University of Johannesburg's Rensburg Discusses Globalization at Askwith Forum

When Ihron Rensburg, vice chancellor of the University of Johannesburg, speaks about his country and his institution's challenges, he is also speaking to the world in hope that they will listen. At the Askwith Forum, Global Challenges and Transnational Research Partnerships: A Case for South African and US Collaboration, on Tuesday, March 30, Rensburg discussed the challenge of globalization and the increased need for global collaborations.

"I know that we will learn a lot from our collaboration," Dean Kathleen McCartney said during the forum's introduction, sharing her excitement about meeting Rensburg and anticipating work the two schools will do together in the future.

The University of Johannesburg is one of South Africa's largest city universities and offers technological and traditional academic programs to more than 46,000 students. Rensburg described the institution as having an ambition to beinclusive. However, since South Africa is a developing country in which roughly 50 percent of the population lives in poverty, the University of Johannesburg also faces many roadblocks on its journey. Additionally, Rensburg noted that there is what he calls a "30 percent in, 70 percent out" system in his country, where nearly 3 million young adults do not go on to further their education. Also, he pointed out that nearly 200 faculty members will be eligible for retirement within 10 years, with no one available to fill their positions.

"The new reality is we live in a global village," he said, stressing that as a result of globalization every challenge becomes "shared challenges" for both the developed and developing world.

As the world faces issues such as climate change, drug trade, organized crime, terrorism, and piracy on the high seas, "multinational responses" are needed. Rensburg believes that "global dialogue, partnership, and collaboration" can move the nations of the world forward together to overcome.

Rensburg sees universities as ideal places to explore these issues since higher education institutions offer places to self-examine, revise, experiment, and come up with new ideas. However, he noted that even within academia there exists a broad range of inequities and academic partnerships are not always created even.

Still, there are profound opportunities already taking place in universities around the globe. In particular, Rensburg credited "progressive universities" for opening up their "intellectual capital to the world" through global research project collaborations, and the sharing of knowledge and interests.

"Perhaps this is just at the beginning of the beginning," Rensburg said, quoting futurist James Martin, who gifted $100 million to Oxford University to forge research on the challenges confronting the globalized world. "The day may yet come where this type of generous investment in research will be linked to an academic institution outside of the developed world. It is then that we will know that globalization of the academic community is becoming a true reality."

Despite these benefits, there are also challenges in globalization of the academic community. Rensburg described a disjuncture between the transnational character of globalization and the national structure of our academic communities where often international solutions emerge from only one side.

"There are many lessons to learn from each other and lots of them by the poor from the rich," he said. However, Rensburg pointed out that every institution discovers ways to deal with challenges, even though they are not all heard. "The means of the local lessons for the global world tends to be internationalized but those of the poor tend to remain buried," he said.

As a result, the globalization of academia has created an unbalanced perspective. Researchers often travel to developing countries where communities become "human laboratories" or arrive at a community with expectations for change only to leave before they are realized. Part of these global collaborations and partnerships should protect the poor more, Rensburg said. "We must find imaginative ways to level the playing field."