Eureka!: European Research Universities and the Challenges of the 21st Century

Bart Funnekotter (ed.)

Edited by Bart Funnekotter

Eureka!

In all of Europe universities have to deal with government retrenchment. Institutions are forced to find new sources of financing, such as making their academic research a source of income. But does external financing leave enough room for essential research that is not directly useful to the sponsor? Or are the universities soon to become exalted R & D centres in the service of the corporate sector? In Eureka! prominent scholars describe how the twelve universities of the League of European Research Universities (Cambridge, Edinburgh, Geneva, Heidelberg, Helsinki, Leiden, Louvain, Milan, Munich, Oxford, Stockholm, Strasbourg) handle this financial challenge. Where do the scientists, students and administrators stand, faced with new revenue streams coming to their universities? And what can their European colleagues learn from them? With contributions from Thomas Blondeau, Douwe Breimer, David Bremmer, Frank Provoost, Hester van Santen, and Christiaan Weijts. Bart Funekotter is the executive editor of Mare, the weekly magazine of the University of Leiden and of the Academische Boekengids (‘Academic Book Review’), the Dutch equivalent of the London Review of Books. ISBN 90 5356 752 6

www.aup.nl

A U P

Eureka! European Research Universities and the Challenges of the 21st Century A U P

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Eureka! European Research Universities and the Challenges of the st Century

Edited by Bart Funnekotter

With contributions by: Thomas Blondeau Douwe D. Breimer David Bremmer Bart Funnekotter Frank Provoost Hester van Santen Christiaan Weijts

Amsterdam University Press

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Photo credits Cambridge: Cambridge University, Bart Funnekotter Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Geneva: Université de Genève Heidelberg: Ruprecht-Karls-Universität, Wouter Roos Helsinki: Helsingin Yliopisto, Frank Provoost Leiden: Marc de Haan,Taco van der Eb Leuven: KULeuven Milan: Università degli studi di Milano Munich: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Centre of Nano Science, Munich Erasmus Students’ Network Oxford: Nasir Hamid, Rob Judges, Phil Sayer, Bart Funnekotter Stockholm: Karolinska Institutet, David Bremmer Strasbourg: Université Louis Pasteur

Translated by: Susan Hammons Cover design: Sabine Mannel, NAP, Amsterdam Cover design Universiteit Leiden: Ratio Design, Haarlem Lay out: Het Steen Typografie Maarssen       / © Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam,  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book.

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Contents Foreword



Introduction



Cambridge



Edinburgh



Geneva



Heidelberg



Helsinki



Leiden



Louvain



Milan



Munich



Oxford



Stockholm



Strasbourg



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Foreword In every country in Europe, universities are confronted by national governments that spend less and less on higher education. Where in the ’s funds seemed to be limitless, nowadays universities are facing severe cutbacks. Indeed, so much funding has fallen away that they are forced to look for new sources of money. Rather than each one struggling to face this challenge on its own, wouldn’t it be better for the European universities to learn from each other how best to deal with this changing social climate? With this question in mind, the editors of Mare, Leiden University’s weekly newspaper, decided to look – literally – across European borders and visit the eleven universities which together with Leiden make up the League of European Research Universities, or LERU. Not surprisingly, it turned out that everyone, from Helsinki to Milan and from Heidelberg to Edinburgh, seems to be facing the same problems. How can we make ends meet? How can we get alumni to give more generously? How can we make money from our research? How do we deal with the business community? Is there still a place for scientific fields which will never be financially profitable? In this book’s introduction and in the twelve chapters on the various universities,administrators, scientists and students address these questions. Perhaps their most important conclusion, the thing on which they all seem to agree, is that whatever crisis may be looming, the university must remain a fully independent institution for higher education – not just a setting for commercial research and development activities. Universities have existed for nearly a thousand years in Europe, and they will doubtlessly survive the challenges of the st century as well. The chapters of this book are similar in format. Each one starts with a brief sketch of a university, then continues with an interview with a member of one of its higher administrative bodies, followed by an article on research activities, and concludes with a description of student life. Visits to the universities were conducted between March  and January . Although some of the people interviewed may by now have left the positions they held at the time of our visit, we do not feel that this decreases the relevance of their opinions.

Bart Funnekotter Editor, Mare

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INTRODUCTION

Challenges of the Twenty-first Century by Professor Douwe D. Breimer, Rector Magnificus, Leiden University

Looking Back, Looking Ahead Until fairly recently, only a minor percentage of Europeans enjoyed university education or were involved in academic research. The main purpose of universities, apart from training clergymen, physicians and lawyers, was the pursuit of knowledge in its own right. Within a very short time span this situation has changed dramatically. Society’s views on universities have altered substantially over the past fifty years. Politicians as well as the general public now seem to feel that the goal of university research should be to resolve sharply defined industrial, medical, economic and societal issues. Direct applicability of research results appears to be a prerequisite.The same applies to the universities’ educational programmes. Employers demand that students are prepared to meet the present needs of industry, ignoring the fact that these needs will change considerably during the graduates’ active careers. Universities need to do their utmost to comply with the ever-changing requirements imposed on them by society. It is because they have succeeded in adapting to change that they have continued to exist over the centuries. Over the past four decades the number of students has grown exponentially while the cost of training them has decreased considerably. In this sense universities have become ever more efficient, although unfortunately this has proven to be at the expense of the pursuit of basic knowledge. Universities are now also much more active in transferring the knowledge they create to those within society who are able to put it to good use. Universities are strongly aware of their responsibilities and accountability towards society. The nature of industry in Europe is changing rapidly. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries our economic activities evolved from farming and heavy industry such as smelting and shipbuilding to production processes requiring highly specialised knowledge and skills; the provision of a wide range of services has also become more important. Competition from recently developed or still developing countries is forcing Europe to raise average levels of education considerably in order to meet current and future demand from various sectors of society and also to preserve its relative advantage over other world regions.A number of European governments have already set targets for participation in higher education as high as fifty percent. This necessitates further growth in and diversification of the higher education system,the establishment of professional schools and the expansion of existing institutions. 9

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Differentiation and Specialisation within Higher Education Although we do need to increase substantially the number of people earning degrees in higher education, they do not all necessarily need to reach master’s level or beyond. For very many people, completing an undergraduate programme would be sufficient.This is not to say that their training should be of lesser quality; after all, excellence in teaching should always remain the basic aim at every level from primary to graduate school. However, not everyone can benefit from education in a research environment. This means that we might have to abandon the idea that every institute of higher education should offer the same type of education. For many students, lecture programmes at undergraduate level would be the most efficient method of instruction, and such programmes could be delivered very well by institutions which focus on that type of teaching.These institutions would have an important role to play in supporting local economy and industry and in supplying local communities with the skilled workers they need. Ideally, they should be linked via university networks, with institutions fulfilling roles at national and international levels. In this way they could keep pace with progress in research and new knowledge which could in turn be integrated into their programmes. Another type of institution could serve a larger geographical area by offering master’s programmes and even a few doctoral courses, preferably in collaboration with industry. Finally, a relatively small number of research-intensive universities should concentrate on basic research and postgraduate education, although they too could deliver programmes at the undergraduate level, especially where this would prepare graduates for further study and research.These should have a strong tradition in research and research-based education; they would need to receive sufficient funding to allow them to engage in top-level research and to be attractive to internationally renowned scholars and scientists, providing them with the infrastructure and facilities they need. Only a diversified European system of universities can cater for the needs of all segments of society and of all who pursue post-secondary education. Precious and scarce resources should be concentrated on a relatively small number of universities. Diluting these sources by spreading them over a large number of institutions would render them ineffective. Every student who qualifies for higher education should have access to the most suitable type of study. Where tuition fees are levied, grants or loans should be available so that students from disadvantaged backgrounds are able to enrol. Such a diversified system must be given room to develop over time; it should not be political decision-making but rather competitive mechanisms that illuminate the optimum route for each institution.

Preserving the Cultural Heritage Now more than ever, the general public must be continually reminded that the cultural dimension is an essential part of the university’s mission.To preserve the world’s intellectual heritage, it is not sufficient to simply store everything we know about the past 10

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within books and other documents or in museums and collections.To keep this heritage truly alive, we must never cease to study our history, including our scientific, scholarly and cultural history.This is the way in which we will discover new aspects, gain new insights and deepen our understanding of the past – and, consequently, of the future. More often than not, such quests cannot be meticulously planned. It would be erroneous to believe that the situation is different in science and technology than it is in the humanities.It is not; in fact,much of today’s technology is based on inventions and discoveries that resulted purely from the curiosity of a researcher. Quite often it is not the case that a theory leads to a predictable discovery,but rather it is unexpected discoveries that lead to new theories. Therefore, it is essential that the freedom to conduct fundamental, curiosity-driven research is preserved. It should not be up to politicians to decide which topics are worthy of investigation; if it was, we should have neither electricity nor lasers, for example, as at the time they were discovered no one foresaw any practical use for either. It is worrying, then, that academics must struggle increasingly harder to find funding for basic research and that they feel compelled to justify their being active in this area. Governments must realise their responsibilities and provide universities with enough resources to preserve our cultural heritage; they can do this by allowing gifted students and talented scholars to pursue knowledge that has no direct economic value but simply adds to the understanding of our past and present world. The rationale is that the presence of these disciplines adds to the quality of the multidisciplinary academic environment, to the benefit of other subjects as well. This means that the government should not only make grants available for students in these areas, it should also guarantee appropriate jobs for the best graduates. If this does not happen, the most talented may opt preferentially for disciplines that will guarantee a more financially secure future.

Fundamental Research In all disciplines, not just in the endangered ones, governments and universities must make sure that there is sufficient space for purely curiosity-driven research in which researchers are free to follow leads whose results are uncertain but which are interesting and promising. Without this possibility, innovation will come to a standstill, and Europe will be outstripped by its competitors. We should realise that we have numerous challengers. Until recently, our main contenders were the United States and Japan, but China and India are in a period of rapid development. Europe really must set full sail if only to remain abreast of them. The combination of government budget cuts and a closer involvement of industry in university research has resulted in a shift in focus from fundamental to applied research.The consequences of this are serious; Europe is now clearly lagging behind the US. A few simple statistics illustrate this trend. A comparison of the citation of academic publications, normalised by per capita GDP, shows the US outperforming the EU introduction

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by over thirty percent.This superior performance can be partially attributed to the proportion of articles resulting from fundamental research, which tend to be quoted more often. A more worrisome statistic in respect to fundamental research is the larger proportion of Nobel Prizes awarded to American researchers. In physics and chemistry the imbalance is fivefold in favour of the Americans. Japanese scientists as well are increasingly winning the Prize; no doubt they will be joined in the near future by a growing number of colleagues from China and India, for example. Reinforcing the position of fundamental research is not enough to reclaim the leading position Europe once held. Concurrently, universities and industry should be encouraged to develop applications for new findings and thus lead humanity to future prosperity. Current processes of knowledge transfer between universities and industry can and must be improved. Several League universities operate units which serve scientists as well as business and industry by assisting them in the commercialisation of intellectual property. In this way, the universities’ contribution to industry and society is balanced by the relative freedom to pursue knowledge for its own sake.

The League of European Research Universities In , twelve top-ranking institutions established the League of European Research Universities (LERU) to promote the idea that fundamental research is essential for the prosperity of Europe. Founding members of the League include the University of Cambridge, the Karolinska Institute, the University of Leuven, the University of Oxford and Leiden University.The League lobbies actively within the appropriate forums of the EU. It has also produced a number of position papers endorsing and underpinning ideas developed over the last few years by EU Commissioner Philippe Busquin to strengthen the European Research Area. The League’s foundation illustrates a growing recognition of the importance of networking and internationalism.It is vital that Europe creates a European Research Area (ERA) in parallel with the European Higher Education Area, which is currently taking shape as a result of the Bologna Treaty. An important step in this direction was taken at the Berlin meeting of Ministers of Education with the recognition of doctoral studies as the third tier in a new European educational system. A proposal has been made to allow researchers and research funds freedom of movement within the ERA.It is only by drawing on member states’resources in the most productive way possible that Europe will be able to face competition from the US, Japan, China and India. At the Lisbon summit in , European leaders set themselves the historic goal of making the EU the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world by . In its March  meeting in Barcelona, the European Council set its target for expenditure on research; it was determined that spending would increase from less than two percent to three percent of GDP. Regrettably, until now the EU has been less than successful in implementing this strategy. The United Kingdom, however, seems to be making progress. In November , 12

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Prime Minister Tony Blair outlined a five-year plan set out by the Department of Trade and Industry by which the UK will develop a strong, modern, knowledge-based economy equipped to face the challenges posed by rapidly emerging economies and new technologies.The plan prescribes doubling the science budget and increasing the overall level of research and development to . percent of GDP. As a whole, Europe must put more emphasis on fundamental research within universities, recognising it as the driving force behind innovation. Basic research is instrumental in developing people’s ability to exploit the unforeseen and to understand and utilise developments taking place elsewhere in the world and so to fuel economic activity. It is necessary in order to attract expertise, investment and business activity, to underpin solutions for societal problems, to support cultural development and democratic values and to replicate itself by contributing to the training of the next generation.All of this is powerfully demonstrated in the major research-intensive universities in the US and in their links with industry. Making available a larger sum of money is not enough, however; Europe must also expand its research capacity.Within the next decade we need to educate a huge number of new researchers to make the most of new resources and to replace the unusually large proportion of researchers due to retire within the same period. Keeping in mind the fact that it takes approximately ten years of university training to transform someone into a competent researcher, the problem becomes abundantly clear. Research-intensive universities have a crucial role to play in solving this shortage. At the same time, we must also make Europe more attractive for young scientists both from our own part of the world and from abroad. Too many of the truly talented ones now consider the US to be the ideal country in which to pursue a research career. Europe should offer far more post-doctoral positions and fellowships, better research facilities and better career perspectives to those who can make a valuable contribution to its future.

The Future of LERU In the few years since the inception of the LERU, academics have taken initiatives for cooperation between the member universities. At a recent meeting in Leiden, agreements were reached on the joint development of post-graduate programmes in nonWestern studies. Representatives from the social sciences have formed the LERU Board of Social and Behavioural Sciences.The Deans of the medical faculties have decided to join forces; liaison officers are planning joint action in the area of knowledge transfer.Other activities have also been commenced, such as the exchange of best practices. Apart from these efforts at collaboration LERU has produced a number of position papers since it was founded, which emphasise the importance of maintaining and further strengthening the position of fundamental research at European universities. These papers have been submitted to the EU Commission and to national governintroduction

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ments. LERU will continue to contribute to the debate on the future of research and the future of universities in Europe, as well as to the enormously important issue of training future generations of scientists. These position papers can be found on the LERU website (www.leru.org). To strengthen the position of research-intensive universities in Europe further, the League is now hoping to expand. In the coming years more high-quality researchintensive European universities will be invited to join LERU.The League is also seeking to form mutually beneficial relationships with similar consortia elsewhere in the world.This book will introduce you to LERU’s members. I trust you will find it a useful reference and I hope it will convince you of the importance of all that the League stands for. Leiden, May 

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cambridge

Cambridge University by Bart Funnekotter

Cambridge University in facts and figures: Founded in 1209 11,979 undergraduate students and 5,499 graduate students 8740 staff Budget D 924 million

No other university in the world has been awarded as many Nobel Prizes as Cambridge University.Over the years no fewer than eighty scientists from the university have been presented with the ultimate recognition for their work. Trinity College alone has received the prize  times since the first one was awarded in  – that is more than many an entire nation has managed to collect altogether. Throughout the entire nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, the natural sciences were especially well represented at the university on the Cam. This is the place where the first electrons were glimpsed, the first atomic nuclei split, the first digital computer developed and the double helix structure of DNA discovered. Cambridge’s pantheon of scientists includes greats such as Charles Darwin, Lord Kelvin, James Clark Maxwell, Lord Raleigh, James Watson, Francis Crick and Stephen Hawking.

The inner court of King’s College

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According to popular British cliché, people hoping for careers in politics and government go to Oxford, while those with scientific aspirations belong in Cambridge. Like many clichés, this one contains a kernel of truth. For instance,  prime ministers have been Oxford alumni,while Cambridge has produced a paltry fifteen; on the other hand Cambridge scientists have won eighty Nobel Prizes while Oxford has gathered only . In international surveys as well, Cambridge always finishes slightly above Oxford. Cambridge University is proud of its standing. Compared to Oxford, it strikes the visitor as being slightly more serious, perhaps even boring.The city itself is smaller, the college buildings less impressive, there are fewer tourists to be found and the pubs are rather more hidden. In general, the atmosphere in the city seems to breathe: ‘We’re hard at work.’ In spite of Cambridge’s leading position in the hard sciences,it has been slow to seek income from its research. However, the ‘Cambridge Phenomenon’ has now taken over. Led by Trinity College and St John’s College, a Science Park has sprung up outside the city and is continuing to grow. By the time its sixty hectares are completely built up, it will be one of the world’s largest research centres. Newsweek magazine recently named Cambridge as one of the top ten rivals for California’s Silicon Valley. All this industriousness can be traced back through a brilliant history stretching far beyond the university’s golden years from  to .In  a group of scientists from Oxford sought refuge in the market town on the Cam; by  they had set up their own institution for higher education complete with its own Chancellor. Over the centuries the university removed itself from the grip of Church and King,and its excellence in research was confirmed in  when Isaac Newton published his treatise Philosophiae Naturalis Principa Mathematica. Since then it has continued to go from strength to strength. In the st century the university is turning its attention to contacts abroad: it has begun an intensive collaborative association with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and it draws new students from all over the globe. It seems more than evident that Cambridge University aims to continue its successful pursuit of Nobel Prizes for the next hundred years at least.

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Vice-Chancellor Allison Richard Hopes to Build on the ‘Cambridge Phenomenon’

‘Don’t Let the Tail Wag the Dog’

Professor Allison Richard returned to Cambridge after three decades in the United States

After three decades in the US, Professor Allison Richard returned to Cambridge in  to take up the post of Vice-Chancellor. She plans to get more alumni and companies involved with Cambridge University. ‘We pursue excellence in all of the fields of human inquiry.’ After many years of working in the United States, Professor Allison Richard finally returned ‘home’three years ago.Having gained her undergraduate degree in anthropology at Cambridge as a student at Newnham College, she moved to Yale University in  and became Professor of Anthropology there in . Between  and  she served as Director of the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, where she oversaw one of the most important university natural history collections in the USA and played a leading role in initiating the museum’s twenty million dollar capital fundraising campaign. Subsequently she became the Provost of Yale University, but in  the time was ripe for her to return to her alma mater. She was offered the post of Vice-Chancellor, the principal academic and administrative officer of the university, which she accepted. What do you think of the different ways in which universities in the US and Europe are funded? The funding of universities in the United Sates has a much greater diversity than is appreciated in this country. Of course there are the Ivy League universities, which generate great sums of money themselves, but there are also a lot of state universities that get their funding from the government, just like us. The University of California is a good example of a very successful state university. cambridge university

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Should governments be solely responsible for the funding of universities? I think that the notion that government funding is a priori a bad thing, is mistaken. And indeed I would say that universities bring great benefits to society, nationally and globally, and therefore are worthy of investment of public funds. But for an institution like Cambridge, which is one of the great research universities of the world,operating costs are extremely high and I don’t believe that the government can be reasonably expected to provide all of the necessary funding. So it is appropriate that we should look to our alumni and friends and those who value higher education for sources of support. That notion has only recently caught on in the UK, hasn’t it? Well, in truth Cambridge was built by philanthropy. That fact is often overlooked. For most of its eight hundred year existence, philanthropy has been an extraordinarily important driving force in the growth of the university. And even in the last thirty years the expansion of the university has really been a joint effort between government and private donors like Bill Gates and his Gates Scholarship. So it is not accurate to say that there has been no philanthropy at this university. It is just that I believe that we need to build on what is already going on and have a more systematic and institutional approach to doing it,following in the footsteps of what private universities in the US have done. A third of our present budget is a combination of fees and endowments. The challenge that I see is to build that third up to allow us to support what we’re doing at a higher level and to provide us with the wherewithal to invest in new activities. And that’s where the alumni come in? There are many advantages for a university in having close links with alumni. It isn’t only about money. That is one of the mistaken notions in this country, that the only thing that American universities do with their alumni is ask them for money. That is actually not the case at all. Alumni are engaged as ambassadors on behalf of their universities; they advise their universities. There is a very rich relationship there; I think that the universities benefit from that and the alumni are enriched by the experience. Why should alumni become financially involved? They pay taxes, don’t they? I have been working very hard over the last year to reach out and broaden the basis of our alumni and to talk about our needs and ambitions as a university. And I am getting a very positive response, particularly from the younger generation. I grew up in a time when there was free education, which is responsible for the mindset that you pay your taxes for higher education and that’s what you get for it. Younger people see things differently and I believe that we have an opportunity here. We bring our ideas to the table and the alumni bring their own ideas and their resources to the table. And when it works,it is a very powerful relationship.Of course one must always be vigilant in not allowing the tail of philanthropy to wag the dog of the institution. 18

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How do you go about convincing companies that they should invest in Cambridge University? We have been quite successful over the last couple of decades. The ‘Cambridge Phenomenon’ that has existed since the ’s is extraordinary. Ten percent of total venture capital in Europe was invested in the greater Cambridge area last year. So we have an array of global companies on our doorstep,or inside our doorstep,including the likes of Intel and Microsoft. Because Cambridge is so entrepreneurial in spirit, there is a huge amount of partnership activity. It is much more developed and much more diverse than at Yale,for instance.Part of our campaign now is to see if these companies are prepared to expand on what they are already doing. With all this emphasis on generating extra funds, will there still be a place at Cambridge for subjects that are not ‘profitable’? We at Cambridge pursue excellence in all fields of human inquiry. I don’t see the university as a collection of cost centres and profit centres. It is a whole. Just because something is not science and technology doesn’t mean that it has to go without funding. In time, one could hope that we can build up endowments for those subjects that create less revenue themselves, so we will need to have a redistribution system. And the scientists won’t mind, because at the end of the day everybody values being part of a larger and more complex university. And frankly, if they don’t, then they should not be here.The people who become part of this community are selecting excellence, but they are also selecting excellence with a great breadth to it. You say that you hope that more companies and alumni will invest in Cambridge, but what about the current students: should they be paying top-up fees? When I arrived here just over a year ago,I ran the gauntlet of the British media.They said, ‘You come from these gouging rich American universities that impoverish students by letting them pay all that money; are you in favour of top-up fees?’ To which my entirely honest response was this: first we will design a needs-based bursary system here, and when we’ve done that then I will be in favour of higher variable fees. That won’t scare away students from less affluent backgrounds? We did a survey on that and our data suggest that financial concerns are not the most important issue students consider when they are deciding whether or not to apply. They are more concerned about whether they’ll be up to the high academic standard here. We as a university are looking for talented students from across the spectrum. We don’t yet recruit as many students as we should from the very poorest backgrounds, but that’s more an applications problem than an admissions problem; it’s about getting those students to apply.A third of our new undergraduates this year were visited at their schools by students and staff of Cambridge, which suggests to me that if we can reach these people, then we can encourage them to apply. cambridge university

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Science Park outside Cambridge. Since the ‘Cambridge Phenomenon’ started in the ’s this area has grown at an astonishing rate

Research at Europe’s Best University

Looking for the Golden Intersection At the University of Cambridge,‘pure’science is very popular,although it goes happily hand in hand with ‘useful’ research. The past few years have seen excellent results for both commercial and social applications.‘It’s good to talk across the divide.’ Dr David Good is a psychology lecturer at King’s College, at the heart of the University of Cambridge.Walking across the green to his offices, with the ethereal sound of the College’s famous choir practising for its daily Evensong floating on the air amid the ancient monumental buildings, the call of bygone centuries is strong. Until Dr Good begins explaining his field of research, that is, which is very twentieth century. He is presently investigating ways in which technology intervenes in human communication, for example with the use of video conferencing and net meetings.‘I am doing this work together with a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in a project called Crucible, which is a network rather than an institute. Our approach has been to establish, facilitate and maintain collaboration between academics whose expertise can contribute to the goal of interdisciplinary design research.We are looking at how we can implement knowledge from the humanities in technology design; for example, we will give a piece of computer equipment to a psychologist and ask what 20

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colour the screen should be, where the buttons should be placed. It’s good to talk across the divide about these things.’ Dr Good is pleased that there has been interest in his work from commercial industry, but he firmly believes that science should remain the driving force behind it. ‘Universities and industries both have a set of interests, and if you can find a place where they intersect then everybody benefits.That’s what I call the Golden Intersection.’ To help scientists cross this hazardous intersection, the university has created Cambridge Enterprise. David Secher is at the head of this rapidly expanding organization. ‘Cambridge Enterprise exists to help our inventors, innovators and entrepreneurs make their ideas and concepts more commercially successful: to the benefit of society, the UK economy, the investors themselves and the university as a whole.’ In March  Research Services was added to Cambridge Enterprise; this department provides guidance for scientists in making their work commercially viable, from the moment a research proposal is written, up to the patent application process. Cambridge Enterprise has grown quickly since then. ‘When I arrived here three years ago,’ says Secher, ‘there were thirty employees, but we have since added a lot of people to the technology transfer area.Now there are about .That is a quick spike,especially in the light of how things used to be done at Cambridge. An industrial liaison office was set up in ; it gave advice, but there were only three people working there and there was very little money available.The university didn’t really want to have anything to do with it. In the end the office wasn’t able to give young researchers what they needed or what the government wanted, which was to raise more money from sources other than the traditional ones.’ Secher explains what happens when a scientist visits his department. ‘If you have something you think could be interesting, then you come along here for an invention dis-closure and a talk with a technology transfer executive.These are people with backgrounds in both business and technology, whose task it is to understand exactly what the invention is and whether it needs to be protected by a patent. Paperwork has to be kept to a minimum and the process must be completed quickly; at the moment we do about  of these disclosures a year.Then we start thinking about marketing and so on and determine whether it would be desirable to set up a spin out company. All of this is done in a way that the scientist feels comfortable with: some want to be involved in every single step and others prefer to leave everything up to us. It’s very different from person to person.’ Cambridge Enterprise is beginning to see the results of its work.‘Licensing revenue continues to rise; five years ago it was less than one million pounds, but in  it was two million.This will be an increasingly important contribution to our present total research income of  million pounds.’ One department that has already been working towards generating more funds for quite some time is Chemistry. Professor Jeremy Sanders, head of the department, explains. ‘Over the last few years we’ve seen a big increase in support for our research efforts, especially in grants from the government and national councils.The government cambridge university

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has invested a lot of capital in upgrading our buildings and equipment, but to be fair, that was making up for twenty years of neglect and starvation.So while we have seen an improvement on the infrastructure side, unfortunately no extra funds have been made available to maintain these high-service buildings. That is a new structural problem, particularly here in Cambridge, since we’ve been so successful in raising money to modernize our buildings.’ Research could also use more money, says Professor Sanders. ‘What can we do to breach the gap between what comes in from the public sector for teaching and research, and what we really need? We get thirteen million pounds a year in grants, mostly from the UK government and the EU,but we need more.Fortunately,we do have substantial relationships with industry, and have had for a long time. Unilever, for instance, put in thirteen million pounds in , of which six million was used to build an information technology centre.They put in the capital for the building and a professorship, two lecturers and a secretary. In  they renewed that agreement and gave us a further three million pounds; this will last until . Another example: the pharmaceutical company Glaxo Smith Kline has an imbedded laboratory where Glaxo employees work and also collaborate with members of the department.That’s beneficial for them, since that way they can do their research in an academic environment.’ Professor Sanders emphasizes that science is the most important thing, even in a commercial research setting. ‘The people working here are doing fundamental research, which is of high academic quality. All the science here is publishable. What we’ve never done, is accept any contract research. Fortunately, on the donations side we’ve been able to raise . million pounds from companies and charities.’ The question now, of course, is where the humanities stand in all this. Is there still room for them at Cambridge University? One person who believes so is Professor Martin Daunton, historian and Chair of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences as well as Master of Trinity Hall. Indeed, his field of research, history, is doing just fine.‘Lately, there is more money available for history than ever before, in the form of government grants.This does change the way we work: nowadays you never work as a single scholar on a book, but in a team on a joint project. Besides this, my colleagues are presently profiting from the recent popularity of history. Publishers such as Penguin are prepared to pay substantial advances for books before they are written. These books are meant for a broad popular readership, but are nonetheless based on serious academic research.We no longer have to produce minutely specific monographs which are fated to be read by only five specialized colleagues across the globe. One of my colleagues recently had a book published by Penguin; it was about Winston Churchill and was received favourably by both specialist reviewers and the popular daily papers. Things like this put us at the centre of an overlap of science, culture and society. And that is just great, isn’t it?’

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Students protest, successfully, against the closure of the Architecture Department

Cambridge Students Score on the Barricades but Not on the Playing Fields

Fighting for Your University As Christmas approaches, students in Cambridge prepare for a week of festivities. But there will also be plenty of exertion as they engage arch-rival Oxford on the rugby pitch and struggle to save the university’s Department of Architecture. A number of things make the Eagle pub in Cambridge a special place. Owned by Corpus Christi College, it was here that James Watson and Francis Crick rather informally announced to the world that they had decoded the double helix structure of DNA. A plaque on the door marks this seminal moment in the history of science. Walking through the pub to the back of the Eagle is like walking through six decades of history. During the Second World War the far section of the bar was a favourite watering hole for English and American airmen. Even today their names are still legible, burned into the ceiling with candles and lighters. The war theme is enhanced by the shields of various squadrons and the old photographs which decorate the pub. Now, though, the pub is not peopled by pilots but by another type of warrior altogether. Gathered around a table in the corner of the bar are a number of young men, freshly scrubbed and sporting loose neckties and staring dejectedly into their pints. cambridge university

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Their talk is peppered with expletives.These are the men of Cambridge’s rugby Under s and they have just faced the worst possible humiliation: defeat by Oxford’s Under s. Coach James Hill urges caution in approaching. ‘I don’t think it would be a good idea to try to talk to them just now.They’re in a truly foul mood. We’ve just got off the bus after a journey of two hours and no one said a word the entire time.’ He elaborates: ‘You can lose every single match of a season,but if you win against Oxford then the season was a success. And vice versa: you can win everything else, but if you lose the Varsity Match then your season was crap. The Oxford – Cambridge matches are on an entirely different plane than the rest.’ One of the team is willing to speak: first-year natural sciences student James Waters, a student at Clare College. ‘Oxford is lame. If you want to see a truly excellent match, come tomorrow when Cambridge’s second team plays Oxford’s.’ In spite of today’s loss Waters is still happy to be at Cambridge.‘Science here is better than at Oxford.The course I’m on now is very good.The first term is nearly finished and I’ve been working quite hard – I think I’ve had about  hours of lectures every week. Combining this kind of study programme with sports means you have to have good time management skills. I hope I’ll manage.’ Waters and his team-mates are not the only sportspeople in the Eagle on this evening. A few tables away Bernd Heidicker is enjoying his pint. He was a member of the German Olympic team at the Athens games and has come to Cambridge to take part in the  edition of the famous Oxford – Cambridge Boat Race. This race, which has been taking place annually for over a  years, will be held on the Thames at the end of March and the Cambridge squad will be defending their title.‘I hope I make the Blue Boat [the first boat – Ed]’, says Heidicker. ‘It would be fantastic to be able to take part in that race.’ He has no regrets about leaving Germany for England.‘Student life here is much more fun. In Germany a lot of people live at home with their parents, but here students all live together and you meet people much quicker. I have been here about two weeks now and I’ve already met loads of people I can go out for a drink with.’ This first week of December sees the streets crowded with couples in formal dress as all the Colleges hold their Christmas balls before students leave at the end of term. Selwyn College is no exception, and staff are busy laying the wooden planks which will protect the floor of the hall.The traditional Snowball takes place in a few days and students are already lining up to buy tickets. The huge dining hall is also looking festive and for the last three days of the term will fill up with students and lecturers singing carols and pulling Christmas crackers.James Cameron,a third year history student,explains the enthusiasm for these closing days of the year. ‘We have had to work incredibly hard over the past months. I handed in my last assignment just yesterday, and now it’s time to celebrate.’ There are others on the streets as well though, besides the well-dressed partygoers. A day earlier King’s Parade, Cambridge’s main street, was the setting for a noisy demonstration complete with banners and bullhorns. The university had proposed 24

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closing the Department of Architecture because of the poor quality of its research; the department’s students opposed the plan and took the opportunity to vent their dismay. Led by the Cambridge University Students’ Union (CUSU) they marched to the grass in front of the Senate House. With over a thousand people taking part this was the biggest demonstration in Cambridge since the ’s and the BBC was there to record the moment.Porters in black capes and tall hats took up positions before the doors of all of the important buildings, ready to prevent any attempts to enter. CUSU president Wes Streeting was the key speaker at the demonstration and a day later, in his office, he explains why he disagrees with the proposal to close the Department of Architecture.‘I do not believe that we’ve heard the real reason this decision was taken. This department’s research may not be up to the standard of that of other departments here, but it is certainly not unsound. I think this is just another cost-cutting measure: get rid of expensive programmes. But architecture is something that belongs here at Cambridge. What will be next, Mediaeval Literature? We are prepared to fight for a complete university where there is room for all sorts of programmes.’ By January it is clear that the Union’s efforts have not been in vain.The university’s highest administrative body, the General Board, has decided that the Department of Architecture should be retained; furthermore, a new professorship has been created and a new lecturer appointed. The CUSU website proclaims victory: ‘The University has announced that it is to keep the Architecture Department open! The news follows a high profile campaign last term led by CUSU, attracting the support of thousands of students, alumni, academics, staff and architects across the globe.’ Cambridge students’ will to win is not always enough, however, as is demonstrated at the next Oxford – Cambridge rugby match. James Waters and his team-mates, joined by two hundred supporters,do their best to scream encouragement to their team and insults to their opponents, but to no avail. It is Oxford who is popping champagne corks as the sun sets and the lamps come on around the pitch. The fifteen Cambridge players form a guard of honour for the winners, but their own sporting year has been ruined.

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edinburgh

University of Edinburgh by Hester van Santen

University of Edinburgh in facts and figures: Founded in 1583 23,111 students 7,118 staff Budget D 540 million

‘Now and again some orator would be hoisted up on the shoulders of his fellows, when an oscillation of the crowd would remove his supporters and down he would come, only to be succeeded by another at some other part of the assembly.Those who were lucky enough to be in the balconies above hurled down missiles on the crowd beneath – peas, eggs, potatoes, and bags of flour or of sulphur; while those below, wherever they found room to swing an arm, returned the fusillade with interest.’ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,who studied medicine at Edinburgh University,was clearly familiar with the tumult that accompanied the election of new rectors there. The above passage is taken from his  novel The Firm of Girdlestone. At the time it was

The University of Edinburgh attracts students not only for its research. ‘Travellers who have searched the whole world round have found no fairer view’, wrote Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

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being written, the University of Edinburgh, by then more than three hundred years old, was striving to become a modern institution for research and education. At the time that the creator of Sherlock Holmes was writing his book, Principal Sir Alexander Grant was doing his best to give the university allure. Besides raising money for the medical faculty and supervising the organization of a student movement, he also cultivated academic traditions along the lines of those at Oxford and Cambridge. The ornate new ceremonial hall was adorned with an organ and murals and became the backdrop for yearly commencement speeches; ‘traditional’ elections were set up to choose rectors. Still, it was only two hundred years ago that the academy in Edinburgh exchanged its old name,Tounis College (city college), for the moniker ‘university’. Since its foundation in  the school had largely been renowned as a school where boys from the wealthier families could be educated for law or the clergy. Students in search of a more comprehensive education found their way to the Dutch universities of Utrecht and Leiden. In fact, the Edinburgh University archive’s collection includes a letter from one of these early international students in which he describes his amazement about the skaters on the Rapenburg canal in Leiden. Major changes began during the Enlightenment, still a full hundred years before Alexander Grant began work on his ceremonial hall. The driving force behind these early changes was Principal William Robertson, who had earlier defended university philosopher David Hume when charges of heresy were brought against him. It was Robertson who changed the academy’s name to ‘university’, reformed its curriculum and began the construction in classical style of what even today is still the main building. Finally, the sons of the wealthy could remain in Scotland, instead of travelling to Europe for their education. Indeed: students began to flock to Scotland from as far away as the Middle East. With all of these changes the University of Edinburgh became progressively less Scottish, and even today it continues to do so. In  seven of every ten undergraduates hailed from Scotland; by  that number was down to four. Students come from the rest of Great Britain – down south, as the Scots refer to it – but now also stream in from all over Europe and beyond.They are attracted not only by the university but also by the city itself. ‘Travellers who have searched the whole world round have found no fairer view,’ wrote Conan Doyle of the panorama of grey houses set into the rocky hills surrounding the ancient royal castle. Two centuries later the shift from Scottish to British to international is for some still a bone of contention. Locals say the university has become anglicised, and this is far from a compliment. Scottish students and their English counterparts, who are largely from more well-off backgrounds, are poles apart.The same goes for the university’s international aspirations and its relationship with the national government, although Scotland’s higher education policy is partly separate from that of the rest of Great Britain. This is the background against which the University of Edinburgh is hoping to reinuniversity of edinburgh

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force its top standing. For Principal Timothy O’Shea, Europe is no longer the frame of reference.The university is setting its sights further afield as broad international cooperation becomes ever more essential.This is the way to attract lucrative students as well as to take up a solid position in the line of available subsidies, both increasingly important now that government financing is decreasing and competition for funds becoming more intense. But if austerity is becoming more the trend in Edinburgh, students hardly seem to notice. The days when potatoes rained down on the heads of the academics may be over, but the students still flood in.The reason: Edinburgh is as exciting as London, but it is a much gentler place to be.

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Principal Timothy O’Shea Is Looking for More Competitive Research Contracts

‘We Are Not a European University.’ ‘We are so much stronger than the other universities in Scotland that competition is not an issue’

In real terms government funding for Edinburgh University will increase by up to fifteen percent over the coming three to four years.Nonetheless,the university will keep looking for funds of their own, says Principal Timothy O’Shea. The most recent Annual Review of the University of Edinburgh stated that internationalization is a strategic goal for the university.You mention the link with Stanford University as a prime example. Does that mean that the US is your major partner in research? It depends on the topic. We are very strong in computer science and in that area we cooperate with Stanford to a large degree. But we have all sorts of partners. For instance, we work with some French universities in joint PhD programmes and we have contacts with Nanjing University in China. If there is an area we want to cover, we ask ourselves: where is the expertise? So we have no predisposition towards Anglophone partnerships. Why did Edinburgh decide to join LERU? I think because we feel we need to have more partners in Europe.Remarkably enough, we currently have more partners outside of Europe, for instance in Dubai and the US. Why is that? It seems so obvious to have partners in continental Europe. Well, that does not really correspond with the British view of the world. Historically, we have always had very strong ties with the Commonwealth countries. We do not really see Edinburgh as a European university; for us it is an international university, based in Scotland,which is in the UK,which is in Europe.But we do see ourselves as international, and very strongly connected to the Commonwealth. university of edinburgh

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Can you give an example of things that you are working on within LERU,or plan to work on in future? I think we should cooperate in areas where there are strong European interests.The Bologna treaty, for instance, is important, but so are discussions on a European Research Council which would cover funding of high-level research. And another area in which there is quite a bit of European involvement is Framework Six, the EU framework for research funding. So we are already involved with a number of EU partners. Under Framework Six, we have submitted  applications. Of those,  have been granted, which, in financial terms, is a great success. Are these European projects carried out with LERU partners? Some are. But because we are involved in various networks, some partnerships are easier to form than others. Has research funding become a priority in recent years? Yes, it is very important for us because about one-third of our income is obtained from competitive research contracts. Is direct government financing decreasing? As a proportion of the total budget it is decreasing,but in absolute terms the Scottish government is actually giving us more money. It depends how you look at it, but in real terms government funding will increase by up to fifteen percent over the coming three to four years. However, we must continue to raise as much money as we can from other sources if we hope to realize our main aim, which is growth. Does this cover all areas of research, or is the university focusing on certain areas of high-level research? We are dedicated to being a comprehensive university, like Cambridge or Harvard. We have the broadest range of subjects in the UK after Cambridge. And we think that it is important to conduct research in many fields. There is a strong concentration of some fields of research: informatics,medicine,genetics.But that does not mean that we are biased towards the sciences to the detriment of the humanities;both the humanities and the social sciences are well represented here. Is it really feasible to aim for the highest level in both research and education? How do you manage this? That’s simple. Some areas of research are more lucrative than others.The money we earn can be divided into two streams: that earned in the competitive arena, which goes back to the researchers who generated it, and funds which we distribute on a more strategic basis.Additionally,national government provides funding for educational infrastructure.

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Is it important for the University of Edinburgh to compete with other universities in Scotland? No. We are so much stronger than the other universities in Scotland that competition is not an issue. We certainly compete with Oxford and Cambridge and with University College London. But can you? Edinburgh’s standings in the ratings are good,but at the global level Oxford and Cambridge do better. I think we have particular strengths. We are extremely strong in computer science, medicine and the life sciences. I do believe that we are a serious competitor. Yes,but research funding for Oxford and Cambridge is much higher than for other universities. It is higher.There is a discussion going on now in Scotland on how we can do better. The Scottish government has been spending money to attract research, and this includes funding in areas of excellence. I would like to see this expanded, but still Scotland is certainly responsive to differential funding. What would Edinburgh have to do to become a top university like Harvard or Yale within twenty or perhaps fifty years? There are three key things.The most important is to attract outstanding people.The second is to have internal structures which make interdisciplinary collaboration easy and profitable – to be able to work in subjects which do not yet have names. And the third is infrastructure.Now,infrastructure is helpful,good labs are helpful,but these are less important than the first two things I mentioned. You can have as much money as you like, but still have people boxed in in certain areas. For example, the University of London does not have beautiful labs, but it does produce excellent work. It’s basically about very bright people, people with vision. And this is exactly what makes it possible for us to be successful.The key question is: how do you attract really good researchers and really good research students? The fact that we have such a rich history works to our advantage.If I am talking to someone who would like to become a professor in philosophy, I say: ‘Wouldn’t you like to follow in the footsteps of David Hume?’ If someone is thinking of a position in chemistry, we mention alumnus Joseph Black, who discovered carbon dioxide. So a historic tradition is definitely attractive. But chemistry has changed since Joseph Black. I think that nowadays chemists would be likely to say: ‘Fine, Joseph Black, but where is the well-equipped NMR lab?’ Money might be important for that. Money helps, money helps. And yet there are private universities in the US that are extremely rich but not successful. Money without talent means zero success. Talent with limited money means success may be difficult to achieve, but it is nevertheless much more likely. university of edinburgh

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Science departments like informatics are gaining massive amounts of funding – but will this help the linguists?

Edinburgh’s Researchers Are Interested in Partnerships

Spreading Science Around the Globe Companies in the chemical industry have been known to move to Scotland to be closer to the Edinburgh School of Informatics, a fact that is acknowledged with respect within the university.The university is equally eager to build and maintain contacts in the commercial industry. Profitable commercial collaboration is an indirect source of funding for fundamental research, its board members say. A soothing female voice wafts through Professor Michael Fourman’s office, explaining the best possible route to Geneva.‘There is a direct flight arriving at : a.m.; it costs £ . The cheapest flight arrives at : p.m. but requires you to make a connection at Paris Charles de Gaulle,’ she warns. The reason that this article begins with the voice of a travel agent is that, in reality, she does not exist. A computer has retrieved the necessary flight information from a database and converted it to fluent and friendly sounding English; even the intonation is perfect.This project is one example of research presently being carried out at the Edinburgh School of Informatics, headed by Professor Fourman. His department is the largest informatics faculty in Great Britain and the talk of the 32

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town in Edinburgh; visitation committees love it and both scientists and board members are quick to name it as an example of successful research, fund raising and commercialisation. Fourman is convinced of the importance of his department for Edinburgh. ‘Informatics changes the way things are done in all areas of research, so it is of central importance to the university as well.’ The School of Informatics attracts commercial investment as well as foreign students who pay high tuition fees,both of which are of particular interest to the University of Edinburgh. The university itself maintains a large department dealing with fundraising and commercial collaboration and is especially proud of its connections in East Asia and the US. League tables confirm its success: according to the reputable Times University Guide for , it is thirteenth in the UK. In the world university guide published by Jiao Tong University it is listed at number . Professor Michael Fourman explains what integrated research means for information technologists: ‘We examine computing systems – and by that we don’t mean only computers,but also our brains,for instance,or the ways in which genes process and preserve information.’ The computer scientists have their own animal testing laboratory as well as facilities for speech research and an echo-free chamber.Three years from now the School will move into a brand-new building which will house all of the research groups in one location. Geologist Professor Geoffrey Boulton is Vice-Principal; he is familiar with Professor Fourman’s department.‘His research has convinced a number of big chemical companies to set up R&D departments in Scotland,’he says.Professor Boulton has his own clear ideas on fund raising, even though his department receives much of its funding from the government. Professor Boulton is head of the School of GeoSciences, formed when all of Edinburgh’s earth sciences departments joined forces in . The School conducts multidisciplinary research in areas such as climate change and alternative energy sources,but fundamental research is also being done, for example, on the composition of the earth. Professor Boulton gives a tour of the facilities. ‘These are blast-proof doors – we need them because we’re subjecting rocks to temperatures comparable to those two hundred kilometres underground.’ The British government is eager to put more money into scientific research; Scotland, which has had its own parliament since , would like to contribute to its own regional development by stimulating investment in a knowledge-based economy. However,Vice-Principal Boulton is not willing to count on either:‘We want to avoid a situation in which politicians are able to tell us how to do things here.’ His solution would be a larger range of competitive research funding opportunities to be awarded among integrative scientific consortiums. This could mean that a field such as Sanskrit, for example, might have a hard time getting money, but this could be remedied by building up strategic funding reserves. ‘So we could say: “Sanskrit is drying up, it needs cash,” and funding could be increased. And we could also use the money for new areas of research, for following our hunches. Sometimes you need to university of edinburgh

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have to have something tucked away so you can say “Go do something silly”.’ To stay one step ahead of competitive funding, the university set up its own research agency in . Edinburgh Research and Innovation, ERI, houses its fifty-strong staff in a charming townhouse in the city centre. In the first years of the millennium, ERI produced a new spin-off company every month.With scouts in every sector of the university,it is able to follow every funding request made by Edinburgh’s academics,which has resulted in three thousand grants every year. When asked how his agency is responsible for the spread of new technologies throughout Europe, board member Derek Waddell’s answer is representative of the university as a whole.‘We spread them over the entire globe! We have contacts in Hong Kong – both of us are busy disseminating each other’s work – and we also approach industrial outlets there.’ Waddell emphasizes the scope of ERI’s work: ‘All the departments of the university have worked with us at one time or another,’ he boasts. On the complete opposite end of the spectrum from the computer scientists are the linguists, a group of researchers for whom commercialization is unimportant to say the least. Dr. Wilson McLeod, one of the university’s researchers of Gaelic, one of the Celtic languages. The university has been home to a chair in Gaelic since . ‘Naturally our work has no commercial value whatsoever,’ he points out. The department’s manpower is equal to eight full-time positions, which means that he and his colleagues deal with every aspect of the language – literature, history, policy – while at the same time competing for funding with some of the biggest linguistics departments in the UK. Moreover, most of the students are from within the region. The fact that Gaelic has recently been made an official language of Scotland has provided McLeod with plenty of scope for research. Still he feels that there is too little interest from both the government and the university.‘Gaelic is a minority language in Scotland and Scotland is a minority in the UK. For the people in London who are in charge of handing out research grants, it’s a marginal and uncommon field of study.’ Within the university it is the biggest earners of research funds who determine policy, according to Dr.McLeod:‘Much of it is done for the benefit of the scientists.’In his department, he says, there is little evidence of the division of riches described by Principal O’Shea and Vice-Principal Boulton. Even so he is involved in projects that involve UK and EU cooperation, since in order to qualify for European funding, projects must involve at least one other member state. He hopes to find partners for his Scots and Gaelic projects, although for practical reasons it does not seem feasible. ‘If the project is supposed to improve the Gaelic curriculum, then there really is no validity in international comparative research. We can provide abstract analyses on an academic level, but that is not of much use to a local Scottish politician trying to influence language policy.’ McLeod compares the fixation on the hard sciences to an ordinary person trying to run as fast as an Olympic sprinter. ‘It just is not realistic. If people think we’re lame because we don’t attract as much funding, then they just aren’t looking at it the right way; that isn’t the way the world works.’ 34

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But the linguists will not be able to escape the need for internationalization and fundraising. Derek Waddell of the commercialisation agency ERI has ideas about this. ‘Our advice to the School of Celtic and Scottish Studies would be to form partnerships on a European level, because the EU is becoming increasingly important. The EU is full of minority languages – that in itself is an interesting research proposition.’

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Why Students Come to Edinburgh

The Best University Town in Great Britain

Edinburgh features lots of popular hang-outs for students, from watering holes to luxurious clubs for the wealthy

Students at the University of Edinburgh know why they chose to come to the UK’s far north:the city is simply crammed with pubs, clubs and student societies. With well over hundred pubs in the city, Edinburgh is a city for nightlife. In the evenings the pubs set out chalkboards with offers to tempt revellers inside.‘Every night till  p.m. double vodka & Red Bull, £ ’, reads one of them. Happy hour sees the grey streets filling with groups of young women in what seems to be the standard party uniform: pleated hip-length skirt, blouse, no jacket. Edinburgh may be among the best of British universities, but students are unanimous: Edinburgh is a place where you come to have a good time. Geology student Tim Hull-Bailey sits drinking a pint in the student union Teviot. ‘The best thing about studying here is the chance to live in Edinburgh,’he says.He is not alone.Friendly people, a city that is small but has nightlife to compare with London, pretty girls – this seems to be the general consensus. Although one would have to agree that the weather leaves something to be desired. Things are well organized for students here.The university provides the Edinburgh University Students’Association (EUSA) with £ . million per year with which to care for students’ needs; all students are members at no cost. EUSA provides emergency loans and advice on housing and work and is a co-participator in university policymaking. It also runs four activity centres, including Teviot, as well as nearly two hundred student clubs including the Aberdeen FC Supporters Club, the Juggling Society and the Zimbabwe Society. 36

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Notwithstanding the quality of the University’s education and research, it would seem that it is the city’s party atmosphere that is most attractive to students.As secondyear business student Alexander Barratt says over a pint in the student union Potterow, ‘I came here by accident. I didn’t do any research – I just went to the university all of my friends were going to.’ He adds,‘Student life here is magnificent. It’s safe, the clubs are nice and clean and it is not expensive.’ However, not everyone agrees with Alexander on this last point. ‘I can’t go to societies or to a bar like many Edinburgh students do,’ says Tim Hull-Bailey. A shortage of funds means he has to work more than twenty hours a week in a café. He confirms the popular media image of Edinburgh University as an elite institution. ‘It seems that many students are funded by their parents. They come from public schools, live in expensive rooms and they don’t give a shit about getting a degree.’ Working class, upper middle class – whatever the implications, it is clear that social status is important here. Students describe themselves in terms of what kind of school they attended, whether they hail from Scotland, England or Northern Ireland, from the country or the city.The measuring stick for class-conscious students is the ‘yah’, the drawling syllable that punctuates their various English accents as they stand chatting. The more well-off students are therefore called ‘Yahs’in Edinburgh.Some of these students were educated at prestigious schools down south but have come to Scotland because there was no place for them at Oxbridge. Steve Cockburn is the chairman of EUSA and he has an insider’s view of the situation. ‘Edinburgh has quite a unique social mix in terms of where students come from. It’s quite similar to Oxford, to Cambridge. Less than half of the students in Edinburgh are Scottish. I can imagine that some Scottish students feel overwhelmed by this, or by some of the wealth that comes with it.’The difference is clearly visible in the pubs: the student unions,with their cheap beer and arcade games,are a world away from the ritzy clubs where young ladies gather to drink Moët et Chandon with orange juice. The university feels it is important to make studying in Edinburgh more attractive for local students. Its Principal, Professor Timothy O’Shea, does his best to avoid presenting an elitist impression to the media. ‘If I’m talking in front of cameras, I always take them out into the street.’ One location he would be less eager to have shown on television is the stately Playfair Library with its ornate ceilings and long rows of busts. ‘It’s important that a poor Scottish student from a working class background does not think to himself: I couldn’t study at the University of Edinburgh.’ The reader could be forgiven for imagining that the typical Edinburgh student arrives at the university with a full set of golf clubs.It is certainly not the case.Fourth-year history student Anna Woltz, herself from the Dutch City Leiden, spent time in Edinburgh this autumn on an exchange programme. ‘St Andrews was more traditional – you could certainly tell by the way the students there were dressed. Here things are more diverse.’ Business student Ben Ashworth, who went to a public school in England, even feels that he is in the minority. ‘Students are divided, and that is quite a big thing. People university of edinburgh

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don’t really give you a chance. During Freshers’ Week everyone gets on together, and the next week they all split up. I don’t like it, but I don’t really care. It’s fine with me if they have that attitude.’ Still, he admits that there are real differences. ‘Only one of my good friends didn’t attend public school. It’s a question of similar interests, little things like politics, country sports, hunting.’ Us versus them: according to EUSA chairman Steve Cockburn this is at the root of relations between Edinburgh’s students. ‘The reality is that there are some very posh people here, but there are a lot of normal people as well.’ Claire McCarthy, a third-year theology student, agrees.There are people with lots of money, people with pretensions, she says. But she is clear on what she likes most about the university. ‘You can choose your own lifestyle; you can choose your own curriculum. You have a lot of freedom to choose.’ In Edinburgh, if you don’t like hunting, you can always become a member of the paintball club.

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geneva

Université de Genève by Christiaan Weijts

Université de Genève in facts and figures: Founded in 1559 14,620 students 5,147 staff Budget D 428 million

Anyone who has entered Geneva from the direction of the train station will have experienced it: the sudden shock of wide open space after crossing the Mont Blanc Bridge; where the Rhône meets the lake it looks as if a huge blue blanket has been spread out among the mountains. On the other side of the bridge the Jet d’Eau shoots a pillar of water one  into the air.The wind carries the foam through the little harbour towards the city, and the tall facades of multinational corporations, banks and hotels tower along the quays. This is Geneva,home of Rolexes,diplomats and Swiss banks.But a walk up the road towards the old town centre and the cathedral of Saint Pierre reveals a city of parks, squares, monuments and historic buildings. It is the city of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, but even more so the city of Calvin. In the municipal park one can stand eye-to-eye with him in the giant monument de la Réformation, the tribute to the man who turned sixteenth-century Geneva into the Protestants’ own Rome. His statue gazes out over the imposing Uni Bastion, whose classical architecture houses the university library and

The city of Geneva by night, with the Jet d’Eau lightened in the lake

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the literature faculties. And it does so with good reason. It was Calvin who founded the Académie de Genève in .Initially,theology was the main area of study; law was added later. Paradoxically, the present-day university concentrates almost exclusively on the sciences, with an emphasis on molecular biology, astrophysics and the life sciences.To understand how this shift occurred, we must look back to the period of the Enlightenment when the university became a magnet for leading natural scientists such as physicist Jean Jalabert (-), a pioneer in research into electricity, astronomer Jacques-André Mallet (-) and physicist Horace-Bénédict de Saussure, who invented the hygrometer. Only in , when connections with the Church were broken and the medical faculty was founded, was the Académie conferred the status of university. Ever since, it has continued to embrace new disciplines and to attract ever more staff and students from abroad. The university enjoys close collaboration with institutes including the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, a world-renowned centre for the study of proteins, and the Geneva-based CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) where scientists from five hundred different universities conduct particle physics research and where the World Wide Web came into being. The humanities have experienced a concurrent process of development. Geneva’s rich tradition of philosophy and literature reached its apex in the twentieth century with the École de Genève de la critique littéraire,whose members included Jean Starobinski, the writer and doctor who gained renown with his studies on melancholy, and writer and literary scientist Jean Rousset. The university has long since outgrown the old Bastion; these days its buildings, libraries, laboratories and lecture halls are spread over the entire city. ‘If you’ve seen the university, you’ve seen Geneva,’ quips rector André Hurst. And this seems to be true. The science buildings dot the banks of the River Arve, their hypermodern architectural forms graced with names such as Sciences II and Uni III. Law is on the other side of town; theology and literature in the historic centre. In yet another neighbourhood is the towering shape of Uni Mail, Switzerland’s largest university building, built in  to house the social sciences; its , square metres serve over  students. Light filters through the glass roof and down six storeys to illuminate the central hall with its wings on either side. According to the building’s architects, its shape symbolises the university’s place within the city: one central binding element with an extensive web of disciplines surrounding it. In each of these faculty neighbourhoods there is a buzz of activity. Afternoons and evenings see cafés and restaurants filling with business people eating side by side with students; at night there are discos in popular student neighbourhoods such as Carouge, while on the other bank of the Rhône in Les Pâquis the nightclubs and casinos open their doors. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, reflecting on the joys of good living, could have been describing the city of his birth: ‘Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook and a good digestion.’ 40

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Rector André Hurst on Internationalization and Commercialisation

Reading the Book of the World

‘Our success over the centuries has always been down to a simple formula: read the work of God just as you read nature’

Geneva is the most cosmopolitan city in Switzerland’s heterogeneous international community.The university, in its turn, is a glorious melting pot. Rector André Hurst expects even closer collaboration with other universities in the future. Rector André Hurst obtained his doctorate in Ancient Greek in Geneva,continued his studies in Rome, worked for a time at the University of Munich and has now returned to the city that feels most like home: Geneva. Although the rector’s offices are housed in the rather sterile modern architecture of the Uni Four building, in front of which long queues of first-year students are waiting to register, luxurious classical ambience permeates his rooms.There are paintings, bookcases, a comfortable sofa; guests are received with the elegant formality common in French-speaking countries. As an ancient scholar in Geneva, Rector Hurst enjoys a direct connection to antiquity. ‘The first professor of Ancient Greek was from Crete, so there is a direct line to Constantinople and the classical world.’ Speaking of traditions, to what extent does the legacy of John Calvin still play a part in university life? According to Calvin, one should read two books: the book of God, which is the Bible, and the book of the world.That is the reason that the natural sciences have been so important here since the university was founded. Our success over the centuries has always been down to a simple formula: read the work of God just as you read nature. Now of course we are far removed from our Protestant beginnings, but the principle is still the same. université de genève

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Calvin’s Académie was formed as an international organization; it was a network of people who helped scientists all over Europe to spread the good news of the Reformation. Even today, comprehensive research and internationalization are the dominating elements at this university. Where is the emphasis at the University of Geneva: education or research? Our strategy was set out in the ’s when Switzerland set up a single foundation for research funding.The decision that was made then was to create one system for the entire country, with one umbrella research institute, rather than leave it up to the various universities. We receive the largest amount of national funds plus money from the European Union and various other foundations.We also have two National Centres of Competence in Research (NCCR). Still, it is important that research and education remain connected, just as they are at all Swiss universities. This is why we joined LERU: the emphasis is on research, but there is a clear link to teaching. What are the biggest advantages of membership in LERU? First of all is that we become visible to the outside world.We are able to demonstrate that we can take part in a network, which is important both at home and abroad. Besides this we have the opportunity to take part in joint research projects, for instance on e-learning which we are looking at just now.Now that LERU has achieved a state of internal stability, we need to look outwards and begin to investigate all the possibilities for collaboration in various areas of research. Geneva belongs to a number of national and international networks. In the long term, of course, enormous developments in global communication will make every university just another location within a university of the world. Swiss students and university staff were rather disgruntled by the decision to introduce a bachelor/master structure starting next year. Will this new structure lead to many changes? At a meeting of Swiss university rectors, we decided to start with this in . In some places it has already been introduced. A certain degree of alignment with the rest of Europe is necessary for a university as incredibly international as we are.Nearly forty percent of our students come from abroad – that is more than anywhere else in the world. Of course this is partly because there are so many large international organizations here; their employees and diplomats, for example, send their children to university here. Still, this group represents only about half of all international students. One advantage of the Bologna Treaty is that it stipulates a system of credits instead of study years. You need one  credits for a bachelor’s degree, so if you get sixty per year it will take three years. Or you do ninety and then , either way. But the number of years is less important than the number of credits – you can do things at your own pace. Theoretically, a programme takes four years to complete, or perhaps four and a half, but statistically most people have needed five. The Bologna Treaty makes it pos42

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sible to finish on time.We do have a limit, but there are always students who manage to find a loophole, for instance by deregistering for a period. Will master’s degree programmes be run in English under the new system? We are considering that for parts of some programmes, starting at the bachelor level. We see the master’s degree as the end of the basic educational programme; after that, at the post-graduate level, we will certainly be offering programmes in English. Still, French remains our language of instruction, although we realize that in order to attract the best students, we will have to offer them something in English. We have developed a programme in which foreign students can learn French. If they succeed they receive an internationally recognized certificate, the Geneva Students Diploma. Within some faculties, the languages for example, instruction is in the target language. Traditionally, whoever teaches languages is a native speaker of that language: Italians teach Italian and so on. Until recently, we had a Japanese professor teaching Japanese, but he has now been succeeded by a Frenchman, which is highly unusual for us. In medicine and the sciences, education is always in English. This is at the instigation of the students themselves, since so many articles are in English and so much of the jargon as well. To what extent is there collaboration between universities and industry? We have our own company, Unitech. They deal with any discoveries that have a practical application. An example: we recently had someone who, for the first time in history, was able to transport photons by a process of teleportation. This is something that should have got him a Nobel Prize, since it is one of the ten discoveries that are going to change the course of human life, but unfortunately it is not up to me to deal them out. It has applications in quantum cryptography, the transport of coded information, and could guarantee complete security for things like credit card transactions and banking.This is the dream of every bank. What are your short-term plans? We want to launch a new faculty next year for environmental studies and sustainable development; this will also include aspects of tourism. In the future tourism will be the biggest area of human activity; since Switzerland has a long tradition of tourism this will fit nicely into the new faculty.We may be  years old,but we are still highly active.

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In Geneva new materials are developed that are expected to be useful for future generations

Looking for Cooperation Between Fundamental and Practical Research

‘The Situation Isn’t Hopeless’ Top-level research is of the greatest importance in Geneva. Half of the funding for it comes from the national research fund in Bern and the other half from the Canton of Geneva.‘The university costs society a lot of money, so it has to give something in return.’ Fundamental research is Geneva’s top priority,and it is a great success.The university is at the top of Switzerland’s league tables for molecular biology, astrophysics and social and economic sciences. It holds second place for mathematics, biology, biochemistry, neurosciences, chemistry and psychology/psychiatry and third for clinical medicine and microbiology. Scientists and their work turn up regularly in the news: photon teleportation, groundbreaking insights into questions such as why human beings have five fingers, the discovery of a molecule that plays a role in HIV-resistance. In the medical 44

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faculty, Professor Robin Offord and Dr. Oliver Hartly, in collaboration with American partners, have been working for seven years on this PSC-RANTES molecule. The publication of an interview in the October  edition of Science led to calls from newspapers and radio programmes from all over Europe. It was a breakthrough, as Offord explains: ‘For the first time in history, we were able to expose a group of apes to HIV without a single one of them becoming infected.’ Applied to the female genitals, a cream containing the molecule gives  hours of protection against HIV; researchers see enormous potential for its use in developing countries.‘In many societies in which AIDS is endemic there is resistance to the use of condoms, for instance because of cultural views on fertility or because men simply refuse to use them,’ says Offord. ‘This discovery could put women in control of their own sexual health.’ The medical faculty is housed in the Hôpital Cantonal, Switzerland’s largest hospital.There is a large degree of cooperation; fundamental and clinical research go hand in hand. So is research funding hard to come by? ‘It would occasionally seem that things are better abroad,’ answers Offord, who worked for many years in Oxford,‘but it is certainly not a hopeless situation here. We have demonstrated that we make good use of available funding. I think we will need to regroup our areas of research, for instance in the way that an institute for genomics has been developed in the Netherlands.’ A great deal of the university’s budget comes from taxes collected by the Canton of Geneva, one of the federation of states that make up Switzerland. Additional funding is provided by the Fonds National Suisse, a foundation set up to stimulate long-term research in areas of national strategic importance. Other than in the faculties themselves, research is also carried out in the National Centres of Competence in Research (NCCR), collaborative institutes within which the universities of Geneva, Lausanne, Basel, Bern and Neufchâtel are involved. At present there are forteen NCCR’s and the intention is to bring this up to a total of twenty. Competition to be the ‘Home Institution’ of an NCCR is tough; a number of universities are currently seeking to acquire the new one in the field of social sciences. Geneva is home to two NCCRs, one dealing with the field of genetics and the other with an area of electronics known as Materials with Novel Electronic Properties, or MaNEP. Professor Fischer Øystein is the director of MaNEP. ‘When I proposed setting up this institute in , there was already a network of researchers in Switzerland working on similar projects. Since the development of the transistor in the ’s, the range of silicon-based electronic equipment has grown enormously.These days, however, trying to make everything smaller and smaller, we have begun to run into limitations.’ So this group of researchers, now associated within MaNEP, is investigating other possibilities, for instance using superconductivity in combination with complex oxides. But as Professor Øystein points out, ‘Large-scale production and application are tricky; we still have a long way to go’. So does this mean that MaNEP is working on developing techniques and materials université de genève

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with practical applications? If so,to what extent is its research independent of the needs of industry? Professor Øystein explains: ‘We take a philosophical approach to this. We do believe that our work is important for the long term, but we cannot be sure how. By the time this work achieves any kind of general application, I will be long dead. We are advocates of fundamental research and developments and hope that they will eventually lead to something useful. Looking at history it is clear that you can never tell who stands to benefit from new technologies.No one could ever have known that superconductivity’s most important application would be in Magnetic Resonance Imaging – the MRI scans used in hospitals. The people who developed it had something completely different in mind. Our aim is to study new materials and make them available for use.’ The fact that Geneva is so renowned for its scientific research does not mean that the humanities are in any way neglected.‘We have over three thousand students,’ says Professor of French Michel Jeanneret.‘It is common in the humanities for people to complain that they are not as well provided for as the hard sciences. Complaining sometimes seems to be the national sport here,but if you ask me we have plenty of resources.’ Geneva’s literary tradition is buttressed by the École de Genève de la critique littéraire, which was wealthy and influential in the past. The literature faculties have strong ties with those at foreign universities, and its professors are native speakers of the language of their faculties. As is the case at many universities, there is little time free for research within the faculty of Arts. Professor Jeanneret is familiar with this problem. ‘I spend quite a lot of time helping the foreign students – sometimes I feel like a travel agent.I am working on an idea for a new book, but I don’t think I will have time to write it until I retire.’ Professor Jeanneret’s last book,Éros rebel.Littérature et dissidence à l’age classique,was published in . It deals with eroticism and pornography in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.‘The most familiar image of that period is that it was the time of Versailles, Louis XIV, the age of reason and political order. But there were dark aspects as well. I concentrated on a number of texts which were explicitly rebellious and which used pornography and eroticism to subvert moral convention – as a sort of counter culture. Sex was no more than a vehicle with which to introduce much more essential questions of morality and thinking.’ Besides their work for publication, members of the literature faculties regularly organize lectures and gatherings in the city.‘It is important for us to show people what we are working on. Half of our research funding comes from the Canton of Geneva. The university costs society a lot of money, so it has to give something in return.’

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Cité Universitaire has a capacity of  rooms, which are still very expensive

Students in Geneva Have NeitherTime Nor Money for an Active Social Life

All Work and No Play At  euros per month, studying in Geneva is expensive. And the programmes are challenging. Students have neither the time nor the money for wild pursuits. Those who have any free time immerse themselves in ordinary night life. ‘Swiss students are hard workers,’ says fifth-year chemistry student Fabrice Avaltroni, ,‘and they don’t have much time to do anything except study.’He is handing out folders to new first-year students in the central administration building in the Rue Général Dufour. ‘I have lectures and laboratory courses from eight in the morning until five in the afternoon, and then I spend evenings studying.’ Avaltroni is no exception.The students one meets in Geneva are diligent and businesslike and almost all of them claim they only go out on weekends.There are no study associations here, and the only organized group activities are those of the Section Sportive de l’Université (SSU), the sport club that all students become members of upon registration at the university. Its activities are mainly free or very reasonably priced and include skiing, trekking and canoeing holidays. Life in Geneva is expensive, so anything free is welcome. The university estimates a student’s basic cost of living at two thousand Swiss francs (h ,) per month. This includes housing, insurance, tuition fees (five hundred Swiss francs per month, about université de genève

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h ), food, telephone, entertainment and sundry expenses. Housing is a major expense, with rooms starting at  francs (h ) but often costing much more than that. Since  the problem of housing all of Geneva’s students has become critical; there is simply nothing more available. Notices are posted in all university buildings urging house-owners to let rooms to students.‘It doesn’t seem to help,’remarks Avaltroni,who has lived in Geneva all his life.‘Sometimes girls can find a room in exchange for looking after children.’ If working as an au-pair is not an option then students simply have to have the right contacts and keep their ears to the ground; what they need most is plenty of patience. With luck a student can get hold of a room in one of the few student housing complexes. Cité Universitaire, a block of flats south of the city centre, is in the middle of a well-heeled residential neighbourhood with retirement homes and medical clinics. Cité Universitaire has  rooms; a student may retain one for a maximum of eight semesters. Rent is  francs for a room of nine to fourteen square metres; kitchen, toilets and showers are shared by an entire floor, sixteen rooms. ‘Each floor has one larger room for the chef d’étage,’ explains Greek fourth-year law student Romanos Scamis, . ‘So every year there is fierce competition to become the head of the floor. Of course you have all kinds of responsibilities towards the concierge, but on the other hand you also have cable television and your own bathroom.’ Scamis’s floor is also home to David Hakkoum, , a fourth-year biology student from France.They sit in the cafeteria in the middle of the housing complex, Restaurant Cité Universitaire, which is a meeting place not only for students but also for the residents of the nearby retirement homes. ‘Probably because the coffee here is so cheap,’ speculates Scamis. Facilities here also include a supermarket, a venue for the local theatre company, a basement disco which is open on Fridays and Saturdays, a sports hall and seven tennis courts. David Hakkoum describes social life:‘Every year there is a journée multisports, a two-day event during which group activities such as football matches, snooker and tennis are organized. Afterwards there is a big barbecue. About thirty to fifty students typically take part.’ ‘It’s very international here,’ adds Scamis.‘There are about seventy different nationalities, and you do notice that they tend to form groups: the Africans all stick together, as do the Americans – who refuse to learn French.’ It does seem a pity that there are no study associations.As Scamis explains,‘I have also studied in London and Aachen and both were really much better than here. I don’t think that Geneva is a good place for students – there are so many multinationals, diplomats and bankers bringing in plenty of money that there is no reason to cater to the needs of students.’ But couldn’t students organize something for themselves? Hakkoum thinks not. ‘Most students are from abroad and don’t know their way around here. Anyway, everyone is too busy studying and working part-time jobs in the evenings and on weekends.’ 48

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Still, on a weekend evening the city centre seems to be full of students and they look like they are having a fairly good time. One of the best-known student cafés is La Clémence on the Place de Bourg de Four, near the cathedral. From early afternoon on, students flock to its outside tables to enjoy a beer in the sunshine. By eight they have gone, only to return around ten when the nightlife gets underway; popular venues are Café Baroque, Adipsie, Bypass and assorted larger and smaller bars around the large university building Uni Mail. The familiar Swiss emphasis on neatness is in evidence even here: on entering the cocktail bar Adipsie, one is immediately shown to a table by a waiter. ‘We usually start off an evening here,’ says Gianna Cartini, . She is from Milan, here studying translation on an Erasmus grant. Across from her is another translation student, Sanna Verheghen, also , from Antwerpen. ‘Antwerp and Geneva have a joint exchange programme,’ she explains. A week before there was a special welcome party for Erasmus students, complete with pub crawl. Lecturers went along as well.‘I think some of them do better in the pub than they do at lectures,’ laughs Cartini. The two share the general dissatisfaction with student life in Geneva: a high cost of living and nothing much in the way of entertainment. Like many students, they look for refuge in the small city of Carouge. Located to the south of Geneva on the banks of the Arve, it has a population of eighteen thousand and a good range of reasonably priced housing. A miniature student community has sprung up around the central square here complete with cinema, discotheque, a number of cheap restaurants and plenty of bars where the drinks are much more affordable than they are in the centre of Geneva. ‘If you want to enjoy student life here, you really have to take things into your own hands,’ says a medical student from Cologne. ‘There is such a big difference between students who work hard and don’t have much money and the ones who are here because their parents are diplomats.They can afford to go out three nights a week.’ Even so, nightlife here never really seems to get going. The beer barrel may still be full, but the bar is closed – perhaps this is part of the legacy of Calvin in Geneva.

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heidelberg

Ruprecht-Karls-Universität by Frank Provoost

University of Heidelberg in facts and figures: Founded in 1386 26,742 students 7,362 staff Budget D 463 million

‘Thank you for your attention.’ As soon as the closing words of the lecture are spoken a thunderous noise fills the hall: the sound of students rapping their knuckles on the benches as the grateful lecturer accepts their approbation.Welcome to Heidelberg – or to use its full name: Ruprecht-Karls-Universität, or Ruperto Carola. Founded on October , , it is Germany’s oldest university. Eager to compete with Prague and Vienna, Kurfürst Ruprecht I had decided to found his own academy and, with permission from Pope Urban VI, he began by opening faculties for theology, law and philosophy; medicine soon followed. Semper apertus became the motto: the book of learning is always open. More than six hundred years later, there are no fewer than fifteen faculties; those of

Picture-perfect Heidelberg with its River Neckar, Altstadt and thirteenth-century castle. In the city centre the Old University is situated

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law and medicine enjoy worldwide renown. Eight times a Heidelberg scholar has been awarded a Nobel Prize. The university is home to approximately , students spread over three areas: the humanities in the Altstadt, or historic town centre, medicine and psychology in the suburb of Bergheim and the science campus of Neuenheimer Feld. In the Altstadt especially, the students tend to stand out, trendy shirts and flip-flops contrasting sharply with the picture-perfect streets and the plaques on nearly every house commemorating the countless great minds who lived or worked inside,or simply passed by. Whatever your vantage point, it seems you can spot an ancient castle keeping watch over the valley. Architecture is a heady mix of mediaeval ruins and Renaissance addons. In the nineteenth century this area was the epicentre of the Romantic Movement. On the far side of the River Neckar, which divides the city in two, the Philosopher’s path curls up the side of the mountain; Goethe, Schiller and Kleist are said to have gazed up at it dreamily. And then there is the Karzer, the special university prison built in the nineteenth century for the incarceration of recalcitrant students. An agreement with the municipality stipulated that the university was responsible for the punishment of students who misbehaved.Disturbance of the peace,drunkenness or unruly duels could result in a sentence of between  hours and four weeks, depending on the seriousness of the offence. Unfortunately, the prison eventually began to exert an unwanted influence on students as it became socially de rigueur to have done time. Anybody who was anybody would have left his signature and perhaps even a silhouette on the wall, sometimes accompanied by an epithet such as Natürlich unschuldig: innocent, of course.The Karzer remained in use until the outbreak of the First World War in . Today,  percent of the university’s student body come from abroad. Students pay no tuition fees and receive no grants or loans. But, as the Deputy Rector Magnificus warns in the research publication Ruperto Carola, ‘students should not decide to study in Germany because it is free, but because they wish to receive an outstanding education’.This statement echoes the current debate within higher education in Germany, a dialogue begun in  by Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and education minister Edelgard Bulman who were eager to create elite Spitzenuniversitäten which would be centres of outstanding research and education.The cabinet would like to see free competition between universities, but, as both board members and scholars are quick to point out, many changes will have to be made before Heidelberg becomes the new BundesHarvard.

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Deputy Rector Magnificus Angelos Chaniotis on League and Politics

Building Bridges

‘The most important investment for our future is Wissen – knowledge’

For the University of Heidelberg to become a Bundes-Harvard, it will first have to become more powerful. According to Deputy Rector Magnificus Angelos Chaniotis, elite universities should not become fixated on technological innovation but instead strive to build bridges between the old and new sciences.‘You can’t create an island of excellence in the middle of a desert,’ he remarks. The beginning of  brought images of student protest in Berlin; students even stripped naked as an illustration of their dissatisfaction with the increasing cutbacks in funding for higher education. But not in Heidelberg. Each Bundesland, or province, is responsible for its own university and even though the cutbacks were serious, thanks to Heidelberg’s earlier long-term contracts with the education minister in the province of Baden-Württemberg, it felt the pain less sharply than universities in some other provinces. It is time the university had more power, says Deputy Rector Magnificus Angelos Chaniotis, especially in the context of the current discussions on Spitzenuniversitäten. He emphasizes his deliberate choice of the word ‘elite’ in connection with Heidelberg and says there is a clear connection. But in order to become truly elite, the university will need a bigger say, since for the moment the Ministry of Education still has control over decisions on everything from the appointment of professors to admissions policy. Problems are brewing abroad as well, says Chaniotis, within the council of rectors 52

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responsible for internationalization.‘Funding is becoming scarce as the arena becomes increasingly competitive,’ he remarks. In  the League of European Research Universities (LERU) was set up to address this problem. After all, it is precisely in times of deadly competition that it is most prudent to cooperate, according to him. What is the importance of LERU for Heidelberg? A lot of persuasive pressure is necessary at the European level. Our most important investment for our future – economical, cultural, intellectual, technological – is Wissen: knowledge. Universities are not the only interested parties here, but they are the only ones conducting fundamental research at the highest level. Our primary task is to conduct research regardless of its usefulness for particular concrete applications. Applied research can be carried out in other settings – in industries ranging from pharmacological to automotive. But this isn’t happening in Europe, because here technological innovation is seen as being of the highest importance.The humanities, fundamental research: everything to do with those, the national institutes have to work out for themselves.That is the fatal flaw. So, for you, an extremely undersubscribed humanities programme and a life sciences programme are of equal importance? Yes. We like to compare the smaller subjects to orchids: they are beautiful, but you can’t live on them.So our strategy is to build bridges between the traditional disciplines and the new ones. Let me put it another way: Heidelberg is divided into two parts by the river Neckar. On one side there is the Altstad, with the traditional humanities and the social sciences; across the river is Neuenheimer Feld, the science faculties. We are doing our best to connect the two. The Centre for Scientific Dialogue, for example, has been set up as a discussion forum in which theologians, philosophers, jurists, doctors and others can meet to discuss ethical and cultural aspects of the life sciences. At one recent lecture we invited a physicist and an Assyriologist to talk about differing perceptions of the universe. Or take archaeological engineering, one of Heidelberg’s core subjects: this is a field in which physicists and geologists help in dating and sourcing of objects recovered during excavations. Within the League there is currently a workgroup looking at possibilities for cooperation between the smaller subjects. Usually, it is the case that a small staff is responsible for a large range of subject matter. We could consider joint courses and common master’s programmes. The latter, especially, could prove to be a challenge as we would have to decide on one language of instruction and also because of the wide variations in everyone’s yearly calendars: semesters at Heidelberg and Strasbourg begin at different times, not to mention England where they work with trimesters. You mention language – what is the future importance of English at your university? We are strongly in favour of retaining the language of the country in which a univerruprecht-karls-universität

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sity is located. For some subjects there’s really no choice. With art history, for example, you really need to speak French and Italian since those countries tend to dominate the field. Having said that, we must face the reality that English is the global lingua franca and that German,for many people,is much less accessible.It would be unrealistic to believe otherwise. Over the years we have seen that international students on European exchange programmes speak English with each other. For this reason our workshops and summer schools, but also the masters programmes that we have developed jointly with other institutions, are given in English. As a university we are quite internationally oriented:  percent of our students come from abroad. We attract students to our summer schools who would otherwise never come here. Once they’re here, they eventually learn German. What is most important in your opinion: education or research? The greatest percentage of doctoral research in Germany takes place in Heidelberg. This is important for us since the preparation of a doctorate is not the result of research alone but a combination of research and education together. We do not differentiate in this; there can be no research without education and no education without research. Now, against the background of the current discussion in Germany on the subject of elite universities, education has become a spearhead of our further development plans. After all, you can’t bring in the brightest and the best students and then put inferior or disinterested professors in front of them. We are not interested in professors who are not willing to lecture; we do not want someone who is going to come here and spend the entire time in a laboratory, even if he is doing excellent research. Conversely, someone who is an excellent and popular lecturer, but who is not conducting original research, would be better off somewhere else. Will Heidelberg become the new Bundes-Harvard? First of all, it is still unclear how the Spitzenuniversitäten, the elite universities, will take shape. In our opinion it is essential that universities are improved in all respects. Change must not be restricted to particular institutes or centres of excellence but should take place in every area: graduation statistics, the degree to which we hold on to our alumni, infrastructure and so on.You can’t create an island of excellence in the middle of a desert. Secondly,money is not the only essential factor in the creation of an elite institution. Of course it is always welcome,but it isn’t enough on its own.A top university needs autonomy, freedom. In comparison with British universities, for example, our independence is sorely limited. We need to be able to collect tuition fees, which we cannot do here in Germany. One semester here costs a student fifty euros; in the US it is six thousand euros.We want foreign students to choose us because they are convinced that they will find the best quality research and education,not because we are cheap.For the same reason we would like to be allowed to recruit students ourselves. If we are to become 54

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truly outstanding, we must be allowed to decide how many students, and which students, we admit to each department. How is your relationship with the Ministry of Education? Several years ago the universities in Baden-Württemberg signed a solidarity pact with the Ministry in which we agreed to phase out  jobs, while the ministry guaranteed that our funding would remain constant until  regardless of any further cutbacks it made.This was a good development for us: it taught us to think carefully about what we could actually cut back on ourselves. Still, things could be a lot better. I’ve heard that an American university can appoint a new professor within two weeks.That usually takes us about two and a half years. Developments in science are rapid and we need to be able to respond quickly.The human genome is finally mapped and we need a new professor right away, but we’re not allowed to appoint one!

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By placing cells on miniscule pillars of silica,Joachim Spatz is able to measure the pressure of the cell on the surface

Scientists in Heidelberg on the Necessity of Research

Booming Business or Intrinsically Unnecessary? Do we really need this, or can we live without it? In Germany’s current debate on Spitzenuniversitäten, or elite universities, this is a question that keeps coming up. Is applied research the way of the future? Will fundamental research be squeezed out? ‘Biochemistry is booming,’ says the up and coming life scientist.‘The humanities are intrinsically unnecessary,’ muses the archaeologist. Two students lumber back and forth pushing wheelbarrows filled with vats of chlorine and other chemicals.Squirrels scamper about; frogs croak in the ponds.On the Neuenheimer Feld campus,just outside the centre of Heidelberg,the modern buildings of the science and biomedical faculties and the leafy surroundings form a harmonious combination. Inside the Institute for Physical Chemistry, Joachim Spatz, , is building towers. Microstructures, as he calls them, are miniscule pillars of silica and the rubbery polymer PDMS. Lined up in rows, they resemble a tiny bed of nails. By placing cells on them, Spatz is able to measure the pressure exerted on the surface. He describes his 56

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work as ‘communicating with cells’, or sometimes ‘searching for a key’. Spatz and his research team of  people are working on the partial recreation of cells.The trick is to remove those components of a cell which are responsible for its particular characteristics, for instance shape or rigidity, and then build the cell up again step by step.This research is based on the idea that if all non-essential elements can be removed and cell architecture reduced to a minimum, diseases can be dealt with more effectively.An example of this is his discovery that the rigidity of tumour cells can be reduced by injecting them with a certain substance. Nanoresearch, as this work is called, combines several different fields.The description on Spatz’s own door, biophysical chemistry, seems to be a three different fields rolled into one. Keeping in mind the number of prestigious prizes to be won, it would seem that there is money aplenty for research, especially now that applied research is so increasingly in demand. ‘Biochemistry is booming these past years,’ agrees Spatz, ‘and although funding elsewhere is shrinking, we are constantly expanding and are able to bring in new professors.’ He expects only growth over the coming ten to twenty years. ‘First of all, the various disciplines are only beginning to cooperate and the amount of work that there is to do is enormous.’ There is much interest from the medical community. ‘And there will always be money in medicine.’ It will be years, however, until this research finds practical application, says Wouter Roos. A Dutch PhD candidate, Roos is in his third year in the research team, in Germany the final year. His electron microscope has broken down and he is happy to provide a tour of the department while he waits for it to be repaired.‘Look,’ he says, pointing at a colleague peering into a Petri dish,‘he’s pulling cells apart so that he can find out how hard they pull back.’ The tour leads past cell incubators, where the temperature is a balmy  º C, a series of biohazard stickers and laser equipment which, explains Roos, ‘attaches little balls to cells’. Finally, he is willing to speculate, albeit cautiously, on the possible future applications of this research. ‘If you think of a wound as a gap where certain cells are missing, then you can think of healing as new cells which you can use to fill that gap. And if you know what kind of pressure they exert then that can help you in the development of this kind of artificial healing.Take the human heart, for example: every beat exerts the same amount of energy. If we could measure that energy, then we could produce better heart valves, or even an artificial heart.’ The life sciences may be booming business, but eighty percent of the research done is still fundamental research,Grundlageforschung as it is called in German.‘Because let’s be honest,’says Joseph Maran,professor of Prehistory and Early History as he prepares for a dig in the clay of a local river, ‘you have to go through thirty other practically useless projects to find out what you really need.That’s science.’ Professor Maran is on his way to the nearby city of Mannheim, where the construction of a highway has exposed the site of an ancient settlement. Students toiling with both small shovels and bulldozers make up part of the excavation team, happy to be inruprecht-karls-universität

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volved in something a bit closer to home than their other project in the Greek city of Tiryns. He himself has noticed a shift in focus in the discussions on elite universities; more and more often the necessity of the research is being questioned.‘It turns up often on the op-ed pages of the German newspapers,’ he says. The attitude is a familiar one for him, but not because of his own work.‘My father was an opera singer. All his life he had to answer the question “What is the useful purpose of that?”’ If you ask him, this is a question one shouldn’t deign to answer. ‘After all,’ he asks, ‘why doesn’t anyone ever ask why it’s important to know how an atom works? Or why we need bigger tomatoes? You’re not trying to sell people something. The humanities are intrinsically purposeless. It would be silly to pretend otherwise.’ Even so, as an archaeologist Professor Maran admits that things are probably easier for him, since the public and the media are always interested in new discoveries and because there is ‘an element of Indiana Jones’to his work.‘But still,knowledge should not have to justify itself.’ According to him, all of the humanities are of equal importance. ‘They are like building blocks: pull one out and everything falls apart.’So cooperation – including cooperation with other disciplines – is important.At the moment he is collaborating with a professor of sociology on a project dealing with the relationships of different ideologies in architecture;he has involved physicists in his research in Greece,where attempts are being made to reconstruct the form of the landscape.‘It is extremely difficult to understand how people living three to four thousand years ago viewed their surroundings, as no writings on the subject have survived.’ Utility is not a dirty word, so long as no one is punished for not striving for it, says Professor Maran. ‘Really, we all know that philosophers and mathematicians are lowmaintenance people.The only thing that Einstein needed for his work was a pen.’

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In the old days, duelling wounds were cherished and even purposely exacerbated by reopening, but ‘these days, scars just aren’t cool’

Heidelberg Students Say Goodbye to the Burschenschaften

The End of ‘All for One and One for All’ Heidelberg’s Burschenschaften, the student societies where lifelong friendships were traditionally sworn and then sealed with raised glasses and crossed swords, are on the wane. It used to be that everyone duelled, but these days only ten percent of students are interested. ‘Even though our organisation is a liberal one, there are still plenty of leftist stone-throwers out to get us.’ The spiralling wooden staircase seems to lead to Hell: along the walls hang a series of grinning dogs’ heads. ‘Students all used to have dogs,’ explains Philip Söhngen, , a student of political science and history,‘but nowadays no one does, unfortunately.’The mounted heads along the staircase may be treasured reminders of pets of yore, but ‘our housekeeper isn’t all that fond of them.’ Beyond the little door at the top of the stairs, there is no purgatorial fire but, instead, a balcony with an idyllic view bathed in springtime sunlight. A pair of binoculars is fixed to the railing, the better to peruse the thirteenth-century castle in the distance, the ancient bridge over the River Neckar and the students’ houses nestled among the trees on the far banks of the river.The inside of the building is no less spectacular.The ballroom, for instance, is graced with two large windows with stained glass panels deruprecht-karls-universität

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picting knightly scenes. High in the wooden rafters there is a balcony. Law student Alexander Till, , explains: ‘The women used to watch from there while the men were revelling below.’ The monumental refectory and bar are one floor down. The antique tables, right down to the legs, have had epithets of eternal brotherhood as well as coats of arms and insignia carved into them over the years.Hanging on the walls are countless portraits of men wearing odd hats;strangely,the prouder the faces look,the more scars they seem to have. Is this a dormitory? No, only the Huismeisterin, the housekeeper, lives and cooks here. Söhngen,Till and fourteen other students live in student housing nearby. So is it a study association? Again, no; it is too small to accommodate the  members and Alte Herren, alumni. This is Frankonia, the oldest of the remaining Burschenschaften or traditional student societies where, since the old days, students have sworn lifelong friendship to the accompaniment of raised glasses and crossed swords. For many decades following its foundation in ,those swords were used for serious duelling with rival societies.This explains the scars, which were cherished and even purposely exacerbated by reopening duelling wounds or stitching them with horsehair so as to cause infections. The last decades have been much less violent. Of the thirty remaining Burschenschaften, only half are still active. Frankonia is one of the few societies in Heidelberg where duelling still takes place, although in modern times it is limited to an initiation ritual in which new members take part after completing two probationary semesters. ‘Students go through an intensive training course beforehand, but the risk of injury is always there,’ explains Till. Browsing through the most recent additions to the portrait gallery it would appear that accidents are rare; as Till puts it,‘these days, scars just aren’t cool.’ Unfortunately, this is true of the Burschenschaften themselves as well. At the height of their popularity, percent of students were members; today they drag in a scanty ten percent. A visit to the university restaurant’s outdoor café, located in the historic city centre and a favourite student hangout, seems to confirm this. Daniël Guhl illustrates his opinion of the Burschenschaf quite succinctly using two words and two hand gestures.‘Brain dead,’he pronounces as two fingers of his left hand form a moustache and right arm shoots up in a salute.This economy student has strong ideas; he fulminates against the idea of the society members living at their parents’ expense in the grandest, most expensive houses of the Schlossstrasse, the road leading up to the castle, with nary a woman nor an immigrant in sight. ‘Nazis!’ says Gühl. ‘Rubbish!’ is the astonished riposte of his fellow students Nicola Korn and Jan Schmitz. A lively discussion breaks out, attracting interest from nearby picnic tables. ‘Who are you – the heir of Ulrike Meinhof?’ snaps someone.‘You people are just trying to get publicity,’ says someone else. What it comes down to, as other students are quick to agree, is that most of them are just looking for some no-strings-attached amusement. Student clubs such as those in the Netherlands,whose main function is to provide fun and companionship,do not ex60

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ist here. And nowadays duelling is out. However, says Korn,‘every sport you can imagine, from football to snowboarding, you can do here.’ The river that runs through the middle of the city is ideal for rowing. Schmitz adds, ‘our rugby team is the German champion,and the hockey team is in the second national league.’The post-match cooldown takes place in the bars and nightclubs of the Untere Strasse in the centre of town. Parties are organised alternately by study associations and the various faculties as well as by dormitories and student housing units. The banks of the River Neckar – ‘Neckar Beach’ – are a daytime hot spot. Crowds gather on sunny days to lie on the grass and read or play the guitar; it’s a good place to play football and volleyball. And to drink. White wine goes straight from bottle to mouth, no need for a glass. But the coolest liquid accessory is definitely a bottle of trendy Welde beer.The wavy neck of the green bottle fits conveniently yet casually between thumb and fingers and, best of all, in the place of a traditional bottle cap it has an easy-open, milk-bottle style foil seal. These ubiquitous half-litre bottles are a common sight on the outdoor terrace of the university café as well. By early afternoon the main activity here seems to be drinking, not studying. More traditional surroundings,albeit heavily frequented by tourists,can be found in the student bars such as Zum Roten Ochsen, which claims to be the oldest, and Schookeloch,whose walls are covered with old photographs,swords and society caps.For serious duelling, for instance when all of the German student societies come together here in Heidelberg, the Hirschgassse is the location of choice. Frankonia is always represented on these occasions. Philip Söhngen is hoping to have finished his probationary period within a few months so that he can exchange the red and black sash he now wears diagonally over his jumper for the real one edged in gold; senior student Alexander Till wears his now. When asked whether students wear their sashes to lectures, Söhngen answers,‘No. Even though our organisation is a liberal one, there are still plenty of leftist stone-throwers out to get us.’ Members of the societies are used to hearing snide and judgmental remarks from outsiders. There is a women’s society though. Yes, both its clubhouse and members’ dormitory are owned by a foundation set up by former members and yes,the criteria for acceptance into the society are strict: aspiring members must speak excellent German, for example. But Till is quick to spring to the defence of his own society.‘It is also about making friendships that last a lifetime.We have to be able to get along,’ he says. In spite of the lack of ethnic minorities among Frankonia’s members, he describes it as ‘truly multicultural’ thanks to the many exchange students from England, Canada, the United States and the Benelux countries who have enjoyed limited membership, although lifelong friendship with them seems to be ruled out. At any rate, violence has no place here in modern times. The only resident bearing battle wounds sits alone in a corner of the ballroom,his body covered with scars.Till caresses the old bald head gently:it belongs to the leather dummy on which he and his fellow Frankonians sharpen their swords. ruprecht-karls-universität

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helsinki

Helsingin Yliopisto by Frank Provoost

University of Helsinki in facts and figures: Founded in 1640 (in Turku though, moved to Helsinki in 1827) 38,454 students 7,445 staff Budget D 475 million

The heart of Helsinki is the perfect place from which to glimpse the essence of Finland. Standing next to the statue of Russian Tsar Alexander II at the centre of the Senate Square, designed by German architect Carl Ludwig Engel, it is possible to take in an overview of Finnish history simply by turning round in a half circle: the main building of the university to the left, the Lutheran cathedral straight ahead and the seat of the government to the right. To this day celebrations of Finland’s independence in  take place in this square, Senaatintori as it is called in Finnish and Senaatstorget in Swedish. Why Swedish? Years after becoming independent, Finland still has two official languages, which

The Main Building of the University of Helsinki at the Senate Square

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means two street signs in the square as well as every other road – even though only six percent of the population speak Swedish. Until the beginning of the nineteenth century, Finland was a province of Sweden and served primarily as a buffer to keep Sweden’s arch enemy Russia at a safe distance. In , after yet another war, Finland was absorbed by Russia and became a Grand Duchy.The Governor General represented Tsar Alexander I in Helsinki. It was during this period that the present university began to take shape. A university had already been founded in , but it was in Turku, nearly two hundred kilometres west of Helsinki and much too close to Sweden for the Tsar’s liking. When the centre of Turku was destroyed by fire in , he seized the opportunity to move the entire university to Helsinki and within a year the Imperial Alexander University had come into existence. Around the same time a growing sense of nationalism led to the spread of the Finnish language from the countryside to urban areas and consequently to the university where, until then, only Swedish had been spoken. Even today one can tell by the shape of the white caps worn by students and by the emblem upon them which is their native language, and which of the two student newspapers (each with its own editorial board) they read. When the Bolsheviks deposed the Tsar in , Finland seized the opportunity to declare its independence. In early  over half the university lecturers walked across Senate Square to take up places in the senate. Law professor Kaarlo Juho Stahlberg became the first present of the new Finnish republic. The three edifices on Senate Square continue to play important roles for Finland. Doctorates are still conferred in the auditorium and solemnized in the church; national holidays are celebrated in both buildings as well.The auditorium also serves as a concert hall and as a venue for national events. And whenever higher education appears on the agenda in the cabinet, the chancellor of the university may by rights be present and participate in discussions. ‘A leading European university’ is how the university currently describes itself. Its eleven faculties serve over , students and , staff and are spread over four campuses. The City Centre houses theology, law, arts, behavioural sciences and social sciences; outside the city are Kumpulan (sciences including physics, chemistry, mathematics and computer science), Meilahti (medicine) and Viikki (agriculture and forestry, biosciences, pharmacy and in the near future veterinary medicine). Of the current budget of h  million, h  million goes to research. If it was up to Chancellor Kari Raivio, currently serving as chairman of the League of European Research Universities, it would be even more. Luckily for him, the Finnish government also understands the importance of research and has promised heavy investment. Because of their country’s history,students are seen as the foundation on which the nation stands and they profit from all the benefits that brings, including financial ones. Or, as the chancellor jauntily rhymes:‘University studies that lead to a degree are free.’ It is curious that so few foreign students have discovered how much of a Walhalla helsingin yliopisto

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Helsinki can be: they make up less than five percent of the student body. Perhaps it is a fear of the pitch-dark winters. It certainly could not be the facilities. From Senate Square, looking past the old university building and the cathedral towards the university library building,an ultramodern transparent tower is just visible. It is the Aleksandria Learning Centre, where students have access to the most advanced computers available –  hours a day, seven days a week. And if that is not convenient enough, they can borrow a laptop.

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Chancellor and LERU Chairman Kari Raivio

Long Live Consensus

‘Changing all our courses to English would be unnecessary and undesirable’

As chancellor of the University of Helsinki, Kari Raivio has the right to be present at meetings of the Finnish cabinet. He is not there to argue against cutbacks, because there are none.But there are plenty of other issues to work out,such as research-based teaching programmes, entrance examinations and the general non-committal attitude of many students. It is not exactly what one might expect to hear from the chairman of LERU. But University of Helsinki Chancellor Kari Raivio describes his main activity as chairman of the LERU – lobbying for European funding – as ‘pretty boring stuff.’There are already quite enough strategic alliances after all, and LERU is only ‘one of the thousands of parties lobbying in Brussels’. It may be important, but it is work for bureaucrats. Still, there is a difference. Of the many international networks in which the University of Helsinki takes part,some can have up to seven hundred members.In contrast,LERU is compact, yet still carries enough weight to be influential. ‘Some of the larger associations are huge and diverse;they try to be a master of all things from traditional and modern universities to business schools.That makes it difficult to cooperate effectively.’ In Raivio’s opinion this is an opportunity for the League to be different. While the original task of wheedling money from various sources is still central, he is pleased to see that more and more joint initiatives are taking shape. ‘That is the really interesting achievement.’ helsingin yliopisto

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Do you think that all the member universities are really doing their best? No. But it is only logical that there is not the same level of interest from every university.Whenever someone comes up with a proposal we make sure all the other members hear about it, but in the end it is up to them to decide whether or not to take part. Everything is done on a voluntary basis. If a university is not interested in a particular project, that is quite all right with us. Obviously, every member sees the importance of the League in a different light. So it is essential that all members are encouraged to continue to contribute if the League is to remain sufficiently weighty. Are research universities paying enough attention to education? If a university wants to promote itself through its research, then students are justified in asking, ‘What’s in it for me?’ Before we joined LERU we had already begun to develop a new strategy of research-based teaching. Education at the polytechnics has to meet the demands of the workplace. Here, however, the law dictates that education is based on research. But what does that mean in practice? How can you develop a curriculum that will help students to understand and implement research findings in a way that will make ‘knowledge workers’ of them? It used to be the case that professors let other staff look after the education of undergraduates.These days we are involving our top researchers more in basic teaching; this gives students a clearer idea of what the research is actually about. This shift will also play a big part in the way we attract new researchers, since everyone will be required to guarantee continuity within his field. Because nobody lives forever. We need a new, well-trained younger generation. And will lectures be in Finnish or in English? We are not so radical as to change everything to English.That would be unnecessary and undesirable. As a small nation we must defend our cultural heritage and as Finland’s oldest and largest university we are bound to uphold tradition.This is especially true for areas in which language plays a key role. Conversely,in areas where language is a tool rather than an end – sciences,medicine, technology – a shift to English would be easier to make.But take the social sciences,for example. There is always an element of native language involved. Why? Because they deal with people. For the same reason law or medicine could never be completely in English. Language plays too important a role there. As chancellor of the University of Helsinki, you have the right to attend cabinet meetings whenever higher education is on the agenda. Is this useful? That depends to a large degree on the prime minister. I have experienced two of them so far,but I know from how things have gone in the past that cabinet ministers are not always amenable to changes being made in their plans – not even by other ministers. That made discussion rather pointless. Our present prime minister has different 66

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ideas, happily for us. A minister may adjust his proposition during the course of a discussion, and that means that it is certainly profitable for me to be there. The right to be present is a result of historical developments. Finland started out as part of Sweden and when it became Russian the Chancellor of the University of Helsinki was the Crown Prince of Russia.No other element within Finnish society enjoys the same right of representation. Legally, I attend as a representative of Helsinki, but in fact I represent all Finnish universities. I attend five to six times every year. Is there much knocking of heads? Luckily, politicians, administrators and the business community in this country all agree that research and education are going to be Finland’s greatest source of income in the future. Besides forests, we have no natural resources. Because of our high standard of living and a high level of worker protection and legislation, more and more of our manufacturing jobs are going to China. What’s left are research and development. Of course politicians here are the same as everywhere else and there is often a gap between what they say and what they do. But generally speaking, things work out to our advantage and we can promote an agenda which is in line with the consensus. So that means not cutbacks but higher funding? Exactly. For the third consecutive year our budget has again been slightly increased, and the government has committed itself to investing more in research and in the universities. Even so, we are certainly not swimming in cash. Ten years ago this country suffered a serious recession and we lost sixteen percent of our budget within two years. We are still suffering the effects of that, but the general trend at the moment is positive. So what are the sticking points? At the moment the minister is working on a plan to implement a time restriction in the right to study, which will mean that students will have to graduate earlier and get onto the job market quicker.They will have the time it takes to get their master’s degree plus two years and that’s it.Mitigating circumstances such as illness or conscription can buy you another two years.This is a big issue here. Personally,I am against time restrictions,but I would agree that programmes should be a bit more disciplined than is currently the case. The way things are now, students can hang around for years without getting anything done. Sometimes someone does not turn up for three years; we have no idea where they’ve disappeared to. Another thing we need to do is to change the admissions exam system. Every faculty has its own complicated process of examination. As a university we want to make sure that fifty percent of students come in directly from secondary school,but the fact is that it takes an average of three years to get in.People try again and again.For some programmes they have to learn entire textbooks by heart, which really has nothing to do with criteria for academic selection.

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As a paediatrician, do you miss your research? Absolutely. I try to stay up to date even though I have been away from the clinic for more than eight years now. Only two people are left over from the research group I was in. I do miss it; after all, research is a rewarding activity. But at a certain point you have to face reality and accept that however hard you work, you will never win the Nobel Prize. So why not help others by getting involved in administration and making sure that young researchers have the opportunities they need to do good work? That is what I decided to do.

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Around the Country for Research

Knowledge as National Obligation

Markku Kulmala at his Forestry Field Station in Hyytiälä where he discovered how aerosol particles help cool down the climate

Finland is generous to its researchers. It seems the only problem is how to distribute all the funds fairly. In these days of technological innovation, the humanities, which played such an important role in Finland’s independence, may be in for a difficult time.‘The value of research is mainly estimated by the value of its returns for technology.’ Markku Kulmala is rather cross because he’s back in Helsinki. Granted, he is a professor at the university here. But it is not where he does his real work; on the contrary,‘We shouldn’t be here at all!’ Forget Helsinki – Hyytiälä is the place! That is the location of the Forestry Field Station SMEAR: the Station for Measuring Forest Ecosystem-Atmospheric Relationships. The station does just what its name suggests: it measures every single element present in the pine forest.Nothing less could be expected of a station run by a centre of excellence that calls itself ‘Physics, Chemistry and Biology of Atmospheric Composition and Climate Change Atmospheric Sciences’. In Hyytiälä, Kulmala and his fifty-strong research team have attached a range of instruments to the pine trees. Sensors around the needles measure any gasses released; more sensors pierce the trunks to measure the flow of water inside the trees. Other equipment has been placed deep under the ground to read subsoil water levels. Throughout the entire forest, masts have been erected to measure humidity and gasification; the smallest is twelve metres high, the largest a towering  metres. helsingin yliopisto

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All of this has provided Kulmala with findings which he has published in the journals Nature and Science.‘I am so proud,’ he admits. And he also admits that the thought of winning a Nobel Prize has recently crossed his mind. What could help him get one? Perhaps the as yet unverified discovery that global warming is not progressing quite as quickly as we had thought. At least, that is the case in the Finnish pine forests. Kulmala found that assimilation,a process in which trees convert carbon dioxide into glucose, also produces an interesting by-product.‘The forests release hydrocarbons, which react with ozone and OH radicals to form vapours capable of condensation and, subsequently,aerosol particles,’he explains.If both temperature and the amount of carbon dioxide in the air rise, more particles are created.This happens about one hundred times every year, mostly before noon.The result? ‘The aerosol particles reflect solar radiation back into space and hence help cool down the climate, a beneficial effect.’ This type of research typifies exactly how Helsinki – a leading university, as it wishes to be known – is eager to present itself. In this project it is conducting innovative, internationally oriented research in collaboration with universities at home and abroad as well as with commercial enterprises. For example, the University of Kuopio provides scientists for the project, and Nokia is helping to design and produce the measurement apparatus. According to the rector of the University of Helsinki, Ilkka Niiniluoto, general opinion in Finland is that the Scandinavian countries will never be able to match lowwage countries in productivity. Consequently, the only useful area in which to invest is knowledge. In order to establish whether this investment is paying off, the rector has begun measuring its returns with American-style research assessments in which panels of foreign experts evaluate the various faculties. Fellow rectors from LERU have been helping to assemble the assessment committees. Something else that justifies investment is the national obligation for knowledge to be spread across the entire country. For this to be possible it is essential that there is cooperation between the university and as many cities as possible in Finland.Momentarily, the university has institutes in twenty cities from the south to the northernmost tip of the country. One of these is the centre of excellence of which Markku Kulmala is director. Of the  centres founded by the Academy of Finland,Helsinki is involved in .Kulmala emphasises that the centres’ purpose is not to make money. Good research requires patience. As he explains,‘The first ten years, we came up with nothing.’ The Academy spends only a tiny part of its budget on anthropology, according to Anna-Leena Siikala, Professor of Cultural Anthropology. Having been involved for many years in negotiations with the upper echelons of government and the business world to attract funding to the humanities, she is in a position to know. To what success? ‘Compared with hard science, we get almost nothing,’ is her conclusion. This is the irony of the young Finnish republic.The humanities, which played such an instrumental role at the beginning of the nation’s history, are now being squeezed 70

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out.A new kind of Finnish culture is taking over in academia and it is being handsomely rewarded for its work. ‘These days people are mainly interested in coming up with more Nokia.There is nothing wrong with that; it is part of our culture. But the important thing is to distribute research funds fairly.’ As Siikala explains, it is increasingly the case that ‘these days, research is valued according to the technological results it produces.’ This works in favour of the hard sciences.‘We need to learn to express ourselves in the same way that they do. But we must be evaluated according to the way we work: not in large research teams, but individually on our own monographs. This is the way our field has developed in the Western world.’ ‘What happens to people in trance states?’ is a major question in Siikala’s research. During the preparation of her doctorate,she spent time with Siberian shamans; during her professorship she continued to conduct field work there. She has also done extensive research in Polynesian tribal communities.‘Many anthropologists go into the field alone and are unsuccessful. But you really have to integrate into family life. Once you have shared a meal and been fully accepted as a member of the group,you know you will be fine.’ Over the past five years Siikala has worked as academy professor, exempted from lecturing duties and charged with editing the twelve-volume Encyclopaedia of Uralic Mythologies. Published in Finnish, English and Russian, this is the standard reference work on mythical personages from Lapland to Siberia,such as the iron-fingered virgin. Her field may not be one with high returns in terms of innovation,but nonetheless it is vital that the humanities continue to receive adequate funding.‘Nowadays,identity is central. In our global community everything seems to be happening at the same time. That’s why it is important to understand how other cultures function – otherwise we will lose touch.’ Luckily for her, UNESCO agrees and provides financial support on a worldwide level. ‘It’s all of a piece,’ says Markku Kulmala.Whoever wants to be a director of an interdisciplinary research centre like his will either have to knuckle down and do the paperwork that goes along with the position or choose another field. Paperwork: that is what he hates about being in Helsinki. Even though his work deals with the living world of trees and ecosystems, talking about it today he is forced to rely on posters, tables and graphs. Stacks of papers fill his office; forms have drifted under his desk and lie next to his shoes. Kulmula strides off to the lab, shod in his leather sandals: he would rather show off some hardware. A particle counter is being tested; it is a cylinder in which particles are filtered through an electrical screen and sorted according to size. But back in his office, his excitement flags.‘Look at this mess! All this reporting is my least favourite thing to do.’

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Only Twenty Percent of Students Pass Admissions Exams

Chugging Vodka in the Toilets Poster of the Student Union in The New Student House: Finnish parents are prone to remind their children, it takes plenty of hard work to earn one of those white caps

The Finnish higher education system is every student’s dream.It may take an average of three years to pass the entrance exam, but once at university they can count on chugging down vodka in the toilets at parties in the company of cabinet ministers. ‘Elite is a dirty word here.’ A stink of smoke, cheap candle wax and petroleum hangs over Helsinki. Senate Square shimmers in the light of torches held by the hundreds of students who have gathered in front of the cathedral. It may be only : in the afternoon, but it has already been dark for half an hour.The smoke hangs in the misty cold air; light from the torches shines on the students’ white caps. Today is December , the day Finland celebrates its independence. The previous night was one of alcohol-soaked festivities; today is the day for official ceremonies. Most Finns stay indoors and watch the proceedings on television, waiting to see which national celebrities have been invited to shake the president’s hand or take a turn on the dance floor. Outside, the students are in charge.They have just laid flowers on the tomb of Carl Gustaf Mannerheim, the field marshal who led Finland through various wars and later became president.Now the leaders of the many student associations,known as nations, are standing on the cathedral steps between two huge bonfires. Accompanied by the mayor of Helsinki they give patriotic speeches and sing songs. The programme follows a fixed order: every speech begins with the words ‘Besta Studenta’ and is answered from the square by the loud and yet somehow muffled sound of gloved hands clapping. Afterwards everyone sings along with the national anthem, 72

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the only moment for which the white caps come off. As soon as the torches are snuffed and discarded in giant containers everyone is off home, caps back on. Everywhere in the city – in the streets, in the trams – long trails of white are visible. As Finnish parents and grandparents are prone to remind their children and grandchildren, it takes plenty of hard work to earn one of those white caps.The cap is the ultimate acknowledgement of a successful secondary school career and a symbol of the privilege of being able to enter higher education; consequently, it is worn with great pride.The first day of May,traditionally the international Labour Day,has been adopted by students in Finland and they don their caps then, too. However, just having a cap is not enough to guarantee entrance to a university, especially for young people hoping to study in Helsinki. The entrance examination is extremely tough, as statistics demonstrate: of the , students who applied in  only , were admitted, which works out to twenty percent. ‘It took me three years,’ says Saija Jokela, . According to the university this is precisely the average. So Jokela was lucky. As she explains, ‘all Finnish girls want to study veterinary medicine, so the exam is one of the most difficult.’ To keep busy while she waited, she worked in a school kitchen and as a bus conductor, among other things. Before her last attempt she had studied for nine months. Commercial organizations offer courses which guarantee success or a full refund of course fees. But believe it or not, an exam is required to take part in those as well. This situation seems like the only disadvantage of the Finnish system, says sixthyear political science student Tommi Laitio, . He finds it difficult to explain the procedure to outsiders:‘They get the impression that we live in some kind of ideal state,’he says. And although he tends to get worked up about, for example, the vice rector’s suggestion that foreign students should pay tuition fees, he has to admit that students in Finland have it much easier than those in some other European countries. A week ago he was in the Netherlands talking with peers from other European student unions about higher education. Dutch Secretary of State for Education Marc Rutte was there as well and his comments drew Laitio’s attention: ‘He said that students would be happy to pay for higher education, because in essence they would be buying their way into elite circles.’‘What on earth!’ is Saija Jokela’s shocked reaction to this. ‘It’s true,’ says Laitio. ‘He talked about “the right to pay”, something no minister here would ever say.’ Jokela confirms this:‘Elite is a dirty word in Finland. Education is financially beneficial for the entire country and should be financed by taxes.’ This is why Finnish students pay no tuition fees and have a right to a  months basic grant of  euros per month with an additional two hundred euro supplement to cover housing costs. Their only obligatory expense is a sixty-euro membership contribution to the student union, half of which goes to a fund that covers health insurance. The unions are enormously powerful, explains Laitio: ‘They are among the wealthiest student communities in the world and own a large section of the city centre.’ Properties include student cafeterias (‘cheapest food in Finland’), branches of the Killroy Travels travel agency and a number of large student dormitories. Among these are two helsingin yliopisto

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buildings in the heart of the city, The Old and The New Student House. Chemistry student Teemu Halme, , provides a tour. Inside the dormitory a long Art Nouveau staircase winds up many storeys past over one  different departments of the student union.These include the editorial offices of the Finnish and Swedish language university newspaper, the department that provides child care for students’ children, the vegetarian eco-friendly animal lovers’ club, the gay and lesbian organization and the hippy club. The higher floors are the domain of the nations, among which all students are assigned a place according to the province in which they were born. Membership is mandatory by law. Four of the fifteen nations are reserved for speakers of Swedish. All of the nations have similar floors with a bar and something Talme finds even more important, a kitchen. ‘Food is essential at Finnish parties,’ he says.There is also a large hall and the usual souvenirs such as coats of arms, busts and portraits of illustrious Finns of yore who were the previous members of the nations.The nation occupying the top floor is truly lucky: the dome on the roof, with its many small windows, offers a magnificent view of the city.‘Some people even climb out on to the ledge to admire the view,’ says Halme.‘It’s a miracle no one has fallen off yet.’ On his own floor he weaves around yet another stack of beer crates waiting to be cleared out after a party. If the labels on the bottles look familiar it is because one can find them plastered on lampposts around the city by way of advertising.Oddly enough, though, there is no explanatory text or brand name, so tourists tend to think they are some sort of traffic warning sign. But besides the Karhu Olut beer (or another favourite, Lapin Kulta, whose name means ‘Lapland’s Gold’), as Tommi Laitio explains there is another ingredient necessary for a successful student party: vodka. Regardless of the kind of party one attends, there are two hard and fast rules: bring it yourself and drink it in the toilets. The only party variable is dress code. For the raunchy faculty parties this means the overalls each student receives at the beginning of the academic year.Laitio lets the smooth fabric slip through his fingers.‘Easy to clean – it’s some kind of non-stick material,’ is his approving conclusion. The stripes and bright colours may seem to outsiders to be a cross between a Formula One racing suit and an old-fashioned prison costume, but students recognize in them the various faculty affiliations of the other revellers. Not only that, but they can also see whatever new affiliations may have been formed on a particular night, as tradition has it that any student who engages in intimate forms of exchange with someone from another faculty is required to exchange a sleeve or trouser leg with them as well. However,even at the swankiest of soirees,guests in tuxedoes still gather in the toilets between courses – and not for calls of nature. From his own experience Laitio knows that this is the place where one can rub shoulders with a range of former Helsinki students including politicians and other dignitaries. He elaborates: ‘I once stood in the toilets with the Minister of Finance and the Army Major General; we drank up an entire bottle of booze.’ 74

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leiden

Universiteit Leiden by David Bremmer

Leiden University in facts and figures: Founded in 1575 17,250 students 4,156 staff Budget D 415 million

Praesidium Libertatis – Bastion of Liberty: this is the motto of Leiden University and it refers not only to the university’s aim, to be a bastion of scientific liberty, but also to its history as the Netherlands’ oldest institute of higher learning.The university’s foundation was a direct result of the  uprising in the Netherlands against the Spanish King Philips II.When the Spaniards laid siege to the city twice in ,it seemed that the imminent threat of starvation would force its mayor and city councillors to capitulate. However, the city fathers were steadfast and on October  , Leiden was liberated by insurgents known as Watergeuzen, who destroyed the surrounding dyke works. To reward the bravery of the heroes of Leiden, William of Orange, leader of the revolt and an ancestor of the present Queen Beatrix, presented the city with its own university.

The more than four hundred years old ‘Academiegebouw’ is used for academic ceremonies, speeches and festivities

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 Years later, the university is omnipresent in the city of Leiden. A walk along the Rapenburg, the city’s most famous canal, leads one past the Academiegebouw, or Academy Building, where inaugural lectures are delivered, doctorates conferred and other ceremonial activities held. Across the canal in the building previously occupied by the university library are the central university offices. Further along is the stately facade of the Kamerlingh Onnes Laboratory. One hundred ears ago Kamerlingh Onnes created the world’s coldest room here: he was the first scientist to transform helium into a liquid at - °C, an achievement which earned him a Nobel Prize and the nickname ‘Monsieur Zéro Absolu’.Today the building houses the law faculty. Besides the faculty buildings there is also plenty of student accommodation, the residents of which can often be found outdoors on a summer evening, sitting on benches with a case of beer or a bottle of cool wine. Leiden University may be known as a classical, even somewhat conservative university, but in  it is thoroughly modern. The huge Bio Science Park on the city’s outskirts is an example of this. Built fifteen years ago, it is now the largest of its kind in the Netherlands and houses tens of bio-businesses as well as the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences and the Leiden University Medical Centre. The continuing expansion of the Bio Science Park is symbolic of the ambitions of the university’s Board of Governors.These include attracting hundreds of international students and lecturers over the coming ten years and reinforcing Leiden’s position in the arena of high-level research. In order to achieve this, it is essential to cater to the needs of the most excellent of students and researchers;this is the aim of the university’s new strategy of ‘Choosing Talent’. In this way the Board hopes to revive the position held by the university in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when its brilliance placed it among the world’s top universities and it was home to famous scientists including Daniel Heinsius, Justus Joseph Scaliger and Bonaventura Vulcanius. The Bio Science Park is also reminiscent of the end of Leiden University’s second golden age at the end of the nineteenth century, when Nobel Prize winners Kamerlingh Onnes, Hendrik Antoon Lorentz and Pieter Zeeman made their groundbreaking discoveries and when the university was a Mecca for physicists. Its rich scientific tradition, the patriotic pride associated with its foundation and its royal connections have put Leiden University in a privileged position in the Netherlands. Professor Douwe Breimer, Rector Magnificus, is convinced that this is a benefit and a challenge rather than a disadvantage for the university. ‘Although there is plenty of room for improvement, we are setting our aims high. We want to become a permanent fixture in the higher echelons of research in all of Europe.’

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Rector Magnificus Douwe Breimer on the Need for Internationalization

‘We Have Healthy Ambitions’

To make a European university out of Leiden Rector Magnificus Douwe Breimer wants to attract more foreign students and researchers

Rector Magnificus Douwe Breimer’s greatest wish is to make Leiden one of Europe’s top universities. To achieve this, over the next ten years the university will have to attract thirty percent of its graduate students and a quarter of its academic staff from abroad. He may be the most celebrated scientist at Leiden University, but Rector Magnificus Douwe Breimer finds he hardly has time for research these days. Administrative responsibilities have been eating away at his time since  and will continue to do so, as his term as Rector has just been extended by two years.But although Professor Breimer is respected both in and outside of Leiden as a talented administrator, he remains first and foremost a scientist. His research in pharmacology has earned him seven honorary doctorates. He has just received his latest from Montreal, which means that he has now had the privilege of collecting them on three continents. Perhaps this explains part of his interest in international collaboration, which extends beyond his own university to the European forum: he is one of the founding members of LERU. ‘I am absolutely convinced that international cooperation will continue to grow in importance and that people will increasingly look beyond their own country’s borders.’ universiteit leiden

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Your Board of Governors has just launched a new campaign: ‘Choosing Talent’. What does this encompass? To attain a leading position in European research and education, we want to attract many more talented scientists and students over the coming five years. One way we will do this is to be more selective in the way we admit students. Internationalization is also extremely important: after all, talent is not to be found all in one place. ‘Choosing Talent’ should help us to achieve our international ambitions. Why does Leiden want to become more international? I am absolutely convinced that international cooperation will continue to grow in importance and that people will increasingly look beyond their own country’s borders, which means that internationalization will be a must in order for us to function alongside the very best researchers. For this reason, ten years from now we would like to see thirty to  percent of our graduate students coming from abroad, as well as twenty percent of our academic staff –  percent if you include PhD candidates. Most of our new master’s degree programmes are starting this year, which is a lot of work since they are primarily given in English. This kind of ambition has not done much for Leiden’s popularity in the Netherlands. Other universities accuse Leiden of being arrogant. Perhaps that is because we are usually the first in the Netherlands to do things differently. For instance the Binding Study Advice, which we introduced in , where students who don’t get enough credits have to stop with that subject. Now other universities are using that too. We are also proponents of preselection of students, if the proper tools for selection are in place, and of higher tuition fees for some programmes. Still, Leiden has never claimed superiority; Maastricht and Rotterdam do. What we do say is that we want to be among the best in Europe, and that seems to me to be a healthy ambition. If others confuse our determination with arrogance, then that’s just too bad. Still, could it be that these international ambitions are making Leiden act just a bit too hastily? After all,the Netherlands is the only country to have already introduced the bachelor-master system. It could certainly be a handicap that the rest of Europe is taking so long to get the bachelor-master system going. It could even slow us down in terms of internationalization, since it will be relatively difficult for students from other European countries to come to Leiden. The other side of the coin is that we are not limiting ourselves to Europe; we also want to cooperate with universities in the rest of the world. I have been to China every year for the last three years,for example.We have a great many language and cultural programmes, which makes the world outside of Europe very important for us.The more contacts we have, the more we can send students to these places.

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How is Leiden doing at the moment? We still have a long way to go. First of all we have to get our master’s degree programmes into the spotlight – that is taking up all our attention now. Also, some of our students and academic staff will have to have help in improving their English.Our staff really must become more international in the long term. Another problem is housing; we need to make many more rooms and apartments available for the talented students and academics we want to attract. The same goes for the facilities we are able to offer, for instance sports and social activities. And our marketing has to be stronger; we have to be able to present ourselves in a favourable light to students at other universities. So what I am saying is that we have plenty to do, though it will be quite a while before we have achieved all of this. Speaking of internationalization, you were one of the founders of LERU in May . How did the League come into being? The very first time that something like this occurred to me was when I was working as a scientist at the Faculty of Mathematics and Science and the Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC); the latter organisation was already involved in a similar collaborative network.When I became Rector Magnificus in , I immediately realized that a league of European universities would be a good counterweight to the Bologna Treaty, which sets out a European educational area and strives to allow students more mobility within it. It was clear from the beginning that there would be significant differences in quality among the European universities, especially in research. Should every student who can show us a bachelor’s diploma be allowed to enrol here in Leiden? Or should you set certain criteria in cooperation with other universities whose judgement you trust? These were the questions we asked ourselves. Using league tables, among other measurement tools, we conducted a thorough evaluation of a number of universities to determine which ones were truly excellent and which less so.Then I sat down with the Rector of Louvain and with the vice-chancellors of Oxford and Cambridge to talk through the idea. What are the League’s aims? The purpose of LERU is to impress upon the European Union and politicians in Brussels the importance of fundamental research. This does not mean only the sciences but also the humanities, which deal with social questions.Thanks to our rich cultural heritage, we in Europe are also good at this, as we told the former European Commissioner Philippe Busquin when we visited each other. Besides this, cooperation within the League is equally important, for example the exchange of best practices and knowledge transfer. We recently held a two-day conference in Louvain; each member university gave a presentation on patents, spin-offs, entrepreneurship and the implications of various funding constructions. So we at Leiden are rather in a middle position; Louvain, Oxford and Cambridge are still far more advanced in all of this than we are. universiteit leiden

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In spite of these activities and plans, some of the League universities seem mainly to be interested in the first thing you mentioned: lobbying in Brussels. Undeniably, lobbying in Brussels is extremely important to some of the universities, especially the British ones. And Oxford and Cambridge will certainly not be changing their admissions policies just to suit the League. But thinking of LERU as nothing more than a lobbying organization is selling us short. We have a great number of collaborative projects running at the moment and have plans for many more.It must be remembered that although we encourage members to participate in our activities, they are under no obligation to do so. As far as lobbying goes, does LERU have any influence in Europe? It would seem so.We have held talks with Commissioner Busquin and his successor about increasing subsidies for fundamental scientific research. We have also agitated for the foundation of a European Research Council similar to the Dutch NWO, the central organisation for the funding of scientific research This would not replace the national research organizations of the various countries,but distribute funds for fundamental scientific research on the basis of quality. The chances of a European Research Council actually getting off the ground are quite good. Back to the Netherlands: over the past twenty years the government has slashed funding for higher education – in many people’s opinion this has been far too drastic. Do you have the money to realize all your ambitions? This is indeed a great problem and the situation would be even worse should the Netherlands decide to stop investing in research. Luckily for us, the philosophy which has led to the financial clampdowns of the past two decades seems to be changing.The government seems finally to have realized that if we are to be able to function as a knowledge-based society,we will need universities and plenty of well-educated people. This doesn’t mean that we are satisfied now, because we are not yet getting the extra money we need. Actually, looking at the overall picture we have even less than we had before. I tend to think in terms of a steady state instead of a projected rate of growth.’ You are a member of the Innovation Platform set up by Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende. Surely you can convince him of the importance of all this? The present cabinet under Mr Balkenende as well as the Ministry of Education have made a good start, but they will have to carry through. Part of the problem is that politicians have plenty of ideas about education but tend to forget about research. Still, I’m optimistic. After all, the Netherlands is still doing well in research on an international level, and I don’t expect any more big cutbacks within the next ten years. My only worry for the moment is the new financing system due to be introduced over the next few years.

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Because of the benefits to both the university and themselves, professor Jan Pieter Abrahams states that more researchers should start their own companies

Exploring and Inventing at Leiden University

Between Bio Science Park and Medieval Manuscript Leiden University aims for the highest level of research in both the sciences and the humanities. As the super-modern Bio Science Park takes shape on the western edge of the city,the Scaliger Institute strives to make the university library’s historic collections accessible for researchers. ‘Explorers and inventors, that’s what we are,’ says Frans Saris, Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences. He speaks with both enthusiasm and bravura.‘We are interested in fundamental research in, for example, number theory, but also in developing new medicines or finding a way to get paint to dry quicker.’ Dean Saris can afford to be proud,since his faculty is doing extremely well.Last year its researchers published  articles in scientific journals, registered  and set up a number of spin-off companies. Half of its eight hundred researchers are from abroad, which makes it a shining example of the internationalism which is so important to the university.The future looks bright as well,especially in the light of agreements between the municipality of Leiden and the university to enlarge the Bio Science Park by an additional , square meters. universiteit leiden

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Looking out of the window of his office, Dean Saris indicates the Bio Science Park. ‘This will be the biggest complex of its kind in the Netherlands. Within ten years I hope we will have acquired a centre for biodiversity and that all of the national Zoology and Biology collections will be housed here.’ The expansion of the Park, with companies such as Centocor and Crucell as major players, is of great importance to the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, explains the dean.‘This would facilitate an exchange of knowledge that would inspire researchers and create new opportunities. Many of our professors and researchers have already been able to form close collaborations with the forty bio-companies presently involved. A number of these companies were set up by our researchers.’ Dean Saris considers this a logical development, since it is the universities’ task to transfer their knowledge to society.‘And if we can’t achieve that through an existing company, we set one up ourselves.’ One researcher who did just that is Jan Pieter Abrahams, Professor of Biophysical Structural Chemistry, who assisted in setting up two businesses. ‘When I became acquainted with Avantium five years ago, its director Ian Maxwell asked me if I would work on the rapid development of crystal forms of medicines. Using technology developed by my research team we set up the Crystallics company in .’ Professor Abrahams explains why crystal forms are essential for the proper functioning of medicines.‘Medicines can exist in a variety of crystal forms. If the crystals do not dissolve completely, then the medicine will not be absorbed by the body, which means that it will have little or no effect.If they dissolve too well,then we run the risk of overdose. In the past this has led to terrible accidents resulting in patient deaths. Factories have had to be closed.’The latter illustrates the medical and economic interests that the project represents. Although Professor Abrahams played only a supporting role when Crystallics was set up, he is joint owner of another company, Key Drug Prototyping (Key DP).‘Initially, we wanted to conduct research into proteins at Crystallics, since proteins are the socalled targets to which medicines adhere. When we failed to get funding for this, I joined forces with my post-doctoral researchers to set up Key DP.’ The two businesses have been successful. Crystallics currently employs twenty people and is reasonably profitable. Key DP, set up in , employs six. ‘We are not earning anything yet, but the outlook is good – turnover has risen fifty percent each year since we started,’ he says. Professor Abrahams is convinced that his entrepreneurship has had a beneficial effect on his research.‘It is good to be involved in more than one thing at a time,’ he says. ‘New businesses generate knowledge and new ideas; you meet people you would otherwise not have met and you think about things from a new perspective. All of this contributes to the creative process, although not always in the most obvious of ways.’ Elsewhere in the city, the Scaliger Institute is also involved in contributing to the creative process. Set up in , the institute’s brief was to make the collections of Leiden’s University Library, the UB, more accessible for researchers in and outside of Lei82

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den. That is no mean feat, considering that the UB is one of the world’s oldest and largest university libraries.Its collections range from the original manuscripts of seventeenth-century scientists like Christiaan Huygens and Justus Lipsius to maps and atlases by the Amsterdam publisher Blaeu. Special collections contain a large number of Middle Dutch texts as well as texts and manuscripts from the Islamic world. ‘The Scaliger Institute was the brainchild of the previous librarian, Paul Gerretsen,’ explains director Paul Hoftijzer. ‘Gerretsen wanted students and researchers to be more closely involved with the library.’ His ideas have been realized, and now the Scaliger Institute, named after the UB’s most important patron, the sixteenth-century Leiden scholar Josephus Justus Scaliger (-), offers financial support to researchers worldwide. ‘Every year we invite about fifteen Scaliger fellows to work here for one to three months at our expense,’ says coordinator Kasper van Ommen. ‘This is beneficial to both parties: not only does the researcher benefit, but we do too as the research generally leads to a book or exhibition.’ Ineke Smit is a theologian and religious historian and is one of the fellows invited to nose through the UB’s collection in search of books and other documents.She is particularly interested in nineteenth-century Dutch pamphlets and brochures dealing with the modernist struggle. ‘The modernists – unrelated to the art movement of the same name – were theologians who wanted to reconcile Christian belief with developments in the natural sciences. It was the age of Darwin. Germany as well had produced a new movement of religious and Bible studies which upheld the idea that Christianity was only one of many religions and that the Bible was not the word of God but was written by men.’ The modernists were eager to embrace new scientific theories and still remain Christian. ‘This led to them being attacked by both orthodox believers and free thinkers such as Multatuli, the most famous Dutch author of the th century. Where the orthodox Christians felt the modernists were going too far,the free thinkers were of the opinion that they should take a firmer stand. This led to enormous battles being fought out by pamphleteers.’ Smit’s research has produced over  titles; she has selected .‘These will be included in a catalogue, an end product. So in fact what I am actually doing is setting down a new special collection.’ Research opportunities like this are what make the Scaliger Institute special. Paul Hoftijzer elaborates.‘The Scaliger Institute is unique in the world – at least that is what our international researchers tell us. Nowhere else is there a special institute concerned with collections in this way.’ The institute does not limit itself to this task. There is currently a special Scaliger Professor who gives lectures and talks and composes exhibitions.The institute also organizes projects, one of which was the digital conservation of over one thousand letters written by the botanist Carolus Clusius (-) with a related research project. Still, says Kasper van Ommen, there is plenty of work to be done. ‘We would like to make better use of the collections for education. It seems to be difficult to get students universiteit leiden

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in here for master classes, for example.’ Is this really so important for students, then? ‘We firmly believe that students should be exposed to authentic material. The feeling you get when you handle a mediaeval manuscript – the smell of it – is indescribable. It excites the senses.’ Van Ommen and Hoftijzer would also like to see ties with the Universities of Louvain and Oxford strengthened. ‘Among other things, we have been considering exchange programmes for curators.There is so much going on in the library world that it would be useful to join forces and share knowledge.’ Sharing knowledge is something that unites the sciences and the humanities in Leiden, as Frans Saris and Professor Abrahams agree. This is the reason that the Bio Science Park is so important for Leiden University and the Leiden University Medical Centre.Luckily,researchers are increasingly interested in entrepreneurship,says Abrahams. ‘Especially the younger generation.The idea that the taxpayer is responsible for funding research has greatly disappeared.’ Dean Saris has also noticed this development.‘This is reinforced by the fact that ties with commercial industry are increasingly a prerequisite for the distribution of funding.’ He has no fear that this will threaten the position of fundamental research, however. ‘Because NWO and the European Union recognize its importance, it will remain possible.’ Saris wants to be able to support scientists hoping to set up their own businesses. ‘The university certainly made a big contribution to my entrepreneurship,’ concurs Abrahams.‘The support I received was both moral and material. For instance, I was allowed to concentrate on my business during my working hours and I also had access to laboratories and other facilities.’He calls it a win-win situation.‘It is a positive development that the university’s overcapacity in terms of apparatus and facilities is put to good use. For instance, there is equipment worth half a million euros that nobody uses at the weekends. Key DP is allowed to use it in exchange for  percent of its shares.’ It is not only the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences that realizes the importance of commercial activity for its researchers. Since not all faculties are ready to deal with the phenomenon equally well the university is working on a uniform code of practice. In this way it hopes to catch up with other universities who have already been working this way for a longer period of time.This should increase the quality of the research conducted in Leiden. ‘It is absolutely necessary for researchers to generate funds for their research themselves,’ says Professor Abrahams. ‘This is how it has been throughout the university’s history.’ It also forces the researchers to justify their work.‘Personally, my most important motivation is still curiosity. But to satisfy this curiosity, I need resources. And because not everyone is fascinated by the same things as I am, I have to get people interested in my research and to demonstrate its practical applications.’

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‘In Leiden you’ve got the university, and besides there is Minerva: that’s all you need’, says Minerva-chairman Willem Kröner

Leiden is Famous for Its Student Life

‘Club Members Study Faster’ If there is one Dutch city especially known for its rich student life, it would have to be Leiden. Although changes to the law have meant that students today have to study harder than ever before,nonetheless over half of Leiden’s students belong to a student club. Whether it is down to tradition or simply because the bars close early, in Leiden it is customary to join a student club. For half of the city’s students, social life means activities among the members of Augustinus, Catena, Minerva, Quintus or SSR. No other city in the Netherlands has so many student clubs with memberships of over five hundred.The clubs are all housed in large buildings, often historic ones, and they are constantly buzzing with activity. Even leaving aside clubs for specific religious and cultural populations and for study programmes,the range of student associations makes Leiden the top student city of the Netherlands. Students have been banding together since the university was founded in . In the seventeenth century, when Leiden was an international university with Latin as the language of instruction, they organized themselves according to their country of origin; from the nineteenth century on they formed clubs. universiteit leiden

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Long tradition has led to the city’s inextricable association with student life. Located halfway between Amsterdam and The Hague, it is seen as student city like no other. References to elitist snobbism tend to crop up often, as the stereotypical Leiden student is perceived as a loud mouthed, conservatively dressed and a little bit arrogant figure If Leiden is the best-known student city of the Netherlands, then Minerva is by far the most well-known student club. ‘In Leiden you’ve got the university and you’ve got Minerva; that’s all you need,’ says Minerva’s president Willem Kröner. ‘We provide students with a complete package, including housing in one of our student complexes and a range of sports and social activities including debating, field hockey and glider flight.’ Fourth-year law student Patricia van den Ende agrees.‘Minerva really has the most to offer; anything you could want from a student club you can find here.’ Florentine Havercamp, a friend from the Lucha sorority, adds that the club organizes big parties and enjoys close association with student clubs in Delft, Groningen and Amsterdam. ‘Also, members are encouraged to be active in club life and to take part in committees, for example.’ The history of these clubs, or corps as they are known, goes back a long way. In the second half of the eighteenth century, initiation senates were charged with the distribution of new students among the various programmes; one of these senates was called Duca Minerva.The Leiden Student Corps was founded in  and the Association of Female Students in Leiden in ; these two merged in  to form Minerva. Since then Minerva has occupied an important position in the city of Leiden and in the university. For many years during the nineteenth century it was responsible for the organization of the October rd remembrance celebrations for the lifting of the siege of , when the city council lost interest in doing so. As higher education became more accessible for students outside the higher social classes,starting at the end of the nineteenth century,more and more student clubs were formed. The year  saw the inception of the Protestant club Societas Studiosorum Reformatorum (SSR); the Catholic club Augustinus, currently Minerva’s rival for the title of largest student club in Leiden,was formed in .Each has approximately  members. The fact that Minerva occupied the leading position among Leiden’s student clubs while at the same time being perceived as rather jejune was met with resistance, and in  a new club was founded, the non-conformist Catena.This club came forth out of a sentiment of rebellion against the post-war idea of unitas which stipulated that every student should become a member of a corps. ‘Our club is characterized by a great degree of freedom and we are proud of the fact that we do not oblige our members to do anything other than pay their contributions,’ explains board member Petra Herschab. Where Minerva is known as highly student-centred, Catena is famous for being leftist and alternative.‘There are plenty of misconceptions about Catena,’ says law student Casper Elshof. ‘A lot of people think we are a group of pothead heavy metal fans. 86

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But that is far from accurate. We may be seen as different, but I think that is more because we are so open and offer alternatives to the other clubs.’ Paul Hendriks, chairman of Catena, and member since , has seen a clear shift away from the left over the past ten years. ‘In the days of punk and new wave music, our clubhouse walls were painted black and the ceiling lowered. Perhaps that’s where the image comes from of our students sitting around in a bat cave, smoking dope and listening to depressing music.’ Still,it is true that Catena is the only club where marijuana smoking is allowed.Herschab is quick to set the record straight.‘It is definitely less these days than it used to be. Actually, it just isn’t an issue with us. People are allowed to light up a joint if they want to, but if anyone objects, then they are free to say so. So yes, we do have our heavy users, but nobody really makes a big deal of it. Not even our straight edgers.’ Although club life in Leiden continues to flourish,there are dark clouds on the horizon.The Dutch government has tightened the screws on students over the last twenty years.Tuition fees, for instance, have risen to nearly  euros per year; even corrected for inflation that represents a threefold increase since . Grants, however, have hardly risen, and the period for which they are given has been reduced to five years. Anyone who fails to graduate within the allotted time is required to pay back his grant. The university itself has added to the pressure by introducing the Binding Study Advice (BSA) at the end of the ’s. This system stipulates that first-year students must accumulate two-thirds of the required study credits within the first year or face expulsion. The rules will be tightened next year to require that three-quarters of firstyear credits are accumulated within one year and the propedeuse, or first-year diploma, rounded off within two years. All of this means that today’s students not only think twice before joining a club but are also less likely to participate in boards and committees. In spite of this, Willem Kröner sees some positive aspects.‘I think it is a healthy development that students can no longer spend seven years completing their studies,even though we have seen our membership drop,’ he says. Still, the remaining members are as active as ever. ‘Student activism is unswervingly great; students still understand that it is good for their development to be involved in organizing a gala ball or making a yearbook.’ Florentine Havercamp thinks that Minerva’s members are more active than those at Quintus and Augustinus. ‘Here everyone counts on you helping out, but elsewhere it’s not cool to get involved.’ Higher pressure to achieve has led to students in Leiden learning to improve their planning skills.‘If we have a lecture or workshop the next day,then we don’t stay out late the night before, or we just stay in,’ says Liesbeth, a student.‘Students here are expected to pull their weight and get their credits.If they don’t,they aren’t asked to help with club duties.’ Everyone agrees that it is not overly difficult to combine club life with a busy study schedule. ‘Statistics show that students who are members of social clubs study faster and better than those who are not,’ says Willem Kröner. Laura, a student, agrees. ‘We are right on schedule with our studies, but we sit on all kinds of committees.’ universiteit leiden

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Petra Herschab has not noticed any significant drop in membership at Catena. ‘Although,’ she says, ‘in the year the BSA was introduced, we had only  new members – but that has since returned to normal.’In her opinion Catena’s students are less likely to suffer from overwork than those at Augustinus, Minerva and Quintus. ‘Members of Catena are not required to fulfil any duties, so the idea of not joining up because of the obligations involved is not an issue here.’ Even so, those members who do nothing and see Catena only as a source of cheap drinks when the city’s bars are closed do not meet with approbation. ‘It is a pity, but on the other hand there are plenty of members who do volunteer to help get things done.’ Most likely the strict new study guidelines will lead to a more rapid turnover in Catena’s membership. Long-term members like Paul Hendriks, who has been around for fourteen years, and Casper Elshof, a fixture for eight, will disappear. Still, the club’s next-door neighbour, the seventy year-old widow of a former member, still pops round every week for a vodka-and-orange. ‘Nobody minds if you keep turning up, as long as you don’t start talking about how things were better in the old days,’ says Hendriks. And they really weren’t, according to him. ‘I think the atmosphere is more open these days; there is more solidarity, too. In  Catena was a bit of an outsider in the academic world, but that is certainly different today.’

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louvain

Katholieke Universiteit Leuven by Thomas Blondeau

Catholic University of Louvain in facts and figures: Founded in 1425 29,254 students 7,725 staff Budget D 512 million

Rumour has it that the municipality has anchored the paving stones in Louvain’s Ladeuze Square in a bed of cement, hoping to deprive demonstrating students of an easy source of weapons.The stones played a major role in the ’s when students agitated publicly for a more democratic university system and an exclusively Dutch-language university. ‘Leuven Vlaams’ – Louvain Flemish – reached its apex of success in , when the Catholic University of Louvain split into two separate institutions:The Dutch-language branch, Katholieke Universiteit te Leuven (KULeuven), located in Louvain and Kortrijk, and the Francophone Université Catholique de Louvain in Ottignies-Louvain-la-Neuve. As one of the founding members of LERU, KULeuven is the home of the League’s administrative offices.

The University Library on the Ladeuze Square

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In the centre of the square a giant beetle seems pinned to the clouds at the top of a  metre pin. KULeuven donated the sculpture, created by Belgian artist Jan Fabre, to the city of Louvain in the academic year - to celebrate its -year history. The Totem, as it is named, represents an ode to science and beauty. The sculpture is appropriately located in front of the impressive university library. The library’s walls are inscribed with the names of other universities, mainly American ones, who provided the necessary funds for the reconstruction of the library after the violence of two World Wars.The library had been damaged deep into its paper heart; it was this grievous vandalism that earned the Germans the nickname ‘Huns’ in . They had attacked one of the oldest Catholic universities, founded in  and home to Erasmus’s Institute of Humanism a century later. It was this Catholic identity that led to years of closure that began during the French occupation of .Today, this identity is mainly visible in the courses that are a mandatory part of every curriculum here: philosophy in the first year and interpretations of world religion in the fourth. Louvain eventually grew to be Flanders’ largest university, serving nearly , students.It is renowned for the quality of its education and research and accounts for  percent of research published in Flanders over the past ten years. In the sciences, onequarter of its research is published in the top ten percent of scientific journals. A student who is unsuccessful after two years of study here can still graduate from another university with flying colours, higher-year students are proud to proclaim. The Belgian and Flemish governments take a highly democratic view of the accessibility of higher education, which means that selective admissions procedures are banned in the main.An exception to this rule is medicine,for which there is an entrance examination.The result of this open-door policy is that a great many students drop out of popular programmes during the first year. Legend has it that one professor is fond of terrifying his first-year students by opening his first lecture with the words, ‘Dear students, take a good look at the students sitting next to you, in front of you, behind you – because they won’t be here next year!’ All of the traditional disciplines are represented here with the exception of veterinary science. Scientific fame has been achieved with the development of an anti-AIDS drug cocktail; another renowned fixture here is geneticist Jean-Jacques Cassiman, whose expertise was enlisted to verify the identity of the living descendants of King Louis XVII. A stone’s throw away from Ladeuze Square is a stone statue of the naked body of Proud Margriet, representing the miracle legend of a woman raped and murdered in the Middle Ages. Someone has attired her rather indecorously in a bikini of toothpaste and shaving cream. Proud Margriet’s odd attire could be explained by her location in Tiensestraat, where a number of the faculty cafés can be found. Ragging time (called baptism in Flanders) sees many a fresher covered in ketchup and egg, straddling the statue. In the wee hours countless night-owls stream along the Old Market – also known as ‘the world’s longest bar’ – and back towards their digs. Some are on their way home from a 90

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cantus,a traditional sing-along party which is more about drinking than singing.However, foreign students and tourists looking for fun in the weekends tend to be disappointed: Fridays bring mass exodus as students leave the city to visit their parents. These days, the paving stones in Ladeuze Square remain safely where they belong. The most popular activity in the square,whenever the municipality gives permission,is a cantus to the tune of the carillon in the university library’s tower.

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Rector André Oosterlinck on the Pursuit of the Outstanding University

A Democratic Elite

‘If professors from the engineering faculty were to let go of all their contacts in the industrial sector, then I would be very worried’

Rector André Oosterlinck has held his position for the past ten years and is coming to the end of his last term.He sees the development of top universities and a process of increasing uniformity as future trends in European education. In the meantime he strives to make higher education accessible to all without compromising on quality. You were involved in LERU from early on, were you not? The rector at Leiden, Douwe Breimer, and I were invited to participate in the hundredth anniversary of the American Association of Universities. This is a group of  American universities who have joined forces to increase mutual recognition but more importantly to lobby in Washington. They had also invited a number of other rectors from around the world.Three of us – my colleague from Leiden, the vice-chancellor at Cambridge and myself – were struck by the desire to create something similar in Europe.The rector of Leiden, who was the first to bring up this issue, asked the Centre for Science and Technology Studies in Leiden to examine publications by sixty universities with the intention of choosing the fifteen best. Of course something like this provides more of an indication of quality rather than an absolute statement.Anyway,it was on the basis of this research that the original twelve members were chosen. We started with Leiden, Louvain, Karolinska, Oxford and Cambridge; we convinced the rector of Oxford University to chair the association. Professor Breimer and I became joint vicepresidents. So why did we do it? Our main aim is to lobby in Brussels for European science, rather in the same way that the Bologna Treaty put the emphasis on education at universities. As research universities, we wanted similar exposure. 92

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Now that international students, backed up by the Bologna Treaty, are looking around to find the best possible universities,what do you think the consequences will be for the universities as a whole? I believe we will develop a tiered system similar to that in the US. There, the first question one asks is where someone studied, not what subject.This shift is taking place here as well. For example, we once carried out a survey among one hundred managers responsible for choosing and appointing staff; results showed that where a candidate had studied was considered highly important.In the US you see a level that is outstanding and under that a number of lower levels.This is the model we in LERU would like to see take shape in Europe. In our present knowledge-based economy, many people aspire to university education,but the top universities cannot absorb all of them.This would lead to an inefficient use of resources and an orientation towards the lowest common denominator. In other words, striving for an average level of quality would mean moving a step up for some universities, but a step down for others, which is surely not what we want. European universities cannot demand high tuition fees; this seems like a disadvantage when compared with American universities whose fees are so high. Putting up tuition fees would seem to be a good way of filtering out all but the most motivated students, but the government is against this. Furthermore, American Universities have a system of grants at their disposal. ‘Whatever happens I think that universities will rank themselves of their own accord in terms of quality. What we see increasingly now is that the first year, to which everyone may be admitted, already tends to work as a kind of filter. Some universities prefer to do this at the door, but we adhere to the democratic principle that anyone who wants to give it a go may do so.This is a matter of principle for us in Flanders and I do not see anything wrong with it. But it does not mean making concessions as far as quality is concerned. Even though we accept everyone who registers for the first year, we reserve the right to tell someone,‘No, you haven’t made the grade. Still, in Oxford there is one lecturer for every two students. If I come to Louvain to study psychology I will be in a lecture hall with four hundred other students. Doesn’t that affect the quality of education? Not necessarily. Of course we cannot provide such small tutor groups. But we successfully send our graduates on to the best universities in the world, which proves that we are doing just fine here.We simply cannot afford the intensive tutoring systems that some other universities employ.While we do work in large lecture halls,we also teach in smaller groups. We also use a programme of coached self-study, which teaches people easier ways of acquiring knowledge and how to use that knowledge to better advantage. You wrote recently that you believe that universities should be guaranteed the possibility to conduct fundamental research, yet at the same time you maintain intensive contacts within the industrial sector. katholieke universiteit leuven

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The Flemish government permits us to cooperate with industry as long as we retain publication rights for our research. When commercial interests are involved, we are allowed to delay publication for a maximum of six months, but no longer than that. Our professors are not allowed to have direct contacts within the industrial sector – LR&D (Leuven Research and Development – TB) is responsible for that. It is not so much a question of guaranteeing independent research as of protecting relatively inexperienced professors in dealings with commercial industry. Professors do communicate about scientific aspects, but legal matters are handled by an intermediary. Of course there is some degree of mutual influence, but that is a good thing – it would be a pity if the two were to exist in parallel worlds. What happens in the practical application of research helps determine which new directions basic theory should take. There has been criticism of the new businesslike approach that the European universities are presently taking.You have been on the receiving end of some of it. Let me put it this way: if professors from the engineering faculty were to let go of all their contacts in the industrial sector, then I would be very worried. If professors from the arts faculties were to build up extensive contacts in the industrial sector, then I would be very worried. What I’m trying to say is that everything is dependent on what a faculty is meant to be doing. For example, any medical faculty that does not collaborate with a major university hospital has a big problem. A totally independent university may sound like a good idea, but if you aim to produce anything with practical applications, then you need to be in touch with the people who make use of those applications. In a multilingual country like Belgium, language is a sensitive issue. Some Flemish universities have resisted the use of English as a language of instruction. How do you feel about this? My standpoint is that we need to support our languages by providing at least a minimum amount of education using them. For this reason I have never wanted to offer a bachelor’s degree programme in English. A local master’s degree, a degree oriented towards the local community, can just as well be offered in Dutch. But any programmes that are subject to international competition will have to be offered in English. Take Ireland, for example, which shifted a great deal of its higher education to English in the ’s.On the one hand,this was economically profitable and put Ireland on the map in terms of international development, but it also killed off some of its culture. It goes without saying that the moment Flanders and the Netherlands switch all of their higher education to English will be the beginning of the same process here. What is the role of the university’s Catholic identity? We must remain true to our heritage. But if you ask around you will hear that we are primarily an open university. It has been many years since we insisted that our profes94

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sors were practising Catholics; for us, it is enough that they are not stridently antiCatholic. Still, we adhere to the basic Christian principles of tolerance towards all peoples and cultures. Concretely, our Christian identity turns up in the first-year world religions course and the fourth-year course on interpretation, ideology and world religion. In the past these kinds of courses were mainly instruments to push everyone towards the same line of thinking.This is no longer the case: things are much more open today and the idea is to give meaning to things and to understand the logic of ideology. I can assure you that this is something in which even atheists are interested.

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‘A poet or a physicist can be brilliant at eighteen. But it is different for an academic from an arts faculty’

Why Business is Good – and Bad

Fighting for Your Soul As early as  Leuven had understood the necessity of proper coaching for university spin-off companies.Now that other universities and the government are buying into the action, a warning is in order, says Paul van Dun, director of Leuven Research and Development.Expectations are dangerously high.In the meantime,Professor of Canonical Law Rik Torfs hopes he will not be forced to work the same way as his colleagues in the sciences. Luck for a student in Louvain means finding a room in the university’s Groot Begijnhof complex. Built in , the building is in the midst of a tangle of mediaeval streets whose peacefulness is imminently conducive to studying. Besides students, the other inhabitants of the historic buildings are the university’s service divisions; one of these is KULeuven Research and Development (LR&D), an interface service whose task it is to explore possibilities for fruitful exchange between science and the commercial sectors. LR&D, formed in , is one of the older technology agencies in Europe. The scope of its work includes contract research, patents and licenses, intellectual property; it also provides support for spin-off companies in the form of financial and human resources departments. There are presently more than fifty spin-off companies; their activities range from bio-pharmacy to stress counselling to the cultivation of fruit. One that enjoys a degree 96

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of fame is Eyetronics, which is market leader in the three-dimensional scanning of objects and human bodies. Their work shows up in James Bond films and blockbusters like Catwoman and King Arthur, and they have a sales office near Hollywood. As a group the spin-offs employ two thousand people and produce an annual turnover of h  million. LR&D is steered by one academic and two non-academics. One of the latter is jurist Paul van Dun. His statistics speak for themselves. ‘We generated approximately fifty million euros in ; the biggest growth within this was income from licensing and the sale of patents. Over fourteen million dollars was from licensing and royalties – and I give this in dollars because most of our royalties come from the US. I spoke to a professor from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently and he told me that they had just banked  million dollars worth of royalties. But then they’re much bigger than we are.’ Two factors seem to be instrumental in making Louvain’s approach a success.One is that every professor is given the opportunity to test the market value of a product and the other is solid legal backing to protect academic freedom and rights. Van Dun elaborates on the mode of operation. ‘Our structure is fairly atypical in that it is extremely decentralized. Any professor who wants to explore a commercial application, be it a small translation CD for five hundred euros or a major contract, can come by for help. We create a virtual entity – a sort of miniature business – and everything that has to do with commercial industry, including profits and expenditures, ends up there. I call it atypical because the procedure at most universities is that one is given a pencil and twelve forms to fill in, preferably a year in advance.’ Louvain’s system gives professors greater autonomy: as long as it has something to do with their scientific research, they are free to buy equipment, hire staff and apply for patents. As soon as the business becomes economically viable, LR&D separates the profit-making activities off and sets up a firm.‘The clients are already there, plus a buffer of cash, which eliminates a whole range of risk factors.’ But to what extent has this opening up of external funding possibilities become not a luxury but a necessity, now that a number of European governments are cutting back on research funding within higher education? Won’t there be a temptation to pursue less academic activities? Not to mention the manipulation of disappointing results. Van Dun’s answer is categorical. ‘I do not feel like I am selling my soul to industry, but I do feel we are fighting to defend it every day. That is not to say that intentions in commercial industry are less than honourable – people are just protecting their interests. Recently, a company insisted that we would have to abandon a research project should its results prove to be disappointing. We would never commit to this kind of contract. Period. It would be easy enough to sign contracts that would lead to rivers of money coming in. But that would place the university in a dangerous position.’ ‘In Belgium, as elsewhere, universities are finding themselves increasingly subject to financial constrictions. From a purely financial point of view, it is completely logical to look for new sources of funding. Of the two hundred million euros that this university invests in research annually, one-quarter originates from LR&D.’ katholieke universiteit leuven

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‘But the prerequisite for this is that these little businesses working in the field of nuclear research still need to be guaranteed their academic freedom.Let me give an example.When we enter into negotiations with a pharmaceutical company,they bring along a legal advisor, a business development manager, a financial manager and so on. Without a good buffer on our side, the risk of ending up with an unfair agreement would be enormous.If a university were to decide to start facilitating spin-offs and then only hire three people to handle everything, I would definitely be worried. We employ  people and that is still not nearly enough.I once read a contract that stipulated a two-year delay in the publication of research findings.That would be completely out of the question for us.We only allow delays in extremely specific cases,and then no longer than six months.’ The idea that commercial research slows down the rate of publication is also proved untrue in Louvain. ‘We examined the frequency of publication of a number of professors over the three-year periods before and after they began working with us. It turned out that they were actually publishing significantly more afterwards than before.’ One professor who will not be making use of LR&D anytime soon is Professor Rik Torfs. As Professor of Canonical Law he oversees  students, mainly priests. He has nothing against a business like approach, but he does fear over-management. ‘I am a proponent of a culture of research which has no practical application, but I do not want to end up in a social vacuum. A cynic would say that most of the humanities are fairly useless, but then you could also say that life itself is pointless, for that matter technology as well.This kind of thinking will not get you anywhere. ‘If you don’t take a business like approach, there is a danger of ending up with something flabby and ineffective. But I am not in favour of a top-down approach, with all kinds of abstract aims being set with which university employees who used to be called professors would have to conform. Removing the individuality of a field of research kills any seed of creativity left in it.’ For this reason Professor Torfs rejects the wholesale replication in the humanities of the sciences’ new working methods.‘There is a degree of streamlining going on within the humanities. In the sciences, collective research is of capital importance. People there reach their peak in their late twenties and they are able to carry on where their predecessors left off. By the time they are in their late thirties, they have moved on to coaching positions and are assisting in doctorate programmes. Scientists have to be at their creative best by the time they are preparing for their doctorates. And now the idea is to impose that pattern on the humanities – especially to stimulate as many doctorates as possible, because that looks good in the league tables.’ ‘I am not so happy about this. In the humanities, the doctorate is not the be all and end all for a researcher. On the contrary: that moment is just the opening of a door; the real peak comes most often when someone is forty, fifty, or even older. Historians, for example, generally do their best work when they are about sixty.With them it is more a question of maturity, accumulation of knowledge, life experience, lateral thinking. A poet or a physicist can be brilliant at eighteen.But it is different for an academic from an arts faculty – or a theological one, for that matter.’ 98

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Having a beer at the Old Market

Hazing Still Popular in Louvain

Filth vs. Internet When it comes to socializing, students in Louvain tend to stick to friends from their own programmes. Luckily, Louvain’s Old Market Street, known by some as the World’s Longest Bar, provides scope for interdisciplinary communication. Popular subjects of discourse include double dealings by the rector and the threat posed to social commitment by instant messaging. It is one o’clock in the morning and Annelies and Tessa are in a sisterly sweat, propping up the bar of the Albatros Hall. These first-year law students have spent all evening looking for their godfathers.The word may seem incongruous, but here a godfather or godmother is a higher-year student assigned as a coach to a first-year student by the students’ association. This evening’s party has taken on the form of a treasure hunt in which the younger students have to locate their godfathers; happily, they all do and the search is concluded with a TD. This abbreviation stands for thé dansant, which may elsewhere actually mean an old fashioned tea-dance but here is nothing other than an outright party. Godfather Stefaan De Boeck surveys his godchildren with a fatherly smile.As a second-year student he is in a better position to describe a week in the life of a typical Louvain student. ‘In the daytime lectures or workgroups, early evening study time, then katholieke universiteit leuven

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usually out to one of the many cafés in Old Market Street or to the fakbar,’ is how he sums it up. Fakbar is student slang for the faculty bar, run by the study association. In Louvain these associations represent the interests of their members in dealings with the university; in addition, they usually run a café, sell syllabuses and organize skiing trips, talks and of course the highly popular TDs. Barbara van Speybrouck is a fifth-year student and president of the Royal Flemish Society for Law Students (VRG). Hers is one of the largest and oldest societies. Since students in Louvain carry on studying while holding office in study associations, she is worried that fewer people will be willing to take part in extra-curricular activities after the introduction of the bachelor/master system.‘Society is becoming increasingly materialistic. People want to graduate fast and so they do not do as much outside of their studies. Parties even start later these days. But messaging and television keep students in their rooms just as much. Until recently, many students didn’t even have telephones in their rooms.Everyone just went home at weekends.’Her own society is already starting to feel the effects of these changes.While there used to be fierce competition for the office of president, now it is difficult to find even one candidate. Someone else who fears the disintegration of traditional values is bar owner Koen Chanterie, whose café Peroket is the local of many a West-Flemish student.‘Welcome home,’ says the sign next to the door. ‘Higher-year students used to get a lot more respect and people used to go out more,’ he says. ‘Now they go out later and later.’ Chanterie knows what he is talking about. After graduating with a degree in economics, he decided he liked the Peroket so much that he bought it.The café is in the Tiensestraat across the street from the offices of the VRG; it also provides space for the university’s brass band. If a student doesn’t enjoy the company of a study association,there are always student societies.These are associations of students from the same region.There names consist of the word ‘Mother’ and the name of the region, for example Mother Waregemse (for students from Waregem) and Mother Brugse (for students from Bruges). However, there is also one named Mother Aphid. The two pillars of student life are the cantus and baptism.The cantus is a traditional sing-along in which drinking, singing and tradition play a central role.Those who opt for membership in a study association have themselves baptised. This hazing procedure usually lasts a full night, but in some regional associations it can be up to two days long.Besides drinking and carrying out silly commands,there is also the ‘dirty baptism’ – a standard part of every hazing. This ritual sees the fresher covered in ketchup, manure, beer, eggs and whatever else is to hand; the consumption of garlic cloves, tomatoes in chocolate sauce, whipped cream and Tabasco is also par for the course. A month after the new academic year starts, the city is full of wandering groups of students slathered in condiments and singing about how stupid or randy they are, led by baptisers in white lab coats and club colours and caps. Injuries are generally limited to dirty clothes and persistent garlic breath, but occasionally things get out of hand; burns are 100

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the usual result. In  two students in another university city in Belgium ended up with third-degree burns to their genitals when it turned out that the hair-removal cream that they had been ordered to apply was not safe to leave on for so many hours. ‘Baptism here is relatively calm,’ says law and history student Jeroen Vandromme. He is the chairman of the Kringraad, the student organization occupied with education and the functioning of the various study associations.‘We meet with the city council to discuss exactly what we plan to do and where.’ Vandromme, whose position is non-remunerated, is proof that social commitment is not yet dead. He studies at the weekends. The Kringraad bought the Albatros Hall as an affordable venue for the study associations’ parties. It also sits on the Academic Council, the highest decisionmaking body within the university. This is no position for yes-men, as recent experience demonstrates. ‘We used to have yearly exams, which meant that there was only one exam period right at the end of the year. Resits took place in the summer. Now, with the bachelor/master system, we have exams every semester. The study associations requested that this be deferred for a couple of years because January would be such a busy period that association life would virtually come to a standstill. First the university administration agreed to this, but barely a month later it went back on its word. As a booby prize for this, we gave the rector a Judas kiss in the form of a Pinocchio doll. I think he keeps it on his desk. When that had no effect, we occupied his offices. In the end we did not really achieve anything concrete, but we did get a promise to take the study associations’ wishes into account next time.’ A more successful operation was a speech in which the rector was compared to Napoleon. Although the rector himself was definitely not amused, media attention led to a number of reforms being blocked, says Vandromme.‘He wanted to make sure that the next rector would also be someone from outside the university and that we would be squeezed out of the Academic Council.’ That would have led to a lot of activity in the Tiensestraat – as well as in the heads of students.

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milan

Università degli studi di Milano by Christiaan Weijts

University of Milan in facts and figures: Founded in 1924 64,000 students 4,380 staff Budget D 324 million

A long row of scooters stand sparkling in the sunlight in front of the Ospedale dei Poveri, the old charity hospital in the Via Festa del Perdonoa.This fifteenth-century building, designed by the Tuscan architect Antonio Averlino, now goes by the name Cà Granda, the big house, and it is the beating heart of Milan’s university. The area is a beehive of activity.The entire street, from the bars and bookshops opposite to the huge entrance gates, is full of animated groups of students carrying books, talking and smoking. Seen from a distance the gates resemble a large monastery; although this might seem to suggest that the Università degli studi di Milano is founded on historical tradition, this is not the case. Last year the university celebrated its eightieth anniversary, which makes it, in comparison to the Universities of Rome, Bologna and nearby Pavia, somewhat of a youngster.

The Cà Granda, the old hospital for the poor, is the university’s main building

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Even so, in less than a century the university has made its name as one of the leading Italian universities.Enrolment in Italy is generally high and Milan,with its , students, is in fifth place behind Rome, Bologna, Naples and Palermo. Milan’s university came into being when four existing schools and research institutes were combined. Initially, there were faculties for law, literature and philosophy, one for medicine and mathematics and another for the sciences; ten years later veterinary sciences and agriculture were added. The ’s brought political and social sciences and pharmacology and , the faculty of motor sciences, which deals with sports. Student numbers have increased exponentially over the years until in the ’s there were nearly , students. At this point the decision was taken to split off a section into a second university, the Università Bicocca to which economy, sociology and psychology were transferred. It is not unusual in Italy for there to be more than one university in a city. Milan actually has seven. Besides the two described above, there are also a technical university, a Catholic university, a commercial university, a free university for languages and communication and another which adheres to the religious teachings of San Raffaele. Nearly every Italian city has its own university, even smaller cities such as Aosta, Bergamo, Sienna and Lucca.The larger universities look down upon these smaller institutions, as their tiny budgets make high-quality research and education difficult to guarantee, and would rather prefer them to disappear.This is unlikely, though, as they contribute to a feeling of municipal pride among rivals. Judging by the crumbling walls, it might seem that the ancient Cà Granda, which houses underground study facilities and a library, could do with some renovation.The walls are not in the process of disintegrating, however; the architect who restored them after the Second World War wanted to leave them as they were as a reminder of the damage inflicted during the bombing. The latest renovation of the philosophy library exposed a section of a mediaeval hospital. This unexpected find was a round double wall which served as a kind of refrigeration area. Cà Granda is located in the middle of the historic city centre, a stone’s throw away from one of Italy’s largest cathedrals, the Duomo, and the famous opera house La Scala, inextricably associated with the name of Giuseppi Verdi.The rest of the city’s architecture gives witness to Milan’s turbulent history.Taken over by the French in , it was later ruled by Spain, then by Austria; later, after the foundation of the Kingdom of Italy, thousands of immigrants flooded in from the south. Today, Milan is a hub for industry and haute couture.The fashion houses of Versace and Armani are based here and the Monte Napoleone, not far from the university, is home to the most exclusive of clothing shops. Seven stops south on the underground is Milan’s other main university facility, Città Studi, which is much less a part of city life. This campus of tall buildings is home to the science faculties, which are grouped around the angular Piazza Leonardo da Vinci. Here too is a cafeteria that is bustling with activity at lunchtime. It serves a wide range università degli studi di milano

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of pasta dishes and pizzas and a number of Milanese specialities. Mealtimes are the most important social gatherings for many Italian students, since they are busy studying from  a.m.to  p.m.and in the evenings.Because eighty percent of Italian students remain at home during their studies, only leaving halfway through their twenties, and because of the lack of study associations, there is little to no typical student life here. It is a good thing that Milan’s nightlife is so exciting.

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Progress and Reform According to Il Magnifico Rettore Enrico Decleva

Towards a LERU Graduate School

‘Our eighty years may imply a bit of tradition, but the truth is that this doesn’t really influence daily life here in the way some of the truly historic universities are dominated by it’

Even though cutbacks and changes have been planned which will affect academic staff, Magnifico Rettore Enrico Decleva remains optimistic. LERU too is a source of inspiration – he is thinking about a joint graduate school. However, allowing English as a language of instruction in addition to Italian would require major changes to the law. Rector Enrico Decleva seems omnipresent in the university buildings as he speaks to students and staff from posters bearing the words ‘Il cambiamento è necessario. Ma servono fondi, non precari.’ Change is essential, but we need permanent funding, not temporary contracts: this message reflects the current unease among academic staff. Minister of Education Letizia Moratti, like Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi a graduate of the University of Milan, has proposed changes to the law which would affect the legal status of university lecturers and professors. She would also like to see research funding cut back. The biggest change would be the scrapping of the academic rank of riceratore, or assistant professor. Those presently holding this position would be allowed to retain it, but those in lower positions would have to work themselves up from post-doctoral positions to appointments as senior lecturers. New staff would be appointed on a temporary or contract basis and chosen by biannual national competition. Salaries for academics would be divided into fixed and variable portions, and the number of mandatory teaching hours would be increased from sixty to hundred twenty per year. università degli studi di milano

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Last year saw nationwide demonstrations by riceratori and docenti. In Milan coffins were carried through the streets as a symbol of the death of the university; their banners read Riforma Moratti = Morte dell’Università – Moratti’s reforms will kill the university.The reforms would indeed be especially unwelcome here, as Milan is experiencing a period of financial insecurity. A long period in which no new appointments were allowed to be made finally came to an end in January . As Decleva says, change is essential: ‘The laws we made in  have had their day.’ But that certainly does not mean that he agrees with the new proposals. ‘This could lead to good young researchers who are not only prepared but in fact forced to look for work elsewhere.’ The present system provides permanent appointments, albeit at slightly lower salaries than are available at other universities. The present proposal is part of a larger programme of reform set out in  when the Ministry of Education asked the national universities to make an inventory of the various problems and shortcomings they faced.The cabinet is due to take a decision on the plans in the spring of . One of the changes that could be made is for university funding to depend not solely on the number of students enrolled but also on how many of them graduate within the allotted time. A university’s scientific output would also be a factor. ‘This is a bit of a weak spot for us,’ says Decleva. ‘There is a significant discrepancy between the number of students coming in and the number who graduate. But there are also some fairly bizarre plans in these reforms, including one in which students’ perspectives on the job market would influence the amount of funding we get for educating them. We are worried that universities that are less selective in admissions will be penalized.’ Milan is young in comparison with other universities. Does that make it difficult to compete? A historic tradition can be an advantage, but it can also be somewhat of a disadvantage.Our eighty years may imply a bit of tradition,but the truth is that this doesn’t really influence daily life here in the way some of the truly historic universities are dominated by it. A balance of quality and innovation has always been our focus. The fact that we are a young metropolitan campus does pose a few problems, especially considering the enormous numbers of students we have;we are addressing this by setting up a new university. One thing that sets us apart from other Italian universities is that we are so active in research. Part of this is because of our location: until recently, Milan was the country’s most important city for industry. Lately, attention here has shifted to information technology and the promotion of innovation.There is definitely a connection between what is going on in the city and what we do. Was it this emphasis on research that led you to join LERU? Absolutely. For us, the LERU means both pride and responsibility.The LERU network is perceived as a privileged one, especially in light of its concern for research and 106

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the links between research and teaching. For us, with such a large number of students, this is very important. Even the best teaching cannot replace giving students the opportunity to learn how to carry out research and to take part in research activities directly once they are familiar with the appropriate methodologies. In this sense, teaching and research interact strategically in Milan. How do you see the future of the LERU network? The LERU could become a first-class academic network and as such become a privileged partner in research and innovation for both economic and political institutions. To achieve this,it will have to open its doors to a number of academic centres.There are presently twelve members; this should increase to ,  – not more. Something else to which we are strongly committed is the development of programmes combining training and research.This could be, for instance, a joint graduate school or a number of LERU PhD schools. LERU has to be more than merely a lobbying organisation. Would this mean offering master’s degree programmes and doctoral degree programmes in English? We are still investigating this. At the moment we are already having problems holding on to our Italian students. And we are also facing problems due to our country’s rather unstable financial situation.These things have to be worked out first.At any rate, the law would have to be changed, because it now stipulates that all programmes must be offered in Italian.We send quite a few students abroad and foreign students come to us, primarily for PhD positions in laboratories. Language is not a big problem there as much of the literature is in English anyway. At the moment we are working on developing contacts in countries like Argentina, Australia and Venezuela where there are many people with Italian backgrounds. What are the university’s plans for the short term? We have plenty of plans.We are in a period of major expansion at the moment: there are buildings going up on several sites including a new veterinary and agricultural complex just outside the city. On the outskirts of Milan, we are renovating a former industrial park that will house our biomedical sciences department. In addition, we are investing in new high-tech biomedical sciences applications. A number of our researchers are members of the prestigious European Microbiology Organisation. Chemistry, too, is one of our strengths – after all, it should be remembered that the first industrial applications for chemistry were developed in Milan.

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Science in the Land of the Education Factory

Training Through Research

Professor Gianpiero Sironi has recently been appointed ProRettore alla Recerca

Because of their enormous enrolment statistics, Italian universities are often compared to education factories. Even so, thanks to financing from sources ranging from banks to charitable institutions,Milan has made a name for itself as a research university. To coincide with the university’s eightieth anniversary celebrations, an exhibition has been set up in the municipal building know as the Rotonda. It is called Il tesoro della Statale. Collezioni e identità di un grande Ateneo: The Treasure of the State University. The objects in this collection of wonders demonstrate the University of Milan’s dedication to research from its earliest days; it includes mounted butterflies, strips of papyrus, early optical instruments and also equipment for the castration of horses. Even today the range of research areas is remarkable. There are  research departments,  research institutes and  research centres. The university invests two hundred million euros annually in research, with an additional forty million coming from indirect and contract funding. Fifteen million euros are set aside to support young research talent. In the land of the education factory, such a strong focus on research is highly exceptional. Professor Gianpiero Sironi has recently been appointed ProRettore alla Recerca; he is charged with highlighting the university’s research activities and attracting extra funding.‘There is a lot going on in the fields of life science and biotechnology,’ he says. 108

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‘This is an area of research that extends across five faculties. We also have a large physics faculty.’ Three research centres, for nanophysics, biomolecular science and neurology, have attained the status of Centro di Eccellenza; as centres of national expertise they receive direct funding from the Ministry of Education, University and Research (Ministero dell’Instuzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca, MIUR). The Ministry was formerly the largest source of research funding, says Professor Sironi, ‘but things have changed’. In addition to the central government and regional research foundations, the regional government of Lombardy is also a source of funds. ‘This province is home to nine million people – that makes it as big as a small country. Regional government is trying to strengthen contacts between research and industry.’ The non-profit sector is an important contributor, for example to cancer research. Banks make ‘substantial’ contributions as well, says Professor Sironi. ‘Since the banks were privileged, all the money earned from the sale has gone into a foundation, the Fondazione Cariplo, a large portion of which our university receives.’ It is interesting to note that in Milan research is nearly always directly linked to education, a situation born of necessity considering the huge numbers of students. A visit to the research departments of the faculties of biomolecular sciences and biotechnology illustrates this. These departments receive . percent of the university’s research budget. ‘We only really got started in  when we combined two departments, biochemistry and genetics,’ explains the director, Professor Enrica Galli.‘Those two areas were becoming so increasingly interconnected that interdisciplinary collaboration was inevitable.’ Research here is conducted in close proximity to education; there are  university courses given here.‘We adhere to a “training through research” principle whereby both undergraduates and graduate students become involved in research early on.’The cellar houses laboratories in which even first-year students are required to do one hundred hours of work; from the third year, students are set to work on ongoing research projects. Maarten Kooiker, a Dutch PhD student and one of the few foreigners studying and working in Milan, is investigating genetic regulation in plants.‘I wanted to spend a few years abroad, so after I finished my professional bachelor’s degree course in laboratory sciences, I started looking around all over Europe.’ Now he has been in Milan for three years, working in a small team of PhD candidates and students. ‘The pay isn’t as good here as it is in other European countries,’ he says, ‘I have heard that from other scientists. But the quality of life in Italy is definitely better.’ ‘In the Netherlands, though, equipment is better.We have to improvise here once in a while.’ He indicates the cooler containing the plants that are the subject of his research, arabinopsis. ‘In “short-day” mode they get eight hours of light; in “long-day” mode they get sixteen and begin to bloom.’ Although a constant temperature º C. is required, the air conditioning tends to break down in the summer heat. università degli studi di milano

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Kooiker hopes to obtain his doctorate within another year. His research deals with the ovule, the female reproductive organ of the plant and the genes that control the circulation of water. ‘Environmental issues are another area in which things here are less strictly regulated than elsewhere in Europe,’ says Kooiker. He points to a yellow barrel. ‘We dump all our waste materials in that, but really they should be separated.’ Although the sciences are heavily represented and swallow up the greater part of available research funding,the humanities and social sciences compare favourably with other universities. Professor Sironi elaborates.‘We cover almost the entire spectrum in these two areas and lead the nation when it comes to international law, art history, the classics and Italian language and literature.’ Egyptology is an area in which Milan has especially distinguished itself. Cà Granda contains the world’s fourth largest library of Egyptology,with , titles.Three years ago it acquired a large collection of diaries, notes and photographic plates made by the nineteenth-century French explorer Victor Loret. Dr Christian Oresenigo, an Egyptologist, explains their significance. ‘Loret explored the tombs of the pharaohs Thutmosi III and Amenhotep II, plus a number of smaller tombs.’ Donning a pair of white gloves, he leafs through the pages of a diary to reveal pencilled sketches Loret made to record what he saw, drawings of hieroglyphs and extensive journals describing his discoveries. Each diary is  pages long. The tens of glass photographic plates in the collection are extremely rare; they represent one of the first photographic records of Egyptian excavations. ‘The photographs are extremely sharp,’says Dr Oresenigo.‘Each one has been entered into a database and now, using them and the accompanying notes, we are trying to reconstruct the tombs. This may help us to understand better how society functioned in the time of the pharaohs.’ Besides local projects there are also national research networks. ‘The universities in Lombardy run a joint project, the Consorzio Interuniversitario Lombardo Calcolo Automatico, which is an important centre for information and communication technology’, says Professor Sironi. ‘Until recently Milan had always been a hub for industry, but in recent years ICT has become dominant. The university is adjusting to changes going on in the city while at the same time retaining our traditional strengths, for example practical applications of chemistry for industry. We never stop growing.’

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Students and young researchers last year held nationwide demonstrations. In Milan coffins were carried through the streets as a symbol of the death of the university

A Day in the Life of a Milanese Student

Aperitivo till Midnight According to a recent survey, ninety percent of Italians between the ages of  and  live at home with la mamma. Daily life here is much different than at universities elsewhere in Europe.  a.m. The first students drift into Bar Campus. They park their scooters on the pavement opposite against the purple wall of the central university building Cà Granda. Once inside, they order coffee from a lady at the cash register who transmits the order to the bar staff with a deafening shout: Allora un’ cappuccino, uno macchiato, uno cornetto crema! As the Vespas fill the pavement,students gather around the wooden tables at the back of the café. Some leaf through exam material one more time, others chatter excitedly in little groups.‘Most people start their day here with a small colazione,’ says thirdyear law student Sara Mazzetti, here with her roommate and study friend Valeria Tosco. This is a miniature breakfast Italian-style, comprised of a cappuccino or caffè latte and a sweet pastry.The two have just come from their house in Robarello, a neighbourhood in southwest Milan. They are part of the tiny minority of students who live away from home; as Tosco explains,‘Italians stay at home for a very long time and study università degli studi di milano

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in the city closest to where they live. I think about three-quarters live at home.’ Statistics show that her estimate is still too low; the current trend is to stay at home even longer than before. In a report commissioned by the Italian government which appeared in January , Dr. Adele Menniti concluded that in , no fewer than ninety percent of young people between the ages of  and  were still living at home. Ten years earlier this was eighty percent.Over a quarter were still at home with la mamma after the age of thirty, twice as many as in . The explanation for this is simple, says Mazetti. ‘You don’t leave home until you get married.’ Tosco adds, ‘And mothers are good cooks.’ Three young men join the group. ‘Ask Fabio – ‘Lui è un vero mammone,’ he’s a real mamma’s boy, she says.They tease him as he takes his seat. ‘Mam-mone-mam-mone.’ ‘Nonsense,’ retorts Fabio, ‘I live at home because I can’t afford to live anywhere else. Rooms in Milan are outrageous.’ The ladies confirm this.They themselves occupy a typical student room, the stanza doppia: two beds and two desks in one shared room. ‘We use a bookcase as a room divider,’ says Mazzetti, ignoring suggestive jokes about the impracticality of this set-up for various night-time activities. Rents, even for a doppia, are three hundred to four hundred euros per month.  a.m.Large groups of students enter the lecture halls in Cà Granda and the science faculties of Citta Studi.The latter, a big grey building nicknamed la Balena, the whale, has recently been renovated and is, by Italian standards, quite modern-looking. Even so, say students, it is impossible to sit on the building’s folding seats for more than two hours. During the renovation the outside walls of the building were fitted with hundreds of small windows; recently, orange netting has had to be attached below them as they tend to burst in the summer heat. Exam results are posted in the building’s central hall, attracting groups of students and happy shouts of ‘Bravo!’ : Città Studi’s cafeteria is getting ready for lunch, which until recently was the main meal of the day.The chefs here still take pranzo seriously. A range of primi (first courses, mainly pasta), secondi (main courses), salads, meats, cheeses and pizza slices is displayed in the self-service restaurant, which seats three hundred. At three to four euros for a generous portion of pasta, prices are truly student-friendly. Joining a table full of students to talk about food inevitably leads to a drawn-out evaluation of Milanese cuisine.‘They never remember to put rosemary in the pollo milanese,’ complains chemistry student Giacomp Delpinto who is dining with four of his fellow students. Other topics of conversation include skiing holidays – apparently one of the benefits of studying in Milan is its proximity to both the coast and the mountains –and study programmes,but as it is Friday night the most important discussion is on entertainment plans for the evening. Delpinto and his mates are glued to their mobile phones, text messaging and ringing friends in an attempt to answer urgent questions about where they will be eating, who will be providing the car to take them to a club in the suburbs, and who else is going to be there. 112

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After lunch there is coffee in the bar of the Balena, whose staff are decked out in party hats.‘Whose birthday is it?’asks Delpinto.‘We’re getting ready for carnival!’answers the barman, setting down a cup of espresso. This is dispatched in one quick gulp, and then it’s back to the books.  p.m. As a new round of lectures and laboratory courses begin, hundreds of students flood into the lecture halls and libraries. Shaped like a cross, the old underground complex of library and study halls is nicknamed laCroce.Andra Pedeferri and Luca Guzzardi are there working, at their own expense, on post-doctoral research. ‘It is next to impossible to get an appointment here,’ they say. They studied philosophy and prepared their doctorates in Milan. According to them, there is no kind of organized student life here. ‘I spent a year in Munich,’ says Guzzardi, ‘so I know things could be quite different.’Pedeferri had a similar experience in Scotland.‘There is no real sense of community at the graduate school in Milan. Study and research are very singular occupations here.’ : p.m. Besides being a capital of fashion and industry, Milan is also the home of the aperitivo. Bars provide a range of dishes to enjoy with drinks, including sandwiches, crisps, nuts, olives and sometimes even pasta salads and potatoes, all at no extra cost. Café Muni Break,near the Piolà metro station at the edge of Città Studi,is a magnet for students on Friday afternoons from five o’clock on. ‘We often make the aperitivo our evening meal and then stay on here until midnight,’ says medical student Paolo Giunti. ‘It saves us a lot of money.’ The background noise here is a cacophony of electronic ringing and beeping and urgent telephone conversations as everyone seems to be busy organising the rest of their evenings. Every few minutes a phone rings again and a change of plans sets off a new round of calls.  p.m.Those with a penchant for mamma’s pasta speed homewards on their Vespas; the rest scatter to student rooms and cheap trattorias.  p.m.It is becoming clear why making plans for the evening causes such logistical difficulties: Italians like to go out in groups of ten to fifteen people. Both the raggazzi and the raggazze have been hard at work at their bathroom mirrors and everyone looks – and smells – extraordinarily well groomed. Students pour into Café Mirabilia, near Cà Granda, for drinks. The style of imbibing is particular to Italy; people can make do with a single glass for nearly an hour. Are they cheapskates? ‘Italians just tend to talk more than they drink,’ says Anna, a student. ‘But I have to admit that going out in Milan is caro come il fuoco,’ scorchingly expensive. : p.m. This is especially true of Milan’s countless discotheques, which begin to fill up around midnight. Groups of young people surge towards the door of the Rolling università degli studi di milano

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Stone, recommended as a typical Milanese student disco but also the venue of fashion shows by Armani.The entrance price is fifteen euros for men and,as is common in Italian discotheques, two euros lower for women; the price includes one free drink. Inside, the décor resembles that of the Italian television station Rai Uno, with its shiny walls, brilliantly coloured lights and staircases and balconies with elaborately decorated railings. ‘This is uno locale magnifico!’ exclaims someone. As the dancing grows wilder, the temperature seems to rise. Elsewhere in the city, especially around the navigli, or canals, the myriad bars, bistros and discos are buzzing with activity. Out with her friends, a girl named Sami points out,‘In a city like this, you don’t need a study association.’

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munich

Ludwig-MaximiliansUniversität by Hester van Santen

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in facts and figures: Founded in 1472 46,876 students 6,301 staff, excluding staff of teaching hospital Budget D 305.9 million

Everything about Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich is big. Its main building, a nineteenth-century Neo-Renaissance construction, is not situated on a square but surrounds an entire square by itself.An army of small children could spend an afternoon paddling in the fountain in front of the entrance; inside, the cavernous entry hall, clad in stately marble, feels almost like an empty swimming pool. The university is Germany’s second largest after Cologne; it has three times as many students as the Netherlands’ Leiden University. And LMU’s reputation is just as impressive as its size: among the  universities in the country it is ranked second.

When in  the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität moved to Munich, wealthy capital of Bavaria, its reputation was firmly established

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The colossal building on the Geschwister-Scholl-Platz may look like it has stood there forever, but appearances are deceiving. Founded in  in Ingolstadt by Duke Ludwig the Wealthy, the university was originally known as the University of Ingolstadt.It has withstood periods of reformation,plague and war.The Enlightenment saw the establishment of a scientific approach to learning, and after two state-sanctioned relocations,to Landshut in  and to Munich in ,its reputation was firmly established. It assumed its present name around the same time. During the nineteenth century it was home to a number of famous scientists, of whom Wilhelm Röntgen is perhaps the best known today. National Socialism ushered in a period in which freedom in research was severely curtailed. Uncooperative scientists were fired and books burned. However, during the war a group of students and a professor formed a resistance group by the name of ‘White Rose’; the members of the group, brother and sister Hans and Sophie Scholl among others, paid for the distribution of its pamphlets with their lives. The main building suffered bombing in , but in the years after the war the Bavarian state assisted with its reconstruction.The university has continued to grow since then. These days the university is going through a period of reform. Education and research are being evaluated and renewed in order to strengthen the Bildung, or scholastic development,that transforms young students into academics.The days when masses of students were taught in huge lecture halls are over; today’s emphasis is on students’ quality, not quantity.The change to a bachelor/master structure is also a reason for this shift in thinking. Research is also in a state of transition. The university has traditionally attracted Nobel Prize-winning scientists who conduct ground breaking research here; money has always been freely available. But in these times of retrenchment of funds for education and research, Munich is also feeling the pinch.‘Politicians see higher education as an expenditure rather than an investment,’ says Vice-Rector Friederike Klippel. Now that indirect funding is no longer as generous as before, staff numbers are also being reduced. At the same time new initiatives are taking shape. A new life sciences complex went up on the outskirts of the city at the end of the ’s and could be greatly expanded in the future. Integrative research centres, such as the Centre for Nanoscience, have more room than ever before. Contacts between the university and commercial industry are constantly increasing, a development that the board feels could be hugely beneficial. With all of this in mind, the university has its sights set on a place in the worldwide top , still a long way to go from its present  place. What will the university look like twenty years from now? Opinions are divided. Some say it will be an elite institution with expensive programmes that attract students from all over the world. Others see a flexible university where students can experience novel ways of learning. In the meantime, scientists are grasping every opportunity to teach their students and confer with their colleagues.As one physicist puts it,‘Research is fun.’ 116

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Prorektorin Friederike Klippel on the Threats of too Much Cost-cutting

‘We Need to Invest More in Support Structures’

‘Competition has become fiercer; research money and other support are no longer as readily available as before’

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich is a remarkable university in many ways. It looks back on a long tradition, it is ranked highly in terms of research quality today and it is also one of the largest universities in the country. However, budget cuts could threaten its status,says Prorektorin (Vice-Rector) Professor Friederike Klippel. Prof. Friederike Klippel, English scholar and as Prorektorin responsible for the Humanities as well as issues of academic training,is a member of the board of the LudwigMaximilians-Universität. She is not quite as optimistic about the future of her university as one might expect. At the time of this interview, she had just published an editorial in the university’s own magazine,saying that ‘German universities are becoming increasingly unattractive for ambitious young scientists’ because of a number of current developments from government imposed budget cuts to salary reform and an increased workload for academics. The conditions she alludes to in her article are true for German universities in general. However, she is concerned for LMU: ‘We don’t want the quality of our university to suffer in any way.’ Why is LMU one of the best universities in Germany at the moment? LMU has a great tradition in research, and it is also a very large university with a wide and diverse range of disciplines in eighteen faculties. If a university caters for a lot of students, as we do, there is a good chance of having excellent students in sufficient ludwig-maximilians-universität

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numbers. LMU Munich attracts keen researchers, good academic teachers because of its reputation as an excellent university, but also because Munich is a nice city to live in. In addition, the academic infrastructure in Munich is outstanding. We’ve got Max Planck Institutes, many other kinds of research institutes, great libraries, lots of wonderful museums,which also makes the whole cultural and scientific context the university is embedded in very stimulating. What about the attention which the state of Bavaria has given to research activities? This question requires a look at the developments in the last forty years. In the late ’s and in the ’s we had a period of great expansion in education and a time of generous funding by the state. But in more recent years this policy has changed due to shifts in the economy at large. Less money has become available for higher education, though student numbers have risen. Just recently, however, the state of Bavaria has set money aside for international PhD programmes and new courses of study aimed at particularly gifted students in the so-called Elite-Netzwerk Bayern. Is the reduction of public funding in education a nationwide trend? Yes,it is.We still fall short of the European target of spending a certain percentage of the gross national product on education. I would like to see research and education at any level as an investment into the future of our society – and of humankind,if you want to be dramatic. Are you already witnessing the results of these cuts? About a year ago, when the cuts were proposed, we started a very thorough stocktaking procedure. We wanted to know which subject should be cut if push came to shove, but no departments have actually been closed. We looked closely at every subject, at every faculty and their achievements in teaching and research, e.g. their number of graduates and their drop-out rate, their number of doctoral students and Habilitationen,their success in acquiring external funding for research projects and much more. We then talked to all the faculties so they could tell us where they saw their strengths and their potential for development. With a steady reduction in funding, we need to concentrate our efforts and refocus our attention both in teaching and research.That is why about twenty study programmes were earmarked for discontinuation. However, all students enrolled in these programmes must be able to finish their courses. So it will be some time before these reductions become effective. LMU has a relatively large income from third-party funding. How will you manage to attract even more funding in the future, as the government is urging you? There are certain disciplines that don’t find it too difficult to attract extra funding, let’s say from industry. But in other areas, e.g. the humanities, competition has become fiercer and research money and other support are no longer as readily available. In the current situation universities probably need to invest more than before in sup118

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port structures within their own institutions in order to help scholars apply for and administer third-party funding. Is internationalization, working together at the European level like in LERU, a way to find extra funds? Certainly. We are stronger if we work together. Yet, it will also depend on what will happen with regard to the European Research Council. LERU’s aims are quite clear, but these processes take time and one has to establish a certain presence at the European level, and one has to create a network amongst the LERU-universities at the different levels.This is something that is being built up nicely at the moment, but we have not really reaped the benefits yet. One of last year’s LMU reports said that belonging to the top  universities worldwide should be the goal for this university. At present, LMU is ranked approximately fiftieth. What do you think needs to be done to improve this standing? A number of factors need to be taken into account. One of them is the size of the university.Nearly all of the top  universities in the world are much smaller and less diversified than we are. We are a very large university with more than  academic disciplines, which requires a lot of resources but at the same time creates an extraordinary interdisciplinary environment for research. However, other excellent universities have a better staff-student ratio than we do. Another factor is the selection of students,which so far is not commonly practised in Germany. If a university can choose its own students, then this acts as a kind of quality assurance, prevents high drop-out rates and improves teaching conditions. Just an example: In autumn  English Studies at LMU established a selection procedure and the intake of new students was much better in terms of language skills from the start. The most vital factor, however, is the quality of staff. A university which attracts excellent scholars need not fear for its research profile.Therefore, we feel it is very important to monitor appointments and to try and attract the best. Just for the record, we are ranked at the very top of most disciplines in Germany. Do you think that the things that are being talked about – the Strukturpläne, the Vernetzungen, the Profilierungskonzepte – will make the university better in the end? Oh yes, I think the process of discussion within and between the faculties has had a very positive effect and we do have the chance of becoming an even better university. But we must not forget that all these deliberations and discussions are only the first steps. They have to be underpinned by excellent research and inspired teaching. Research needs time and mental space in order to focus. After the last hectic year we now need to do two things: on the one hand, we need to build on the decisions taken, continue with the processes of refocusing and set in motion new interdisciplinary endeavours; on the other hand, we need to provide a stable and stimulating environment so that the university can get on with its tasks in teaching and research. ludwig-maximilians-universität

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The multidisciplinary research at the Munich Centre of NanoScience is the university’s prime example of top-notch science

The Pro’s and Con’s of Integrative Research Consortia

‘Great Organizations Are Never Efficient’ The LMU is a wealthy university that is able to attract and hold on to top researchers. These days the university is seeking to strengthen its position through participation in projects such as integrative research consortia. ‘We are currently conducting research in areas that none of us would have considered individually.’ Still, researchers also desire a degree of autonomy. Everything about Munich’s high-tech campus, where Professor Thomas Carell’s laboratories are situated, suggests that it is dedicated to the advancement of the life sciences. Built in , the research centre is a complex of streamlined grey buildings whose white halls are decorated only with scientific posters and blackboards covered 120

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with chemical formulas. It was these facilities that persuaded Professor Carell, , to move to Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität instead of accepting an appointment at Marburg’s Philipps University.‘I have previously worked at two top institutes:MIT and ETH in Zurich.But as far as research goes, this brand-new campus here in Munich allows me to conduct my research at the same high level.’ Professor Carell’s research deals with repair mechanisms within DNA. It is extremely fruitful:he has won prizes every year,his success reaching an apex in  when he was awarded the Leibniz Prize,at h . million the largest personal research subsidy provided by the German Research Foundation (DFG). He plans to invest this money into efforts to understand the ways in which damaged DNA can be repaired, valuable fundamental work for cancer research.To do this, he leads a team of thirty researchers in Munich, the Carell Group. LMU’s research credentials are outstanding. In the ranking determined by Shanghai’s Jiao Tong University, it holds  place worldwide and second in Germany after the Technical University of Munich. It has a rich tradition in research – twelve Nobel laureates worked here – and the Chinese analyses show that a high scientific output is one of its particular strengths. The university is good at attracting external funding, which represents over a quarter of its budget compared with a national average of fifteen percent. The state of Bavaria is traditionally supportive of research, according to Professor Carell and others. Even so, Professor Carell believes that his comfortable position is an exception to the rule. ‘The German Research Foundation accepts only a fraction of the funding requests it receives and even then the amounts they provide are much lower than those available in the US. I can never expect to win another prize like the Leibniz, but in America I could potentially win one year after year.’ In its search for additional funding and a better strategic position, the LMU will have to go the way of interdisciplinary collaboration,according to a report it published in .The practical results of this are as yet unknown. As Professor Carell explains, ‘If you set up a Sonderforschungsbereich [an integrated consortium, Ed.], you have a much better chance of getting funding from the German Research Foundation.’ To this end, his team collaborates with other institutes including the Centre for Nano Science (CeNS).This institute was set up in  as a cooperative forum for LMU scientists and provides scope for cooperation with other research institutes and with industry. Professor Jörg Kotthaus was the initiator of the project which, despite its informal nature, is housed in the stately edifice which once housed the laboratories of Wilhelm Röntgen. For LMU, the Centre for Nano Science is a paragon of integrated research. ‘If you wish to strengthen your university’s position, the way to do so is to ask yourself what the research areas of the future will be,’ says Professor Kotthaus, who began working with nanotechnology in the ’s.The university’s choice for nanotechnology was a strategic one,then,in terms of setting itself apart from the Technical Universiludwig-maximilians-universität

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ty of Munich. Six years after the centre was opened, it is now bringing in five to seven million euros of external funding for research annually, even though it was set up as a loose collaboration of scientists. ‘And what has happened is that CeNS has now produced six successful start-ups working where the boundaries of scientific fields overlap, plus research projects that none of us would have considered individually.’ One of these spin-off companies that is a good example of the kind of research conducted at CeNS is Nanion, which builds apparatus that measures the ion channels in cells responsible for transporting nerve impulses.‘A medical scientist was working on a traditional method of measurements using patch clamping when he came up with the idea of using a chip instead.We didn’t think that this would be successful and had to do a lot of tweaking,but last year this discovery ended up being one of the highlights of the American Physical Society.’ However, as Vice Rector Professor Klippel points out, such initiatives can only be successful if they are based on solid basic research. Professors Carell and Kotthaus, working in the productive field of life sciences, have found ways of conducting fruitful research. For researchers in literature and the humanities, on the other hand, finding funding is more difficult. While his voice may be only one among many,Professor Armin Nassehi,head of the Department of Sociology and Communication Sciences, seems satisfied.‘My position is more or less ideal,’ he says. As a sociologist he is involved in research into the way communication describes an underlying social order. Findings can be applied to many areas including family relationships, immigration and attitudes to death. He is also a familiar media personality and an advisor to various organizations. Professor Nassehi says he moved to Munich from the University of Münster because LMU was able to provide more funding for his research. ‘Cutbacks are not the biggest problem,’ he says.‘Munich’s sociology department is not in danger, but those at other universities are,’ he points out. In fact, there are even plans to move the sociology departments of other Bavarian universities to Munich. This would not be a good development according to Professor Nassehi. ‘I don’t think that’s the right strategy, because this discipline is of great importance to the universities. It is important to have individual networks within and among universities, various people you can talk to.’ He feels it is important for a researcher to have the freedom to initiate cooperation with others. ‘I can do what I want. And I think that what I do is not so bad for the university. I find it very interesting to talk to colleagues in other disciplines and I’m able to develop teaching programmes that work quite well.’ It is precisely these unofficial networks that are important for a university, Professor Kotthaus agrees wholeheartedly. He would not like to see the informal collaborative structure of his Centre for Nano Science institutionalized. Professor Nassehi as well feels that universities put too much emphasis on efficiency.‘You could say that the most efficient method of working for a university is a programme such as Scandinavian languages,where overheads are low and which students can complete in three years.Is that efficient? Is large-scale fund raising efficient?’ 122

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From the point of view of a sociologist, Professor Nassehi is amazed at the German universities’ perception of themselves as patients at the brink of death. He would prefer to see them have more weight in the context of society in general. ‘We are constantly letting ourselves be lectured on concentration strategies, differentiation strategies, being told first that we have to become more autonomous and later that we have to cooperate more.’ Something all three scientists are eager to emphasize is their desire to function in a university that lets them go their own way.They want to work in a setting where collaboration with colleagues across a range of disciplines is possible as is teaching and setting up networks for other than strategic and financial purposes. As nanotechnologist Professor Jörg Kotthaus says,‘If scientists want to collaborate they shouldn’t be doing it because of money or political pressure but because they want to have fun.’ Professor Nassehi puts it even more pointedly:‘Great organizations are never efficient.’

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Crate race for international Erasmus’ students in Münich’s English Garden: beer please, but not too expensive

Student Life in Munich Is Tough

Housing Problems and Expensive Kneipe Munich is an expensive place to study. Rents alone are much higher than elsewhere in Germany. Students seek refuge in Wohnheime, sanctuaries of cheap housing and entertainment, but even these face hardship. Munich is a city full of ladies of a certain age. In their furs and shiny parkas, they people the metro stations and Christmas markets, strolling at their leisure through the crowds past posters for ballroom shows such as ‘Fire of Dance’ and the latest production of Phantom der Oper. As if these spectacles were not enough, there are also equestrian galas, ice-skating extravaganzas and Helmut Lotti live on stage – clearly not entertainment calculated to amuse the city’s , students. ‘If you stand here long enough you are bound to see a Porsche drive by,’ says philosophy PhD candidate Benedetta Bisol. ‘Some people here are just incredibly wealthy.’ She is not the only one here who has noticed this. Ask any student in Munich about life in the city and the conversation is bound to turn to the purchasing power of its average inhabitant – and the students’ general lack of it. Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität lacks extensively organized student life, with its 124

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big clubs where students can drink beer on the cheap. So as one student of ethnology succinctly explains, students have to rely on ‘Kino, Kneipe, Konzerte’ – films, pubs and gigs. It isn’t that there is a shortage of any of these, but there is a definite down side. ‘Munich is the most expensive city to live in. My friends fell over laughing when I told them I was going to study here,’ says Franziska Langhammer, , who is studying German.To earn extra money she works in a hotel. ‘If I were to live anywhere else but here I would not have to work on top of studying.’ Staff at the study associations are becoming increasingly used to hearing this complaint. Stuve, the co-participation body for LMU students, supports students who are in financial difficulties and those looking for work. ‘You need plenty of money to live here,’ says student Dorothee Chlumsky, who leads Stuve. The government-run organization Studentenwerk (Student Services) is also familiar with the problem. It serves , students, the majority of whom come from LMU, providing services ranging from housing, childcare and meals to psychological assistance. It is primarily supported by government funding, but each student contributes  euros per semester. Student Services’ Munich branch published a report in  detailing the social position of students in the region. It found that the cost of living for students in Munich was higher than the national average. Armin Rosch is the head of the Munich branch and has been active in the organization for  years. ‘Some students receive grants or loans, but that is not enough. If they want to be able to have a bit of fun they have to work quite hard. It isn’t always easy to find a job, and the more they work the more their studies suffer. Lots of students are in financial difficulties.’ The report showed that housing is especially expensive in Munich compared to the rest of the country. In  students spent a monthly average of h  on housing, while the national student average was h .There is also a huge shortage of rooms in Munich, according to Rosch. ‘We have , rooms but that is not enough,’ he says. Although the situation is getting better – over the past twelve years there has been a thirty-percent increase in the number of rooms available – the November  edition of Student Services Munich’s newsletter opened with the headline ‘Student Housing Problem Enormous’. Student Services provides some affordable housing with its rent-controlled Wohnheime, but this alternative to the outrageous rents elsewhere in the city is accessible only for the lucky few. The waiting list is six months to two years, and these days a room may turn out to be a recycled shipping container. Once you are in, however, the benefits are clear.The two biggest student complexes in Munich are true sanctuaries of student life with not a bouffant-coiffed lady in sight.There is a sauna.The walls are decorated with Keith Haring figures and there are rehearsal rooms for bands – these may be thirty-year-old concrete flats, but that is easy to forget. Studentenviertel auf dem Oberwiesenfeld, or Olydorf as its residents call it, is a complex with  rooms. In a previous life it was home to female athletes during the  Olympic Games, though it is not the scene of the bloody hostage tragedy – that was in the men’s quarters down the road. This complex is comprised of a large block of flats ludwig-maximilians-universität

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and eight hundred bungalows. A student willing to wait three years can become the inhabitant of a brightly coloured, squat, little house with its own balcony. Rasso Steffl, , and Stefanos Kossas, , are old-timers here; both are on the board of Olydorf and they are happy to provide a tour. It is immediately evident that no costs were spared when the block was built in the ’s. The facilities are excellent and include a communal great room with buffet, workshops for carpentry, electronics and pottery, a crèche, four music rooms, two rehearsal rooms for bands, a café and a discotheque. Rasso indicates the ballroom with its spray-painted décor: ‘They used to do it up every six months.’ The complex’s glory years are behind it now. Rasso explains that the discotheque’s opening hours have been drastically reduced; there is also little money available for the maintenance of the workshops or for much-needed repairs to plumbing and electrical wiring. Like the housing shortage, these problems are a result of financial deficits. Armin Rosch of Student Services needs no invitation to elaborate on the situation. ‘We do get government funding,but there are no legal guidelines as to how much money we should receive. And that is the essence of the problem: in periods when the government has less money to spend, we are the first to have our funds cut back.’ For this reason Student Services is planning to restructure itself; it will also increase the students’ own contribution.‘At  euros our contribution is the lowest in Germany,’ Rosch explains.‘Some branches demand  or  euros.’ Until its lean years are over Student Services will just have to make do with what it has or, as Rasso Steffl puts it, ‘We will just have to keep our heads above water.’ Seeing a Porsche drive by will continue be the option for students – instead of owning one.

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oxford

Oxford University by Bart Funnekotter

Oxford University in facts and figures: Founded in 1096 10,097 students 7,866 staff Budget D 683 million

‘Harry Potter at Christ Church’ announces the cheerful red lettering on a blackboard next to the entrance to the stately College at the edge of Oxford’s city centre.Tourists, mainly American, queue to buy tickets from the bowler-hatted gatekeepers, nicknamed ‘bulldogs’, who collect their money impassively.Those who are too impatient to walk the entire route of the tour,which leads past scenes familiar from the films starring the world’s most famous aspiring wizard, are pointed in the direction of the highlights. Video camera at the ready, a heavy-set American in a Hawaiian-print shirt barrels towards the dining hall. Inside the hall, staff are laying the long tables in preparation for the evening meal, supervised by a portrait of King Henry the Eighth, the founder of Christ Church.The scene encapsulates the essence of Oxford University in all its con-

View of Oxford city center, with the dome of the Radcliffe Camera, the roof of the Bodleian Library

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tradictions: ancient and conservative, yet hypermodern and progressive. Oxford is England’s oldest university and steeped in tradition, but it is also the most successful one at capitalizing on its scholarship. It is the academy of the elite, but it provides educational opportunities for less privileged young people from all over the world. Oxford’s university community exists in protected isolation from the rest of the city, while its buildings attract hundreds of thousands of tourists every year. Paradoxical paradise as it may be, Oxford University does not seem to suffer from this duality of character. The st century meshes seamlessly into a tapestry of nine hundred years of history.The university’s central administration is responsible for providing modern research facilities; each of the tens of Colleges sets out its own research and educational programmes (the structure of the relationship is comparable to that between the federal and state governments in the US). All applications are first evaluated by the university and then sent on to a particular College. Here the decision is taken whether to accept a candidate or return the application to the university, which will then offer it to another College.This may not sound like an efficient manner of dealing with applications, but it is out of the question that this age-old process might be changed. Progress is fine, but Oxford must remain Oxford. And because it does so, the semesters continue to have names like Hilary, Trinity and Michaelmas; students and tutors of each College continue to dine together in formal attire at the second sitting in the dining halls; it is the reason that students take breaks in their college’s private chapel between study sessions and attend tutorials with a ratio of one tutor for every two students. Meanwhile, on the edge of the city, a huge science park is taking shape; professors float their businesses on the stock market, an Arabian sheik has donated millions to fund a business school and patents are registered to cash in on intellectual property. Walking past the buildings of Oxford University is like travelling through nine hundred years of English university history in a time machine. One is left feeling dizzy, but contentedly so, by the companionable mixture of past, present and future that is Oxford.

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Vice-Chancellor Colin Lucas on High-Level Research and Top-up Fees

‘Elite of the Mind’

‘Society has a clear choice to make: either we let the universities die a slow death of attrition or we find new ways of financing them’

Vice Chancellor Sir Colin Lucas is stepping down in October  after seven years of leadership at Oxford University. He still believes that the purpose of academia is to lead the search for universal knowledge. ‘Any professor whose main interest is doing business would be better off leaving this university.’ The most dangerous party revolt which threatened Tony Blair in  was not about the war in Iraq, but higher education. Many Labour party members opposed government plans to implement so-called top-up fees, give universities the right to demand tuition fees of up to £ . Backbenchers in the House of Commons saw this as a threat to the accessibility of higher education. Blair managed to win the vote by a narrow margin after weeks of lobbying by Labour party whips, but there were more rebel votes than there were in the resolution on the war in Iraq. Relief was great among the universities,who believe that an increase in tuition fees is essential in order to guarantee the quality of their education. And while so far few have been prepared to discuss their top-up fees for the  academic year, ninety percent of the major universities are expected to go for the maximum allowable amount. Sources within Oxford report that it too will set a yearly tuition fee of £ , although Vice Chancellor Sir Colin Lucas, head of the executive committee, is keeping mum: ‘We will make this public at the appropriate point in time.’*

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Why are top-up fees necessary? Universities everywhere are finding that they no longer have enough money to keep themselves running and to finance education and research. Since the aim of most governments is to keep taxes low, public resources are shrinking. As far as priorities for public spending are concerned, here, as elsewhere in Europe, universities are not at the top of most people’s list. Between  and , the amount of funding per student that we received from the government dropped by  percent – and that was on top of a decrease of twenty percent over the previous twenty years. We simply can’t continue this way. Society, in my opinion, has a clear choice to make: either we let the universities die a slow death of attrition, or we find new ways of financing them. So now it’s up to students to foot the bill? Society as a whole benefits from good university education,and so in my opinion the government has a major responsibility towards the maintenance of the universities. Having said that, I also believe that students benefit personally from their education and in the world we live in today it is appropriate for them to realize this. The money earned from top-up fees must be put into education, not used for research. This way the students themselves will get a return on the tuition fees they pay. For example, with the extra money we will have coming in, we will be able to keep tutor groups small. Interestingly, at the same time that Tony Blair was working towards raising tuition fees, he also expressed the hope that in future, fifty percent of young people in Britain would enter higher education. Should we be wary, that the qualifier ‘higher’ will lose its value? This is a difficult question.Our present economic system is based on knowledge and dictates that it should be widely spread across the population. Knowledge that was traditionally the domain of a small group must now become available to a much larger group. It is a positive development that there are so many educational opportunities for over-’s. The term ‘higher education’ is problematic. As a label I think it has become outdated; I think we should be talking in terms of tertiary education and realizing that it is a large and complex sector. The government’s problem is that it still considers awarding diplomas to be tertiary education’s most important goal. But I believe that there are many skills which cannot and should not merit a university diploma. What we will probably end up with is a target of fifty percent, which will be achieved by letting some programmes award degrees which they are at present not entitled to confer. So in future it will become increasingly more important where you earn your degree. Labour’s underlying idea here is an admirable one: it wants to ensure that young people from less privileged backgrounds have access to university education.What is your university doing 130

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to achieve a more equal mix of students from diverse socio-economic backgrounds? Oxford still has a reputation of being elitist. We want our elitism to be one of mind, not social status. We do all we can to attract applications from young people whose families do not have a tradition of university education. Still, there are certain standards which a student must meet in order to be successful in a challenging course of study.We can afford to be a little bit flexible in this,but not very much. Otherwise, the diploma we finally award will be too devalued. Also, if we were to accept students solely on the basis of socio-economic status, without examining their academic abilities,then many young people would simply end up failing.This is a damaging experience and we would not be doing any student a service by facilitating unrealistic expectations of success. In another area, the government is probably very satisfied with Oxford University: you’ve been very successful in transferring the fruits of your research to the marketplace. Could it ever be possible for a university to become self-financing in this way? No.There is a lot of money to be earned with intellectual property, but any university whose budget is reliant on spin-out companies is in need of serious financial advice. Over the past six years we have earned an average of £ . million per year from commercial activities.Our total turnover is £  million,so this represents a very small portion of our budget. The purpose of the university is not to conduct commercial research, although it is certainly laudable to share your discoveries with the rest of society. But any professor whose main interest is doing business would be better off leaving this university. I am by no means happy with the current opinion that hard sciences is the only ‘real’ science. I believe that the arts and humanities are just as important. The university is the setting in which to conduct a universal quest for those things which we do not know or understand. It is not about innovations in machinery, but the encouragement of innovative thinking in its own right. Governments would like to see science lead to more lucrative practical applications – interest in fundamental research generally seems to be on the wane. Is there a role for LERU in this? The League needs to draw attention to the importance of fundamental research within institutes for higher education in the EU.Interaction with the European Parliament is of crucial importance. Luckily, the twelve participating universities are collaborating in setting up expertise registers and in producing joint EU funding propositions.

* In  Oxford University decided that it would be charging the maximum £  per year to UK and EU students. However students will not have to pay anything towards their fees until they have finished studying and are earning over £ , a year. oxford university

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Professors George Smith and Martin McLaughlin: one the president of a successful company, the other translator of works by Umberto Eco

Oxford Excels in the Commercial Exploitation of Scholarship

The End of the Lone Scholar Oxford University provides professional support for its researchers from their first search for investors up until the stock-market flotation of a spin-out company. The university is becoming more businesslike – and this includes the humanities, albeit to a lesser degree.‘Why is there no academic merit in translating Umberto Eco?’ George Smith looks precisely like you would expect a science professor to look: beard, thick-rimmed spectacles, sturdy jacket and a rather old-fashioned necktie. But he is not merely a professor and head of the materials department at Oxford University. By all rights he should at least be sporting an Armani suit and a pair of expensive sunglasses, with a key to a flashy car in his trouser pocket. Indeed, since March  Professor George Smith has also been the chairman of Polaron, a company listed on the London Stock Exchange. Having set up a small business in , this has been his most important milestone to date. Eighteen years ago, Smith and a number of fellow researchers applied for a patent on a microscope which made it possible to examine atoms three-dimensionally.‘The business partner we had at the time was not interested in the project, so we decided to take the leap ourselves and set up a business. We were completely on 132

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our own, since in those days the university was completely uninterested in business.’ Things have changed, and this is only logical, says Smith. ‘From both a business point of view and a scientific one, the creation of spin-out companies is a good thing. The money earned by the business can be put into new research projects. And now that I have twenty major investors backing Polaron, I can afford to spend more on innovative research.This kind of money is simply not available from a university.’ But if researchers are to become businessmen, will there still be room for more speculative fundamental research which, for practical purposes, could even turn out to be useless? ‘It is certainly true that it is increasingly difficult to find funding for speculative research,’ says Smith. ‘That is a great pity. When I think back forty years to the time I first arrived at university, it makes me wish that we could have the best of both worlds: the time and the freedom to conduct purely fundamental academic research, as we had then, and the commercial opportunities we have today.’ Smith’s position, that of researcher-cum-entrepreneur, is hardly unusual in Oxford. On the contrary: of all British universities,Oxford is the most successful at capitalizing on its scholarship.This is not down to chance. Researchers whose work leads to the development of intellectual property (IP) receive support from the university from the moment they first present their research proposal, until the stock-market flotation of a commercial enterprise. At the very beginning of this trajectory is the university’s Research Services Department, led by Catherine Quinn.‘We are here to help researchers in their funding applications. Money can be made available from the government or from the European Union,but also through contract funding.Our job is to make sure it is clear who has the rights to exploit the results commercially once a research project has come to fruition.’ No one in Oxford is obliged to use the services of Quinn and her colleagues.Those who prefer to go it alone may do so. ‘Still, more and more researchers are coming to us. We have representatives in all the large departments; people can drop in at any time for advice.’ When the time comes to reap the financial rewards of a project, researchers in Oxford can turn to Isis Innovation for help.Linda Naylor,head of the Life Sciences Group at Isis,explains what the organisation does.‘Isis was founded in  and has undergone major expansion since .We employ  people and are completely owned by Oxford University. Our job is to inventory, protect and market the university’s IP.’ And Isis has been extremely successful in doing this. Before , when the business began to operate in earnest, the university had produced nine spin-out companies; between that year and December  there were . The number of projects underway has increased from  in  to  today. Commercial deals as well rose dramatically from four in  to  in . Naylor elaborates on where the proceeds from these activities end up.‘From the initial profit,just over sixty percent goes to the researcher who conceived the idea for the business. After that, the university and the department earn progressively more on amounts over £ ,.’ Why do researchers decide to approach Isis for help? Naylor laughs.‘Every once in a oxford university

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while someone will stroll in and announce “I think I’d like to have my own small enterprise and a nice car to go with it”. More often than not, the commercial exploitation of research results is a convenient way to generate funds for more expensive research.Still, quite a few researchers have never even heard of us, so we spend quite a bit of time on PR and in building up connections with the various departments.’ As the wheels of science grind on, one could imagine that all the attention – not to mention money and prestige – that the hard sciences seem to be getting could lead to resentment among researchers in the humanities. No such bitterness is felt by Martin McLaughlin, Professor of Italian and Director of the European Humanities Research Centre. ‘I am not jealous of anyone involved in the hard sciences, and I would wager that neither are most of my colleagues. What does bother us is that they are so seldom willing to contribute time to administrative duties.“I cannot afford to be out of the lab for two years; I would get too far behind,” they say. And so it is the humanities researchers who are forced to pick up these tasks.’ And that just when it seemed that the humanities were being brought up to date in terms of professionalism.‘The lone scholar,the man who never emerged from his room full of books, doesn’t exist here anymore,’ says McLaughlin. ‘If you’re trying to get research funding,your proposal will have to mention the word “interdisciplinary”a number of times, otherwise you really have no chance of success.’ McLaughlin is convinced that the relevance of the humanities for society is much greater than some people believe. ‘It is true that we are not creating million-pound businesses. But for example, I have been translating the works of Umberto Eco; now thousands more people will be able to read his books. So by opening up the work of a writer who would otherwise have remained inaccessible,I am making a contribution to culture and knowledge in Britain. Why is there no academic merit in translating Umberto Eco? That is not fair.’

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Students play cricket on the lawn in front of Christ Church

Oxford Students Lean to the Left

No Longer the Domain of the Rich and Happy Few Students at Oxford may belong to an intellectual elite, but they no longer belong to a social elite. Most vote Labour, and very few still dress in the traditional corduroy trousers, braces and straw boaters.‘I thought it would be more elitist here.’ The thwack of willow on leather drifts across the sunny lawn of Christ Church. A crowd at the edge of the cricket field applauds the young men in spotless white outfits as a number of tidy runs are scored. Down the road, in the Fellows’ Garden of Exeter College, students with wooden mallets and balls set out their wickets on an impeccably groomed lawn. Croquet and cricket on a Saturday afternoon: for many outsiders the two epitomize the genteel amusements of students at Oxford.That these students are in fact quite diverse becomes apparent during a tour of the splendid city centre. In Cornmarket Street, the city’s most important shopping area, the men of the a cappella group ‘Out of the Blue’ are showing off their talents. These are no choirboys trotting out ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ and other evergreens; they open with ‘By the Way’ by the Red Hot Chili Peppers and end after more than half an hour of pop songs with the cheerful ‘a-wimaweh’ refrain of ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ by the Tokens. A few of oxford university

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the onlookers buy copies of the group’s CD and some even buy tickets for their concert later that week in the  seat Apollo theatre. James Smith, musical director and human beatbox, reads English at St John’s College. He was amazed the first time he heard about the group. ‘I’m trained in classical choral singing and when I arrived in Oxford I had never imagined that there were modern groups like Out of the Blue. Now I’m singing with chaps who had no singing experience before they joined the group. It was a real eye-opener for me to find out that there were other kinds of singing going on at Oxford beside evensong at Magdalen College, for example. I thought it would be more elitist here. You would think there would be a huge gap between places like Oxford and Cambridge on the one hand and the rest of the universities on the other, but in the end I don’t think there’s that much difference for the average student.’ That Saturday evening Smith is in the long room of New College (the name is deceptive; the college was founded in ) lending moral support to fellow singer Vishal Bhavsar.The latter is taking part in Oxford Idols, a talent show organized as part of the annual RAG week.RAG stands for ‘receive and give’,and during the week students organize a range of activities to earn money for charity. Every penny raised by the sale of lukewarm cocktails and by ‘auctioning off ’ members of the biggest sports teams will go to projects such as a school in the former Yugoslavia which Oxford students have adopted. Kirsty Rolfe, a first-year student of English at St Anne’s, sports a snug ‘I love RAG’ T-shirt as she works behind a table that serves as an improvised bar. ‘I think it’s great that students at a place like Oxford organize this kind of thing,’ she says. Rolfe attended a state school, not one of the prestigious public schools (which, confusingly, are actually privately run) as Eton or Harrow which for centuries have provided a large number of Oxford’s students. ‘In that respect I don’t have a typical Oxford background, so I consider myself lucky to be able to study here.’ Also present is Helena Puig Larrauri, president of the Oxford Student Union, which represents students of all but two of the Colleges. She believes that the days in which students from state schools were all too grateful to get into Oxford are over.‘Oxford has changed since the time when the English aristocracy sent their sons here to prepare them for positions of leadership in business and politics.Perhaps that is still the case at a very few Colleges, for instance Christ Church, but in the main students here are no different from those at any other university.’ The union’s officers, whose tasks include protecting gay rights and organizing demonstrations for a cleaner environment, fair trade, and students’ right to have abortions, have mainly Labour sympathies; very few support the Conservatives.‘Many students here are involved in these issues. Over four thousand subscribe to our newsletter. No, the ‘Brideshead Revisited’ years are over.’ Ms Puig Larrauri is not the only person to refer to Evelyn Waugh as an illustration of what Oxford is not. In the Turf Tavern, Oxford’s favourite student bar, classics students Kirsty Ross and Roland Lewis are sipping pints. Asked to describe the typical Oxford student, Lewis replies, ‘Not like in Brideshead Revisited, at any rate.’ In 136

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Waugh’s  novel the university’s glory years are seen through the eyes of protagonists Sebastian Flyte and Charles Ryder. There was much drinking and frolicking by the rich and happy few, but very little studying. Every student here now would agree that those days are over. Lewis continues, ‘Oxford is no longer the university of the elite. It has become a bastion of the middle classes.The key word is no longer aristocracy but meritocracy.’ Ross agrees. ‘Nowadays this university is full of students from upper middle-class families whose parents are eager for them to achieve more than they did. Plenty of today’s students come from ordinary state schools.’ Lewis and Ross themselves are an exception to this rule, coming as they do from public schools. But, says Lewis, ‘That is no longer an advantage in England. When I tried to apply to King’s College in Cambridge, I told the admissions officer over the telephone that I had attended a public school. Right away she said I was wasting my time – they were only interested in less well-off students. I do think that everyone should have the same opportunities, but if you ask me this is not the way to go about it. If the government would only work on improving education in state secondary schools, then we wouldn’t need these kinds of rules at universities and we could get rid of all this elitist blather for good.’ Until then, Oxford remains wary of being too easy on the rich and famous. And no one is spared. In , Euan Blair, the Prime Minister’s eldest son, was gently shown the door at Trinity College. His grades were simply not good enough – and in that case even the son of Britain’s most powerful man is no longer welcome.

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stockholm

Karolinska Institutet by David Bremmer

Karolinska Institute in facts and figures: Founded in 1810 5,309 students 3,868 staff Budget D 385 million

Walking onto the campus of Stockholm’s Karolinska Institute, you can easily miss it: a bust of Alfred Nobel,the spiritual father and namesake of the world’s most coveted scientific award.The bust may be difficult to spot,situated as it is in a grassy park to the left of the entrance to the university, the street sign, reading Nobels väg, assures the visitor that this is no ordinary medical university. More than any other body, the Karolinska Institute determines who will win the annual Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. This fact alone is enough to make Karolinska Sweden’s leading medical university, but even leaving that aside, the university has more than enough to be proud of. It represents a total of thirty percent of medical education in Sweden and conducts forty percent of the country’s research. With over five thousand students and almost four thousand staff, the institute is one of the largest medical universities in all of Europe.

The headquarters of Karolinska Institutet are situated at the north campus in Stockholm

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Despite these impressive statistics the Karolinska Institute, with its two hundred year history, is a relatively young university. It was named after the Swedish King Charles XIII, who founded it after being defeated by the Russians in the Finnish War of -. Upon learning that one-third of all injured soldiers ended up dying, the King decided that something had to be done to improve the training of the army’s doctors and surgeons. Thanks in part to the work of Jöns Jacob Berzelius, the renowned chemist who developed the atomic symbols which are still used today, Karolinska grew rapidly. By , the year university status was conferred, there were eight professors and one  students.The next milestone was , when Alfred Nobel decreed that the university would be the body to determine which scientists should be awarded the Nobel Prize. Over one hundred years later it is clear that Karolinska has moved forward with the times. Scientists from the university collaborate with colleagues from across the globe, from Europe to the US and in Ethiopia, China and Thailand. Students and academic staff as well come from all over the world, and Karolinska has very recently opened its first foreign branch in Singapore. But it also continues to renovate itself at home; the brand new Bio Science Park in Huddinge, just south of Stockholm, will give a major boost to research activities as well as draw in extra funding.The university is becoming more modern in other respects as well, for instance by taking a more active approach to attracting female professors. All things considered,it would seem that the Karolinska Institute is a university that other universities can rightly be jealous of. Its affiliation with the Nobel Prize has given it access to an international network as well as an excellent reputation worldwide that attracts both scientists and students to Stockholm. Sweden’s ideal educational climate is a boost as well.While universities elsewhere in Europe are facing drastic budget cuts, these are out of the question here.The Swedish government is aware that not industrial need but knowledge and innovation are the driving forces behind education, and so education remains free and study grants relatively generous. For the moment, the Karolinska Institute has the time and stability it needs to take a considered approach to the upcoming implementation of the bachelor/master system which will harmonize European higher education.‘The Bologna Treaty is a good thing for us and for our students,’ says President Harriet Wallberg-Henriksson. ‘So is our membership in the League of European Research Universities. It is a privilege to be able to work in even closer collaboration with Europe’s best universities.’

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President Harriet Wallberg-Henriksson on International Ambition

‘Toppers Flock to Us’

‘Thanks to the Nobelprize it’s not hard at all to get talented students and researchers to Stockholm’.

Sweden has no plans to decrease funding for higher education, which means that the Karolinska Institute’s President Harriet Wallberg-Henriksson can continue with and expand on her plans to improve the quality of the university’s education and research programmes. Since being named President of Sweden’s most prestigious university a year ago, Harriet Wallberg-Henriksson has had little time to rest. At the moment she has just returned from Singapore where she attended the opening of the university’s first foreign branch. Her diary is jam-packed, so it is not surprising that she rushes into her modest office a few minutes late. ‘Yes, my new job is certainly a big change from my work as a doctor and professor of physiology,’ she admits. ‘I miss my research and my patients most.’Even though she has not held the reins at Karolinska for very long,she knows exactly what she wants to achieve. Karolinska opened a branch in Asia this past autumn.Why? Internationalization is at the top of our list of priorities.Of all the Scandinavian universities we are the most international, and to remain so we need to attract as many top researchers and students to Sweden as we can.Another reason is that we want to be present where the most important medical research is taking place.This is why we set up a branch in Singapore. We have already been working with the university there since . What we will be doing specifically now is offering a joint PhD programme for eighteen students, half from Sweden and half from there. 140

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Karolinska’s excellent reputation is known all over the world. Is it still difficult to attract talented students and scientists? Honestly,it is not at all difficult for us to get top talent students and scientists in here. The truth is that we get so many applications that we have the luxury of choosing whom to accept.The fact that we award Nobel Prizes plays an important role in this – it certainly adds to our stature.Wherever I go, whether it’s the US or Asia, scientists consider Karolinska as one of the very best medical universities. Holding on to our talent is a problem though. Sweden’s weak economy has led to universities’ budgets barely increasing over the last decade; our education minister even refers to the ’s as the ‘lost decade’. A lot of people have given into the temptation to move to jobs in business or elsewhere in health care. How important is the LERU to you as an international university? It is extremely important because it strengthens cooperation in Europe and brings us into close contact with the best European universities. Besides this, it is useful for us to be a partner in the European Research Council along with the other LERU universities. I hope LERU will help our scientists to exchange more knowledge. At the same, time students will share better educational opportunities, for instance through the exchange of lecturers or by going abroad themselves. For this reason I am happy with the Bologna Treaty; harmonizing European educational systems will mean that European students will be able to study wherever they like. How far along is Karolinska with the introduction of the bachelor-master system? We are hard at work on this. Although we are strongly in favour of this system, and have made this known to the Swedish government, it also causes problems for some of the programmes. For instance, our medical programme presently takes five and a half years to complete, longer than the bachelor-master system stipulates, so we want to make sure that exceptions to the rule are possible. Another thing is that it takes four years or longer in Sweden to prepare a doctorate; this would have to be brought back to three and connecting this to a master’s degree programme would be problematic. But these are not really the most difficult problems to solve, so all things considered I’m sure we will find solutions and get used to the bachelor-master system quickly. To be the kind of internationally oriented university you wish to become, education will have to be in English. Our postgraduate education is already completely in English, which affects  students. In the undergraduate phase, the future bachelor phase, instruction is mainly in Swedish; that will not change. We have not yet taken a decision about the language of instruction in the master’s degree programmes, which are now half in English and half in Swedish. I can imagine that we would decide to offer more instruction in English.

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Despite a climate of economic malaise throughout the past decade,Swedish higher education is stable in comparison with the situation in Germany, England and the Netherlands. There are no tuition fees, no controversial issues. How is this possible? This is because here in Sweden we realize that we must rely on knowledge and innovation not on industry. We could never compete with Southern Asia. Knowledge and innovation are what we are good at on the international market; we have something to contribute there. We need to invest in sectors in which we are seen internationally as being successful.Higher education is of essential importance for this,so I do not see the government reducing funding for it any time soon. Do you discuss this regularly with Sweden’s present Minister of education? I do talk to the minister regularly and we do not disagree on many issues. The present minister is really doing his best for higher education and trying to make more funding available for research; he is preparing new legislature to this effect which he will be presenting to Parliament. So we are quite happy with him, even though we would like more money. But I think everyone everywhere wants more money. Something completely different: you are a proponent of having more women in higher academic positions. To what extent is this necessary, since Swedish women are already well represented in the country’s workforce? It is absolutely necessary. Sixty percent of students, regular and PhD, are women. In academic positions just under professorship they make up  percent, almost half.The problem is the last step: only seventeen percent of our professors are women. When I realized that if we carry on at the present rate it will take until  to get to fifty percent, I knew that was much too long. We have set up a task force to speed things up. Now every time a department appoints a female professor,it receives an incentive of , Crowns [over h ,, Ed.] two years in a row.The department gets this money from me, not from the government. Everyone supports me in this; it isn’t a topic of debate because everyone agrees on the necessity of it. Karolinska is a real research institute.A common complaint heard from students is that education has rather a low priority at research institutes. We are familiar with this problem; we are working on it.When we appoint a professor, we still tend to concentrate on his or her research skills and pay less attention to teaching skills. We are trying to improve the quality of our education by finding a better balance between it and research. Unfortunately, I’m afraid this will continue to be problematic simply because we are first and foremost an international research university. Still we must improve and we realize that we need to train our researchers ourselves. We could never bring in all of our staff from abroad.

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As head of the Department for Cellular and Molecular Biology and the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, Thomas Perlmann runs an important stem cell research programme

Research as Undisputed Spearhead

Everything for the Patient Over  percent of the Karolinska Institute’s budget is spent on research.‘In my opinion, all research conducted at a medical university should be for the benefit of patients. The only way to guarantee this is to apply for patents and to make sure that these patents are further developed by companies.’ Nancy Pedersen is Professor of Genetic Epidemiology;she has done well since arriving in Stockholm  years ago as a graduate student from Colorado in the US. ‘The possibilities for medical research here are limitless.This is partly because churches have been keeping birth and death records since the year dot, which means that databases have been compiled that are of invaluable importance to me and other scientists.’ Her field of research is twins. ‘Twins play an important role in the study of causes of disease, especially in determining the degree to which genetic or environmental issues are involved.’ Records for nearly , sets of twins born between  and  have now been karolinska institutet

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stored in an electronic databank.‘An advantage of this is that we now have a lot of information about twins who were separated at an early age,something that used to be common but luckily rarely happens today.’ Information gathered by Professor Pedersen led to her discovery that while twins’ cognitive abilities are often quite similar, genes play a much smaller role in the development of personality. Professor Pedersen’s research is an illustration of the generous attitude towards research in Sweden in general and at the Karolinska Institute in particular.Statistics confirm this: of its total budget, the university reserves  percent for research, while as a whole the Karolinska Institute receives forty percent of the total Swedish budget for medical research. It attracts sixty percent of its research budget from non-government sources. In total, the university employs over  scientists, plus  technical and laboratory staff.Together they produce nearly four thousand publications annually. The fact that thousands of guest researchers visit Stockholm every year is more proof that its reputation for research is highly respected internationally. The university’s aims for even further internationalization are set out in its strategic plan for , with which it hopes to strengthen its position and become more competitive. Research here covers the entire medical spectrum and the university is a world leader in some areas. Alzheimer’s disease is one of these; Professor Pedersen is also involved here.‘At the moment I am working on ageing processes in twins,looking at cognitive function, memory and when and how dementia sets in. Genetic factors are also important in the development of Alzheimer’s,while in Parkinson’s disease they are not, oddly enough.So when one female twin is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s,in  percent of cases, the other will be, too. However, with Parkinson’s it almost never happens that both twins develop the disease.’ The reasons for this are still unclear, says Professor Pedersen. ‘There must also be some kind of environmental factor involved in the development of Parkinson’s disease,’ she says. ‘We know that in the case of Alzheimer’s brain-stimulating activities such as doing crossword puzzles and taking part in cultural activities are beneficial. If someone with a predisposition to the disease starts doing this long enough in advance,chances of it developing later decrease by up to fifty percent.’ Besides genetic research into Parkinson’s disease, Karolinska is also involved in a prestigious project dealing with stem cell research. Professor Thomas Perlmann, head of the Department for Cellular and Molecular Biology and of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, is taking part in this project. He is investigating the development of the central nervous system.‘There are at least one thousand different kinds of neuronal cells; I am interested in how neurons that produce dopamine are generated.’Dopamine is an important neurotransmitter that is associated with Parkinson’s disease in which fully formed dopamine-producing neurons die off.’ This is where stem cells come into the picture.‘Stem cells are immature cells that, in theory, can develop further into any kind of cell. Research has shown that Parkinson patients can benefit enormously from transplants of nerve cells. The result is a longterm, and in many cases permanent, reduction of symptoms.’ 144

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That is the good news; the bad news is that helping even a single patient requires large numbers of dopamine cells.Tissue for transplantation has so far been taken from aborted human foetuses. However, besides the ethical dilemma involved, it is simply not possible to harvest sufficient amounts of tissue to help the large number of patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease. Consequently, up to now experimental success has been reached on a very small scale.‘If we can understand how dopamine cells are generated in the normal process of development we should be able to “instruct” stem cells and engineer them in the lab so that they become fully functional dopamine neurons.If we are successful, this would enable large-scale production of dopamine neurons, providing, in theory, an unlimited source of dopamine neurons for transplantation.’ Professor Perlmann adds that research on Parkinson’s disease is far from being the only application for stem cell research. It is also useful for the study of brain processes. He is himself working with mouse stem cells. Human stem cells will be required for transplantation.‘Our research is still one step away from actual therapeutic application, so mouse cells are perfectly adequate.’ Research at the Karolinska Institute occasionally leads to particularly important findings, as Jan-Åke Gustafsson is keen to point out. He is head of the Department of Medical Nutrition as well as Director of the Centre for Biotechnology; his field of research is steroid hormones. In  he discovered a new oestrogen receptor, ERβ, while before only ERα had been identified.‘This new receptor turns out to be extremely suitable for the development of new drugs with which to treat diseases of the brain and for use in controlling the immune system,’ he explains. Over the past year Gustafsson has been working on the development of synthetic drugs for rheumatism and arthritis.‘But that isn’t all: ERβ is effective in destroying cancer cells in cases of prostate cancer and there is evidence that it may also be able to play a role in intestinal and breast cancer. It has beneficial effects on ovulation and could be used to treat depression. Oestrogen is active in the brain and affects dopamine, a neurotransmitter responsible for mood states. Giving women oestrogen can reduce depression.’ Besides being one of Sweden’s most celebrated scientists with an overwhelming number of prizes and publications to his name, Gustafsson is also a popular face in the media. But keeping him busy at the moment is Karolinska’s new Bio Science Park Novum, which he is in charge of and which the university hopes will give it new momentum. The park is situated in Huddinge, just south of Stockholm; this town has been home to a division of the Karolinska Institute since . Thanks to Gustafsson, who has been involved in the development of this southern campus since the beginning, there are presently  people at work there.‘At the moment I think that one third of our work takes place in Huddinge and two-thirds in Stockholm. In ten years’ time this location will be much bigger.’ He is convinced of the Bio Science Park’s great value for Karolinska.‘In my opinion, all research conducted at a medical university should be for the benefit of patients. The only way to guarantee this is to apply for patents and to make sure that these patents are further developed by companies.’ karolinska institutet

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In  he put these words into action when he set up the bio-company KaroBio, which now employs  people. ‘The purpose of the Biopark is to create new structures from which viable new businesses with growth potential can spring up.’What he has in mind is a three-phase system. ‘First the academy, then small to medium-sized businesses and finally the big players, the pharmaceutical multinationals. The small businesses are the intermediaries between the multinationals and the university and can help place a new discovery in the commercial arena. By setting up these businesses, or attracting them, we can generate new funds for the university.’

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Rafaella Ockinger leads the Medicinska Föreningen (MF), Karolinska’s biggest student union

Student Life in Stockholm Hardly Sparkles

Might as Well Get to Work Generous study grants, no tuition fees and life in one of Europe’s trendiest capital cities: Swedish students have it made,you might think.However,there is no sparkling student life here.‘Studying here is just something you do, rather like going to work.’ At twelve o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon, the Karolinska Institute campus is a cheerful bustle of activity. In the university restaurant some students are eating, while others discuss their work, books at hand. Flyers pinned to bulletin boards resemble those at every other university: ‘See Lapland by dogsled! Winter weekends from  Crowns!’reads one.At a number of tables students are busy cramming for exams; in the bookshop, owned by the medical students’ association, course books are being rung up. Books are cheap for students: the shop is not run as a profit-making enterprise. Although initiatives like these may make Karolinska a good place to study, there is no real student life here to speak of. ‘Stockholm just isn’t much of a city for students,’ says second-year medical student Daniel Fröjdh, . The jolly air of the Karolinska campus is not representative of the rest of the Swedish capital. ‘Studying here is just karolinska institutet

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something you do, rather like going to work.’There are no special cafés or bars for students, adds fellow student Frederik Lindstedt, like the one in Uppsala [eighty kilometres north of Stockholm and home to Sweden’s largest university, Ed.]. Where you go depends on what you like to do; most students go out in popular night-life areas like Stureplan and Söder.’ Sky-high duties on alcohol also put a damper on student life in Sweden. Strict government regulations stipulate that alcohol is only available at national sales points; a beer in a café generally runs to an astronomical . euro’s. There are not many loopholes to facilitate a cheap night on the bottle.‘There are only a few places in Stockholm where drinks are a bit cheaper,’says Malin,another medical student.‘And we don’t have the “student nations” here that sell cheap beer, like they do in Lund and Uppsala.’ The best way to make a night of it seems to be to have a pre-party and get tanked up before leaving home. Daniel explains:‘What it comes down to is that people get themselves fairly legless at home and then go into the city. But it isn’t just students who do that – it’s a typically Swedish thing.’ And then there is the medical faculty’s pub, which is open Fridays from three o’clock in the afternoon until nine in the evening. Beer, at  Crowns (. euro’s), is considered cheap.‘That’s about the cheapest beer you can possibly get,’ according to student Lisa Kekonius. So back to study facilities. ‘Education is free in Sweden; students’ only obligation is to become a member of a student union,’ explains Rafaella Öckinger, chairman of the Medicinska Föreningen (MF),Karolinska’s biggest student union.‘We are here to protect students’ interests. We make sure they get the best possible education and have access to the best possible facilities.’ Membership costs three hundred Crowns per semester. Swedish students receive a grant of two thousand Crowns per month; they can borrow amounts of up to  Crowns. ‘It’s easy to get money from the government,’ says Öckinger.‘The idea is that students should not be dependent on their parents, but take care of themselves.’ While this arrangement may seem generous, students in Sweden do not lead lives of luxury. Housing in Stockholm is expensive, with a single room of  to  square metres costing up to  Crowns per month. Apartments for two can be up to  more. And there is little time for students to work on the side. ‘That’s why almost everyone ends up borrowing the maximum of  Crowns per month.’ In spite of the heavy academic workload, students feel they still have enough time left over for other activities.‘It depends on the semester, but even though medicine is a full time programme we still have plenty of time,’says Malin,who works part time as an interpreter for the deaf.‘We never spend forty hours a week on our studies,’agrees Lisa. ‘At any rate it is certainly not like what I hear from a friend of mind who studies at Oxford. She gets up every day at half past six and doesn’t get to bed until she finishes all their work, which is usually after midnight.’ The students at Karolinska who are the hardest workers are the slightly more mature ones,such as Daniel Fröjdh.Students tend to be older here because many young people take a year out after secondary school to decide what they want to do next. Also, not 148

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everyone has the grades to be admitted to Karolinska or one of Sweden’s other top universities right away. ‘To pull up their marks a lot of people end up at institutions for adult education,which operate to high standards here in Sweden,’says Öckinger.High marks are required for admission into the medical faculty, especially in mathematics and English. After admission it takes . years of study to earn the title of medical doctor. Completing a specialism takes an additional four years. Furthermore, students do not have to wait until after graduation to start a PhD education; they may start after accumulating a total of  credits. As head of the MF, Rafaella Öckinger is exempted from academic obligations for one year.She and her staff are charged with making sure that students’interests are represented in the workings of all committees and administrative bodies.‘Student co-participation works well in Sweden,’ she explains.‘The law guarantees us just as much decision-making power as all the other committee members and administrators.’ There is also a student parliament which meets regularly.The only problem is that few students are motivated to take up administrative duties.‘Most students see the union as an organizer of parties and social activities,’ laments Öckinger. ‘They are less interested in the rest. I’m chairman now, but it’s always difficult to find someone to hold this position.’ It is interesting to note that in spite of the challenging study programme, there seems to be little or no competition between students.‘That’s because Swedish universities do not give marks for exams – you either pass or you don’t.’ So that makes it difficult for students to stand out.‘How does that work out for students hoping to get a PhD position? That is indeed difficult,’ says Öckinger. She herself came to Sweden from Italy as an exchange student and ended up marrying a Swede; she is familiar with the dilemma. ‘Personally, I think a little competition is no bad thing. As head of the MF, though, I have to represent everyone and I think there would be resistance to the introduction of marks.’ Perhaps this will change with the introduction of a bachelor-master system. ‘The Bologna Treaty stipulates that students who ask for a mark for an exam have to be given one. So who knows?’

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strasbourg

Université Louis Pasteur by Thomas Blondeau

University of Strasbourg in facts and figures: Founded in 1971 18,055 students 3,165 staff Budget D 137.4 million

In the morning light, white laboratory coats flit back and forth in the Rue Blaise Pascal, moving between the Le Bel Institute and the chemistry faculty. Sometimes two coats stop to kiss a greeting. The tall faculty building may look rather like a giant gas lighter, but it has been a long time since any experiments took place inside. Security issues are partly to blame, although some people also claim that the building sways slightly in high winds, interfering with precision measurements. That an institute of technology could allow such a shortcoming to occur is a subject that students at Stras-

Ecole Européenne de Chimie, Polymères et Matériaux de Strasbourg

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bourg’s Université Louis Pasteur (ULP) never tire of discussing with each other. Whether there is any truth in the story is unimportant: it has already taken its place in the canon of urban legends connected with the sole French university in the League of European Research Universities. In the Alsace region, it is not unusual for a building’s name or function to change with the years. Strasbourg, the region’s capital, is located on the German border; over the centuries it has found itself governed alternately by France and Germany. By  a university had grown out of a local Protestant school, but it wasn’t until a later period of German dominance ( to ) that its status was finally raised when Emperor Wilhelm decided to make it a showpiece institution. However, even when the commotion caused by the war was over, the university had not yet seen its final transformation. An interesting glimpse of the ULP’s further development can be found in the Rue Blaise Pascal, where a number of its lecture halls and administration buildings are located. Just a few hundred metres along from them are the buildings of the Université Robert Schuman.Although architecture confirms a common history,the two universities could hardly be more diverse. In  the spirit of the late ’s inspired a call for more democracy and direct involvement; the ensuing schism split the old university into Strasbourg’s present three institutions: Louis Pasteur (where Pasteur himself worked), Robert Schuman and Marc Bloch. Each is an independently operating university and their fields of research generally do not overlap. The ULP is the choice for students of medicine,the sciences,economics and psychology; Schuman and Bloch for law and languages respectively.There is little or no interchange between the three, and although some ULP board members hope that they will slowly grow towards each other, everyone agrees that this will not take place in the near future. ‘All the changes that the Alsace and this university have seen over the years have led to people feeling first and foremost that they are Alsatian, and then French. It’s the same for students: if you’re from the region,you stay here,’says Pierre Ali Beikbaghban, a cheerful biochemistry student and himself of mixed Alsatian and Iranian descent. It is this pride which has led the region to go its own way instead of subscribing to the ubiquitous French centralism.The sentiment is evident in both political and university decision-making. Strasbourg boasts the country’s oldest student refectory, where decent meals can be bought on the cheap. In a country that prides itself on strict separation of church and state, clerics here are financially supported by the government; the Marc Bloch University is home to both Catholic and Protestant seminaries. And Strasbourg: wasn’t that the seat of the European Parliament? Perhaps, but foreign students hoping to land a work placement position in an EU staff office should spare themselves the effort. ‘It’s two completely different worlds,’ says Michèle Debay, head of international relations for ULP.‘Perhaps we should try to change that.’ But this, too, will probably not happen within the foreseeable future.

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Président Bernard Carrière on European and French Difficulties

Pressure on Brussels

‘There is no reason that a university should not be involved in commercial projects’

‘League members need to get to work first.’ Président Bernard Carrière hopes that the association of research universities will wield political clout. In the meantime, the bachelor/master degree system has been causing headaches in France, even though English-language lectures have never really topped the list of priorities in the Alsace. Bernard Carrière is a physicist and the eighth president of the Université Louis Pasteur (ULP); he is a busy man.The bachelor/master debate is in full swing in France, and for him as head of the institute of technology, this means plenty of travel and headaches. Carrière can count on the help of seven vice-presidents, each with his own area of responsibility ranging from trade to research. Interestingly, the vice president for student affairs is always a student but enjoys the same powers as the rest of the board members. ULP boasts the highest rate of voter turnout of all French university elections: around thirty percent of students take the trouble to ensure that their voices are heard. ULP has always been an exponent of international cooperation. For many years it has conducted an intensive exchange programme with Japan; more than twenty percent of the student body come from outside France. Language courses are offered free of charge. And yet while Strasbourg enjoys such cordial relations with educational institutions abroad and welcomes people from all over the globe, its own three universities work alongside each other, their paths never crossing. Finding a balance in all these issues seems to be the soft-spoken, moustachioed president’s most pressing task. He almost seems to miss his old desk.

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A few months before you became president, your predecessor associated this university to LERU. What do you think is the university’s most important task within this association? If the league has a role to play, it is one of political pressure. It must be an organization that will make a case in Brussels for the research institutes and for the position of fundamental research within university education. There are already a number of cooperative associations for European universities, so LERU will have to make sure it stands out. It has a more specific field of activity and has to be able to work effectively to promote its own interests. Otherwise, its existence has no justification. But doesn’t lobbying require a permanent presence in Brussels? And what form will this political pressure take? League members need to get to work first. We have to define our vision, determine what we have in common. Not just for politics, but for ourselves. Ultimately, we will have to present our findings to a committee in Brussels and, in conferences and other forums, make sure we continue to stress the fact that European universities do more than just teach. Still, we shouldn’t be pessimistic about the Bologna Declaration. Some universities seem to be afraid that a large increase in the number of foreign students will put extra pressure on staff and endanger research programmes. Personally, I’m not really worried. Actually, I would like to see even closer affiliations between universities in the same region.That would mean that the bigger research institutes, for instance those in LERU, would be able to help the smaller ones to climb up the ladder. Then every student would have access to an attractive curriculum regardless of the university where he or she is registered. So the ULP will not turn into an elitist university? The fact that we aim for excellence in research does not make us elitist. On the contrary: the League will improve the mobility of researchers and students, not limit it. To facilitate internationalization, some universities outside the UK have made English the language of instruction within their master’s degree programmes.Will Strasbourg follow this trend? Not for the time being. The government is not going to force us to implement this kind of change. Foreign academics who come here do teach in English for the simple reason that they speak it better than they do French. But French remains the first language here.You see, French universities attract more and more academics and students from abroad and although we do understand that not all of them speak French, we still feel they need to be able to speak the language after having been here a couple of years – even if it is only for their own personal benefit. English is definitely winning ground within the research community.Even so,in the European arena there are three major languages: English, German and French. While université louis pasteur

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I can understand that Northern European countries,including the Netherlands,might feel pressured to conform, I’m doubtful that France ever would. European researchers have been leaving the European research institutes in search of better facilities, for instance in industrial research or in the US. Will ‘Old World’ universities find they have to take up commercial activities in order to generate additional funds? Without a doubt, the university must continue to conduct basic research of the highest quality; this is a sine qua non of the modernization of research and technological development. It is essential that governments continue to guarantee that universities can concentrate their energies on that, since industrial research in France is simply not capable of providing the necessary level of innovation. There is no reason that a university should not be involved in commercial projects, but it would be better to organize specific centres and networks within which universities and their commercial partners could cooperate.Governments – and that could certainly mean all EU governments – have a supporting role to play in this. As a physicist in the field of micro-electronics, I am aware that corporations like Philips, Siemens and Motorola have truly outstanding research laboratories. But for us, the independence of our research is non-negotiable. And yet your cooperation with industrial partners contributes greatly to your university’s income. So how will you guarantee your independence? You know as well as I do that the European Commission wants member states to invest increasingly in scientific scholarly research. Some big companies, including Philips and IBM, support this scholarly research unconditionally. It’s all about reaching a state of balance. Commercial industry is interested in finding a magic pill to cure obesity; let governments be responsible for finding funds for expensive work on rare diseases. Your vision is a truly international one,but in your own city three universities work alongside each other without any interchange to speak of – your students cannot just drop in next door for lectures in complementary subjects. (Laughing) Good point! On the one hand, we work with virtual study programmes whereby students can earn certificates over the internet and which we plan to put to use in developing countries; on the other, we have this situation here in Strasbourg where , students are spread over three universities. It’s a strange combination for sure, but in the end it is a result of our historical development.There are some ideas; we have discussed the possibilities of combining the management and administration of the three. Amalgamation is not unthinkable, but we need time.Time will tell.

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‘In theory researchers should have enough time for their real work, but the truth is that they rarely do’

‘No Division Between Fundamental and Commercial’

From Penguin to Business Tiger ‘There is nothing more dangerous than a division between fundamental and commercial research,’ says Alain Beretz, a pharmacologist in Strasbourg. Almost a third of the ULP’s budget is self-generated. Even so, a children’s tour of the university museum is almost as important – not to mention the beer. Penguins are hot in Strasbourg. Stuffed emperor penguins (together with Nile crocodiles and coelacanths) may be among the showpieces of the Zoological Museum, but recently the birds also helped biologist Dr. Yvon Le Maho to reduce the schism between fundamental and commercial research. Well known in his field for his contributions to popular nature documentaries, Dr. Le Maho has studied emperor penguins for many years, and not long ago he discovered a peptide which helps them store food for a longer time in their stomachs. Although its application is not yet certain, it could prove to be extremely important in the food industry. This is music to the ears of Professor Alain Beretz, who besides being a pharmacologist is also responsible for relations between the Université Louis Pasteur (ULP) and the business world. ‘It is far too simplistic to imagine a situation of opposites in which the university is an ivory tower of theoretical, fundamental research and commercial université louis pasteur

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industry is only interested in practical applications.This kind of division is undesirable, too, since it implies a hierarchy of noble aims above more basic ones. As if theoretical research has no effect on the economy!’ Even so, Professor Beretz allows that universities must be aware that not all research results lead to commercial application and insists that they continue to be supportive in the face of this unpredictability. ‘Applied research simply would not be possible without a fundamental base. Nothing would be more dangerous than to differentiate between the two in funding.’ Since ULP concentrates almost exclusively on the sciences (with the exceptions of economy and psychology),intensive interchange with the business world and with national research centres is strongly promoted. An example of this is the university’s pride in its participation in the Incubateur – loosely translated: business incubator – SEMIA. SEMIA is the acronym for the rather unwieldy name of the Sciences, Enterprise et marché, incubateur d’Alsace (Alsatian science, trade and industry incubator) which functions as an incubator for new enterprises. Professor Beretz is the university’s finger in the pie. ‘We coach businesses from start-up through their first two years. Funding comes from central and regional government; ULP provides  square metres of well-equipped laboratories and offices.’ Many alumni are only too happy to make use of their expertise, and researchers can count on the presence of some friendly professor or other from their university years to be there when their experiments threaten to get too complicated. These ambitious little enterprises – often fondly called ‘sprouts’ – tend to have catchy names like Synth’ E or Oncophyt and try to make ends meet with pharmacological applications for plant extracts or original, user-friendly archival systems. Since its inception in  the SEMIA incubator has helped over three hundred beginning projects. In the - alone,  start-ups and  jobs were created, the majority of which are scientific research positions. Berentz has the numbers at hand to illustrate this commercial-friendly cooperation. ‘The ULP’s contractual activities bring in a total of ten million euros.This total consists of three parts: industry contracts, those with public and charity organisations and European contracts.’ Biotechnology, chemistry and ecology are among the areas where money is to be found. But he warns against comparison with universities abroad. ‘In France a tangle of national research centres work with various universities, which makes it difficult to assign a particular research area to a specific university. Our complicated research administration system is to blame for this.’ Whoever thinks that ULP is simply a research and study factory is off the mark. Besides its zoological museum, the university is also home to museums for mineralogy and seismology as well as popular favourites like an observatory and botanical gardens. The Jardin des Sciences, a project that the university began in  in cooperation with regional and national governments, is proof that the museums are not just a series of dusty display cases.The six-year project to promote scientific culture received just under nineteen million euro’s with which to renovate and interconnect the museums. Here, too, a scientist holds the reins. Dr. Hugues Dreyssé, a physicist, is a trendy 156

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middle-aged Frenchman. ‘I am an old professor,’ he laughs as he fingers his diamond earring. ‘I still have a few research projects going, but because of my experience I am able to take charge of the cultural side of the university’s academic mission.In my opinion, younger scientists need to put all their energies into their own field. ‘Since the ’s the universities have been legally responsible for promoting academic culture.That is my job now. And I really feel lucky that Strasbourg is so well suited for this. Not only do we have a truly wonderful heritage of beautiful buildings and museums, we are also a research institute. All the other French universities have connections to museums,but as independent institutions.Here they are a real part of the ULP.’ Besides major museum projects, Dr. Dressyé also does his best to make academic culture attractive to people from outside the university. There are scientific programmes for children and weekly lectures and conferences featuring ULP professors. ‘On average, lectures attract up to  people per week even though the subject matter can be quite challenging,’ notes Dr. Dreyssé with satisfaction. The ability to bring together disparate entities could be ULP’s trump card. For example, bio-engineers recently organized an event entitled ‘Portraits of Beer’, which featured a scientific exhibition about fermentation processes as well as artists who explained how beer had influenced their personal perspectives. The event not only attracted potential future students but also served to enhance links to the food industry. By making research and education accessible within cultural and commercial contexts,ULP hopes to banish the idea that the sciences are stuffy and boring.But even Dr. Dressyé is forced to admit that interest in ‘hard science’ is on the wane in France. ‘Not educating enough engineers and chemists is akin to mortgaging a country’s future’, he says.‘I can only hope that my work will have some positive effect.’ But with all the extra tasks thrust on them, do scientists still have enough time left over to get down to their real business: thinking and experimenting? Dr. Dreyssé for one admits that research is no longer his main activity; business guru Professor Beretz’s response when asked whether he can still spend as much time as he would like in the laboratory is a resounding ‘NON! Unfortunately, my administrative work is too pressing. In theory, researchers should have enough time for their real work, but the truth is that they rarely do. Even so, in my opinion, professors continue to remain responsible for research.’

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Students in Strasbourg take their education very much au serieux

French Students Stick Together

‘Alea Ejaculata Est’ In matters of both politics and their own education, the Strasbourg students are a serious group. A wild nightlife is quite unknown at ULP. ‘I noticed on my way over here that our posters have been pulled down again – so please don’t try to tell me that the various student associations are like hand in glove.’Sébastien Heitz is the representative of the national student association UNEF. He sports a T-shirt with an anti-extremist text,although it is worth noting that in this region twenty percent of people under  voted for Jean-Marie Le Pen’s extreme right-wing party. The object of his annoyance is Lionel Dreyfuss, law student and chairman of the General Federated Association of the Students of Strasbourg (AFGES). Both Dreyfuss and Heitz are active for students’ rights. Dreyfuss, still in his young twenties, leads a regional organization of five thousand members which runs a huge refectory,provides deposits for student rooms and generally does everything else that could be considered as ‘representing and defending the material and moral interests of the student’.He does it without pecuniary interest, which according to him, could lead to political bias. UNEF is of a more political bent: Heitz talks of information, red-flagging, mobilization, demonstration. His concerns are many and include the accessibility of university education, the new bachelor/master degree system, the desperate position of students from developing countries and, of course, right-wing extremism. And with 158

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almost , members across France, UNEF can be sure to get up a respectable demonstration when faced with perceived injustice. When Dreyfuss gingerly points out that AFGES also holds opinions on political matters, Heitz comes to the end of his patience; he accuses his fellow student of fawning to the board. In turn, Dreyfuss counters that UNEF is mainly good at making noise, but in fact only serves a certain type of student. An hour later they agree to disagree and then go their separate ways,although Heitz lingers long enough to opine that the events of May  could just as well happen again now and to admit that his own political position is a legacy of that time. Earlier the same day, a student stood handing out flyers advertising a lecture by Daniel Cohn-Bendit. One of the predominant student leaders who challenged the authoritarian university climate in the Paris demonstrations of , Cohn-Bendit presently represents the Green Party in the European Parliament. Seeing the name Dany le Rouge, a university employee’s eyes go misty at the memories of the good old days. Political activism is clearly an essential element of the curriculum for many French students. Clément Beylet of the Office for Student Life recognizes this attitude:‘Most French people discover and develop their political orientation during their university years.Some turn out to be more radical than others,although there’s nothing now that compare with what we saw in the ’s.’ Rémy Perla, chairman of the Mathematics Students’ Association (ADEM), does not seem to want to change the world. ADEM is one of the seventy smaller student associations, or amicales, at ULP.‘Our association’s aims are to provide fun for students as well as to defend their interests. We throw parties and we also campaign for a reduction in the prices of syllabuses and for cheaper coffee. That sort of thing.’ Most of the smaller associations are set up to serve a particular degree programme or group of foreign students, so that those from Guinea or Senegal, for example, can meet each other and talk about home. The larger amicales have their own cafés, often located within university buildings. The café provides table football, cheap beer and a background of rock music; this, plus examples of student humour such as the proud motto ‘Alea ejaculata est’, can make you forget that the lecture halls are just upstairs. From early afternoon students turn to the three kinds of beer on tap to rinse away the taste of chalk dust.They have to start early because everyone has to be out by ten, although occasionally a blind eye is turned for an open music session or a party. Still, here, as in the rest of society, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find volunteers. Large organizations such as AFGES, as well as the smaller student associations, are seeing numbers dwindle. Perla blames this on the pressures of studying and the need to concentrate on career orientation.‘People want to enter the job market quickly so they can improve their career opportunities.The result for us is decreasing membership.’ When biochemistry student Pierre Ali Beikbaghban organized a forum for students and the business community, a total of three people turned up to help from his student association of . université louis pasteur

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It is evident that students in Strasbourg take their education very much au serieux. The image of students rolling out of bed and into the bar is not one familiar to the French, and foreign students expecting to spend a free and easy year at a French university will find themselves in for a shock. Even the quintessential experience of a winefuelled discussion on existentialism is out in Strasbourg: faithful to its German roots, Strasbourg drinks beer.The beer menu at café Les Trois Brasseurs is a hefty tome; copper kettles from the establishment’s own brewery gleam behind the bar. Foreign visitors to the weekly revue at Au Java find a basement bar where the walls are decorated with fishnets and the tables peopled with Dutch and Americans. Everyone agrees on the serious nature of the Alsatian students. The lectures, however, draw no approbation. Jantine van der Vet is a third-year Dutch student of social geography who finds the level frankly jejune.‘It’s just too basic.And the lectures are far too passive. Even though I’m working on the third-year material that belongs in the programme, it really isn’t at all challenging.’ Sitting in on a biochemistry lecture seemed to confirm this. German professor Burkhard Bechinger drones on monotonously; there are no questions. Bechinger’s closing words are: ‘Well, I’m sure you probably remembered most of that from secondary school.’ On the other hand, Birgit Wieczorek, a German chemistry student, is enthusiastic. ‘The ULP is great! I’m doing research and the facilities and supervision here are excellent.’ Perhaps these disparate opinions are typical for research universities. After all, Wieczorek does not attend lectures here. But before she can elaborate on the nature of her research project, another foreign student drags her away to dance to the international pop pulp of Britney Spears. Somehow, it feels like home.

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