Tribune The Double Helix: A Project for the Future of Learning and Work

The possibilities offered by computerization permit revolutionary changes in the ways in which higher education is structured and delivered to learners. In particular, the substance of all fields and disciplines can be broken down into modules, basic building blocks of knowledge, that can be assimilated by learners in a variety of ways, including long-distance transnational delivery. This method, coupled to the pressing need for workers, in what is now a knowledge and learning society, to constantly retool, permits an alternation throughout life between work and study, the structure of which resembles a double helix.     

Reflections on the Creation and Functioning of UNESCO-CEPES: The Personal View of One of Its Founders

A principal founder of the UNESCO European Centre for Higher Education reflects on the origins of UNESCO-CEPES that he traces back to a chance encounter he had, in September 1954, with René Maheu, a future Director-General of UNESCO. Inaugurated in September 1972, as part, both of the détente process of those days and of the efforts of Romania to increase the presence of the United Nations and of its specialized agencies in Bucharest, the Centre assumed the task of promoting East-West co-operation in higher education. The author has been closely associated with the evolution of the Centre, which survived the "cold" period in Romania of the 1980s, and is currently celebrating its thirtieth anniversary.     

The Enhancement of Endogenous Capacities in Science and its Application to Technological Development

Although inhibited by ideology, science and technology (S&T) managed to make some progress during the socialist periods in Central and South Eastern Europe. Even when transition came after 1989, inhibition remained for the following reasons: the lack of objectives and strategies, institutional fluctuations, inadequate funding, the dissolution of internal solidarity, and inadequate S&T management. Through the assistance of such inter-European programmes as TEMPUS and SOCRATES, a new paradigm of S&T has been introduced in the sub-region based on international competition, computerization, and networking, and an emphasis on excellence in the exploitation of the knowledge revolution. The dichotomy of theoretical and practical science is being reduced through the links between higher education and industry and the increasing use of university science parks as incubators of ideas in the interface of higher education and science.     

Higher Education for the Twenty‐First Century

The author begins by distinguishing between culture and civilization; one is particular and characteristic of given peoples and nations; the other is global and based on science. Education is called upon to impart, to transmit, and to promote both cultures and civilization drawing upon the latter to promote tolerance among the former. Four major components of learning are participation, anticipation, concentration, and motivation. For the future, learning, particularly higher learning, must become life‐long, computer assisted, international in character, and modularized. Learning of this sort should reduce the tensions between civilization and cultures.