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<\/p>\nBy Kristin O\u2019Donoghue<\/p>\n
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Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights upholds education as a right to which every individual is entitled. The opportunity to attend an institute of higher learning and improve one\u2019s position in society, however, is available only to those who can afford it.<\/p>\n
In most nations, the cost of education is unconscionably high. In the United States, the average cost of attendance at a university is $35,720<\/a>, which stands in stark contrast to the $6,750 per year salary that public school teachers in Morocco make.<\/p>\n Students who can afford to attend university have an obligation that extends beyond themselves: their duties as students should not be to exclusively improve their own social standing and maximize the money they make. Instead, their focus should be one of service. In their academic undertakings, they should seek to do more than write lofty thesis statements and present abstract principles. Instead, they should use their education to serve others, giving its usefulness a much wider scope.<\/p>\n Academia should not and cannot exist solely within its own realm; it must respond to the world it observes. Knowledge for the sake of knowledge is not useful. To be blunt, it is a fruitless endeavor to write papers about social ills without trying to solve them.<\/p>\n Just as in development work, the impact of academic work should be tangible and measurable. Development organizations can appear to set out with noble goals that sound laudable on paper, but the organizations fail to execute their plans. It is easy to veil failed implementation efforts by claiming that the results are impossible to observe concretely, but this is often not the case.<\/p>\n While women\u2019s empowerment, for example, sounds like an abstract concept that might be difficult to measure, the degree to which women are more empowered is demonstrable in literacy rates, women\u2019s role in the economy, and family planning strategies. A paper on women\u2019s empowerment that is full of feminist theories and purely hypothetical considerations is not as effectual in achieving social progress as one that points readers toward the application of theory to reality and needs.<\/p>\n One solution to this problem of theory vs. practicality is the wide-scale implementation of service-learning<\/a>: an educational approach wherein students learn theories in the classroom and, at the same time, volunteer with an agency and engage in reflection activities to deepen their understanding of what is being taught. As stated in Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Higher Education for the Public Good<\/a>: \u201cAt its best, higher education provides graduates with the ability and motivation to collaborate with others to improve their local schools, break bread with their refugee neighbor, resolve racial conflict in the community, and create economically and environmentally sustainable communities.\u201d David Weerts believes that, ultimately, higher education for the public good may best be defined and measured by the \u201ccollective ability of postsecondary institutions to respond to key public agendas: improving economies, contributing to improved health and quality of life, and promoting the ideals of citizenship and democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n The best hope we have for progress in this world is through collaboration in every area of life. A collaborative approach that involves interaction between those writing papers and those with local knowledge and lived experience on the ground will be infinitely more successful than one in which those spheres remain separate. Participatory development allows community beneficiaries to occupy a central position in creating solutions to the everyday problems they experience. This makes perfect sense: those with local knowledge understand what will prove most effective and what issues should be prioritized in the development of the nation.<\/p>\n Just as the High Atlas Foundation (HAF) employs a participatory approach in which the public and private sectors work together, university students who set out to write papers should consult with and be aware of the realities of the subjects of their writing. HAF President Dr. Yossef Ben-Meir argues that right now, \u201cthere is generally inadequate coordination among ministries to achieve the synergies of these national initiatives, and a lack of popular understanding and the needed skills in order to translate them into reality.\u201d Partnerships among NGOs, business, and governments \u2014 local and national \u2014 generate solutions that cannot be achieved by any of these entities on their own.<\/p>\n
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