Xabier S. J. Gorostiaga

The world we have created today as a result of our thinking thus far has
problems which cannot be solved by thinking the way we thought when
we created them.

Albert Einstein ¹

Education has an extraordinary potential for generating development.
Nonetheless, today's education, particularly university education, is propa-
gating maldevelopment. This is reflected in the distortions and shortcom-
ings of modern economic growth, the gap between educational systems
and sustainable development projects, the disintegration of the educational
continuum from basic to university education, and the absence of a social
contract on education.

The university has become more essential than ever before in the cre-
ation of human resources able to confront a globalized world dominated
by the intensity of knowledge and international competitiveness. Higher
education is thus faced with the responsibility of creating the human ca-
pacities needed for sustainable development as well as the democratiza-
tion of knowledge, which is a key to genuine democracy. There is immi-
nent danger that universities will become an instrument for maldevelop-
ment in most Third World countries by exacerbating the concentration and
centralization of knowledge. The distribution of knowledge is even more
distorted than the distribution of income, wealth, and power. This process
of concentration and centralization may have subsequent antidemocratic
effects.

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