and research.

On Thursday, in the latest stage of the process, the Austrian university city of Graz will host the third convention to be organised by the representative body of European university leaders, the European University Association (EUA).

The aim of Graz is to make it possible to prepare a policy statement for a summit declaration in Sept. in Berlin by the 38 ministers of education. The theme is convergence in research and quality assessment. The EUA position takes research as an intrinsic element of the European university.

But there are also concrete questions. Can there be a common line on the nature, structure and optimal duration of the PhD in the developing knowledge economy, cooperation and promotion of joint doctorates, strategies for reducing barriers to doctoral and post-doctoral mobility? And how can universities better exploit their role of disseminating knowledge at regional level? On quality assessment the convention members intend to frame recommendations, such as one on avoiding a burdensome quality assurance bureaucracy.

Berlin will thus take its place in a collective process, unprecedented in modern times, that started at Bologna in 1999. That summit advocated most of the structural criteria for convergence.

The intriguing question, given Europe’s universities’ jealously guarded autonomy and traditions and national sensitivities, is how have universities got to this principled acceptance of convergence, and persuaded governments to back them? You could say that Bologna matches an idea and action with a situation, and does so much more effectively than other institutions that favour international collaboration — the EU, the Council of Europe and the OECD.

Bologna started with a powerful idea from the French minister of education, Claude Allegre, in 1998. He argued that European universities should, in collaboration, be able to play their part in the international scene as effectively as the top American universities. The precondition was that European universities should be recognisable by their structure, and by the quality of their research and scholarship. It is significant that Allegre was not only a minister but also a world-class scientist and university professor. He knew first-hand that researchers have to compete on an international stage. He was able to argue with conviction for a strategy that saw the traditional university aims of emulation in the context of cooperation and collaboration on a European scale, in the arts as much as in the sciences. The Bologna activity that followed makes universities the setters of the agenda. As such they are a more powerful driving force than ministers, who when they meet intergovernmentally are more diplomats than policy entrepreneurs.

Though the ebullient Allegre was determined to keep the commission at bay, later leadership has recognised the EU commission’s value as expert in cooperation through the Erasmus programme, for example, and as a provider of incentive funding. The commission now gives important financial support to Bologna development on quality assurance and diploma supplements. It has invented a new programme, Erasmus Mundus, to spread the Erasmus programme model worldwide. Having got over its initial huff at being excluded, it has recognised this opportunity to develop Knowledge Europe, a major strategic goal of the EU for its research and development policies and opportunities to develop the EU’s European Research Area in parallel with the EHEA. There’s a well-researched argument which concludes that the process of European integration has rescued nation states from decline. Closer European integration could well do the same for universities.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.

This known male chauvinist was angry that afternoon, once again, on the issue of women being subjected to what he described as ‘injustice’. He argued on and on that women in this society were getting a raw deal, and that somehow there was being demonstrated almost a brutal, cruel lack of sensitivity on how women were suffering in all walks of life. His contention was that regardless of how women were coming forward in economic terms, there was an “attitude problem” that somehow was not getting the attention that it should. The attitude of men.

He was referring to a story from Mirpurkhas that said that “maternity cases claim 30,000 lives every year”. This figure was revealed at a seminar held there on “Maternity Diseases” by the PMA, and it was stated that 30,000 pregnant women died in the country every year due to the lack of medical facilities. That is not all. It was further revealed that 375,000 pregnant women were paralyzed every year due to the same reason. It made one think what kind of scenario exists in India or in other countries of the SAARC region.

We talk about the subject of women and hospitals and in particular of the disturbing revelation: “Maternal death rate high in the city.” This was a reference to Karachi — the wealthiest city in the country — and it was quite obvious, that one presumes, that the situation would be far more distressing in other parts of the country, all the talk of progress notwithstanding.

In this story, which appeared in Dawn of May 29, it was reported that “122 women of Karachi died in childbirth last year.” This figure was disclosed at a seminar where it was further said that 62 of them had died before they had reached a hospital. The other details in the story are pathetic and a sorry reflection on the state of neglect and the priority that is given, to this obviously very vital health sector.

One cannot but refer to a young man in the town whose wife is expecting their first child sometime in August this year. They live somewhere in Korangi area. There are the usual dreams that go with the whole scenario at this stage.

I asked him which hospital would his wife go for the baby’s delivery. He said it was a hospital in Site, a government hospital. How would he take her there, in case it was at night or in the early hours of the morning? He said that he had spoken to a neighbour, a taxi driver, and he would help him out, despite any odd hour. Somehow he looked assured. Somehow he made me feel unsure. But that is the way life goes on in this place, and maternal deaths don’t really surprise, given an ambience of mounting inadequacy and a paucity of decent medical infrastructure.

I spoke to a senior doctor on the theme of maternal deaths, and he listed some factors that are responsible for this state of affairs. They are: ignorance of relevant medical requirements in patients and their families, malnutrition, lack of timely medical assistance, infection, multiple pregnancies, poor doctor-patient ratio, and a patient load factor that made the doctors and nurses not do their professional best ever.

But read this story and the appalling situation takes a very disgusting turn when it is revealed that in Karachi, at least 33 government-run maternity homes, mother and child health centres, and rural health centres are incapable of providing comprehensive emergency obstetrical care round the clock and only 14 per cent of them could provide basic emergency care. (Think of the country).

The entire tale on this count is one of shocking absence of what is needed. Once again a sorry reminder of how our medical facilities are failing to meet the needs of a rising population. Or of how they are failing to deliver, in some of the leading government hospitals.

The hospitals have their own horror stories of what one doctor calls the growing load factor in a society where the awareness of medical attention being available (at least in theory) is also growing.

Relevant is the mention of a story that appeared in Dawn early in May where it was reported that a woman had died of what was reported to be a “surgical team’s negligence.” This was at the Civil Hospital, Karachi, and reading the whole tale made one alive to the latent fear that most, if not all, people have of hospitals and doctors in this society.

A brief recall of that story. Three consecutive surgical operations were performed on one woman who had stones in her gall bladder. They first removed the gall bladder and left a swab behind inside. Then they operated on her again for the removal of that swab from her abdomen. The situation deteriorated after the second operation and so a third operation was required, and later on she died. It was reported that an inquiry had been ordered into the case. Nothing has been disclosed thereafter. The deceased left behind five sons, three daughters and her husband (an employee of the same hospital) to mourn her death. Life goes on.

Of course there is nothing new about such incidents and many others where patients and families feel they have not been treated fairly or as best as they deserved. It is a long and familiar story of trauma and tragedy. Fears of hospitals — government or private — are common, in what is regarded as the uncaring and negligent attitude of hospital staff at all levels. But then, reminds one doctor, “we also have our side of the story”. A very sad, tearful story.

Of course it does not surprise to hear that most maternal deaths are preventable. Let us return to the point with which we have dealt with here — maternal deaths. It is said that today more than 600,000 women die in childbirth world over every year. That is the wider picture. Whither woman? really.

In the context of the situation, one young woman professional interprets the whole picture in symbolic terms. She says that it reflects the poor depleted status of the woman in society where in, what she describes as, a man’s world, not enough priority is being attached to this aspect of a woman’s life. That she dies at childbirth. She was vocal and angry as she listed out the various stages of a woman’s life, when she suffers more than a man, and the number of spheres where she is victimized for she is weak and vulnerable.

Women today are victims of crime, domestic violence, injustice, prejudice, exploitation, she went on and said that this was happening in the rural areas and urban centres, both in the developing and developed world.

A report mentions that there is a ‘safe’ motherhood project somewhere in Karachi. Are these the dreams that society sells to woman, to lure them into believing that society cares for them, when even essentially mother and child centres are unable to deal with them in cold reality, even in name.