A call for a shared reflection
The students body at the projected UCI School of Design will
unquestionably be American in its majority. We are also told
(p. 25 in the Proposal) that through a proposed "Academic Alliance",
an "International Consortium" of "top design schools around the
world", exchange programs for, among other things, faculty and
students will be sponsored. It is well expected that those exchanges
will be initiated and enhanced with Design teaching institutions
in "Western" countries first. It seems however that a few
institutions have also been approached in the so-called "emerging"
countries such as India, Hong Kong, South Korea, (and most probably
China, as that has been alluded to recently) and their eventual
participation in academic exchanges with the UCI School of Design has
been secured already.
Upon their graduation, and further to the present context of
globalization, one can thus expect to find scattered in various work
contexts all over the world graduates from the UCI School of Design
(see forecast of the Demand on pp. 38-39 of the Proposal). And as
evoked above, many of these will be originals from the industrialized
or semi-industrialized countries. But eventually also, mostly by the
way of scholarships, a small number of those graduates will also be
nationals from non-industrialized poorer countries, who will return
home after graduation. (Assuming that they would have resisted the
strongly tempting high pay and better working and living conditions
in America and in other high income countries - see pp. 38, 39. To a
certain extend, the Design profession will also be widely plagued by
the "brain-drain" disease!)
Upon reading Maria F. Camacho's presentation, on one hand, and in
consideration of the proposed innovative UCI School of Design
curriculum, on the other hand, one is left to wonder how those fresh,
new breed of professionals, nationals and/or aliens, may work to
alleviate or, even better, reverse the trend of so many hopeless
situations as briefly reported by Maria. Would there realistically be
a slight way the proposed UCI School of Design could contribute to
make a difference from the present?
François-X. N.I. NSENGA
Montréal, Québec
CANADA
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