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This round table discusses the impact of migrations on universities and university cities, including recent and current trends, potential future trends, and actions that need to be taken. It emphasizes the need for collaboration between academic and social communities to address these challenges.
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THE JOINT FORA OF THE ADRIATIC-IONIAN CITIES, UNIVERSITIES AND CHAMBERS OF COMMERCE Split, October 16 – 18, 2018 Round table SOCIETAL CHALLENGES INFLUENCE OF MIGRATIONS ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF UNIVERSITIES AND UNIVERSITY CITIES Prof. Dr. Dušan Nikolić University of Novi Sad Faculty of law
Recent trends: • Universities have attracted great number of young people from smaller, predominantly rural areas. • That process contributed to the expansion of university cities. • Universities led to permanent economic growth of urban centres. • The number of citizens grew and the educational structure of the population has changed.
Current trends: • Migrations from rural to urban areas has a downward trend, due to the fact that rural areas are inhabited by a scant number of young people. • The majority of rural areas are consisted of households with aging population. • Similar trend can be noticed in many other parts of the World. • More then half of the world’s population live in big cities. • That trend will affect the number of students at universities as well as the revenues of university cities.
Current trends: • Universities and university cities already have encountered a problem of depopulation. • Most European countries record negative population growth. • Situation is additionally more complex due to the heavy outgoing emigration waves. • Many young people permanently go to the developed Western Europe. • This also contributes to the decrease in number of students at the universities in this part of Europe. • There is also a decline in a number of students who achieve top-notch results and who should stay at universities.
Possible trends: • Unless nothing changes, universities will have fewer and fewer students, they will start to weaken economically, in human resources as well as in terms of the quality of education. • This will vastly affect stability and the development of some university cities, countries and regions.
What we have to do: • Emigrant flows ought to be reduced. • The abandoning of the territories need to be prevented. • The critical mass of people, without of which society cannot normally function, need to be preserved. • To aware society and key decission makers that without strong and comprehensive (all-encompassing) universities there will be neither stable social community nor social progress.
A sinergy: We need to strengthen a synergy between academic and wider social community. As recently was said at the 30th Anniversary of the Magna Charta Universitatum at the University of Salamanca, in this circumstances universities and university cities, which are mutually organically and fatefully connected should cooperate tightly.
How could we stop negative trends? - By opening a dialogue with the social community about mutual Expectations. - By increasing budget allocations for science. - By decreasing costs with the partnership with local community. - By increasing number of successful applications before the EU Commission. - By extensive interpretation of principle of Open science. - By opening a dialogue about the moral obligation of developed countries tosupport the development of science and higher education in the Region.
Novi Sad initiative : - Association of universities of the Western Balkans - Intensifying inter-university cooperation in the Region - What do we have in the Region? - How can we help each other? - What we do not have in the Region? - Who outside of the Region could help us and how?
