Belgian Presidency of the Council of the European Union

News - 15/10/2010 By sebastien.vermast

On 14 and 15 October 2010 the conference 'Conditions for achieving excellence in Universities and other Research organisations' took place, attended by Benoît Cerexhe, who chairs the Research Council, Zoltan Cséfalvay, the Hungarian Secretary of State, and Anneli Pauli, the Deputy Director General of DG Research."

In the framework of the European 2020 Strategy, and in particular of its communication of last 6 October with the title « A Europe of Innovation », the European Commission has made of modernisation one of its ten priorities. Excellence is put at the heart of the measure.

This measure is based on the three pillars of the knowledge triangle: research, innovation and education. Indeed, qualitative higher education, which pursues excellence, is at the root of research activities resulting into innovations. The profound link which connects research and training activities in universities provides them with a unique and essential role to play in the knowlegde society.

Given the importance of the three pillars of the “knowledge triangle” and to remember the necessity of fine-tuning these 3 parts, the Belgian Presidency – in close negotiation with the Commission – has organized this conference on the role of universities and research centres in the European Research Area.

Among the questions dealt with: the links between the academic world and business, autonomy of universities, the structuring of doctoral schools; with the conditions to achieve excellence in our universities and other research organizations as guidelines.

Hence, in terms of governance, excellence goes hand in hand with the freedom of decision in a large spectrum of domains, of which financial autonomy in relation to public and private providers of funds is one.

In this regard, a certain number of participants plead for university public funding to be more based on performance as well as on competition put in place between institutions. This of course should not be at the expense of the essential mission of training and education. Autonomy implies responsabilization.

The participants to the conference consider that a reinforced autonomy, together with a professionalization of their management should enable universities to chose a more outspoken profile. Can everyone be excellent everywhere and in all fields?

A more profound specialization and differentiation of the different European universities would also make it possible to put in place strategic alliances with other academic and industrial partners, in such a way to make use of the strong points and complementarity between them.

Besides research and innovation, one should not forget the third cornerstone of the knowledge triangle, namely education. Yet, qualitative higher education, pursuing excellence, is at the root of research activities resulting in innovation. The profound link uniting research and training activities in universities gives them a unique and essential role to play in the knowledge society.

At the political level, the Ministers of higher education should now take a stand on these different questions.

As far as I'm concerned, I believe it is indispensable to reinforce transversalities between all policies which contribute to an improved transformation of research results into economic results and jobs.

I believe that Europe should not develop towards an academic system at two paces by focusing its efforts exclusively on a small number of “selected” universities. It remains also important to aim to reduce the gap in level which nowadays exists between our different European universities. Excellence must remain a goal for all.

Finally, this conference has been the occasion to assess the ranking of universities.

Indeed, the actual rankings only take into account the partial indicators, which focus on the intensity of research. Yet most universities have institutional profiles and missions which are multiple and reduce them to one dimension may be dangerous for the diversity of our institutions. The U-Multirank project develops a ranking and classification concept for each type or profile of institution of higher education in order to put forward other types of excellence apart from only excellence in research. Indeed, excellence is also in education and training, transfer of knowledge, participation to regional development, etc. Therefore I will follow attentively the works concerning this European ranking initiative and the pilot study in particular which will be launched without delay.