Higher Education and Global Poverty: University Partnerships and ...

of the wealthiest countries in the world, including the United Kingdom, France, Sweden, and Australia among others, have committed to Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which include targets to halve extreme poverty, reduce child mortality, provide all of the world's children with education, and reduce the incidence of infectious diseases—all to be accomplished through global partnering by 2015. Predictions based on current trends indicate that most of these targets will be missed, and inequality emerges as the primary culprit (UNHDR 2005; Sachs 2005).

Sachs explained the relative disregard that many rich countries have for philanthropy (2005). For example, although the United States annually donates billions of dollars to charity, the level of donor assistance is equivalent to only 0.15 percent of annual national income. Tax cuts for the four hundred richest Americans from 2001 to 2003 totaled $220 billion per year—enough money to raise the level of U.S. giving to meet its committed share of the MDGs, which is 0.7 percent of the national income (Sachs 2005). However, as Yunus pointed out, “charity is no solution to poverty … charity appeases our consciences” (2003, 249). In addition to meeting commitments of philanthropy, donor nations must also conceptualize how this money can effectively promote sustainable growth and poverty reduction.

Just as poverty indicators are subject to debate, so are the various suggestions which have emerged for reducing poverty as a global force. The literature proffers two overlapping objectives that could contribute to the reduction of poverty: advancing scientific and technical knowledge, and enhancing self-sufficiency. On the first point, Sachs has identified one of the six major kinds of capital that the poor lack as “knowledge capital,” or “the scientific and technological know-how that raises productivity in business output and the promotion of physical and natural capital” (2005, 244–245).¹ Ideas and knowledge can be shared and made use of over and over again. Natural resources alone are not the catalyst for growth; rather, the knowledge of how to use such resources is what can have a tangible effect. The academic community is one location where knowledge development in science and technology can occur (industry is another).