Eveniment de referinta pentru industria aviatica, gazduit de Universitatea "Cuza"
Zeci de participanti din mai multe tari au fost in aceste zile la Iasi la o noua editie a unui forum dedicat industriei aeronautice • Discutiile au avut loc la Universitatea "Cuza", in prezenta oficialitatilor judetene
Recent, Iasul a gazduit cea de a 12-a editie a Forumului ACI EuropeLeadership and Human Resources, reuniune anuala a membrilor Consiliului International al Aeroporturilor din Europa. Evenimentul destinat managementului si resurselor umane a fost organizat în premiera în România, de catre Aeroportul International Iasi, cu sprijinul Universitatii "Al. I. Cuza" din Iasi si a Universitatii Politehnica Bucuresti.
Forumul a adunat în capitala Moldovei peste 30 de participanti din 16 state membre ale Uniunii Europene, si nu numai (Spania, Italia, Grecia, Finlanda, Germania, Bulgaria, Elvetia, Cipru, Croatia, Lituania, Islanda, Rep. Ceha, Austria, Israel, Franta si România) si a avut ca scop dezvoltarea industriei aeroportuare, prin promovarea practicilor de succes, schimburi de cunostinte si experienta în domeniu, dar si prin crearea unei comunitati puternice de resurse umane.
"Activitatea pe care o desfasoara grupul de lucru privind resursele umane reprezinta modul în care putem dezvolta abilitatile oamenilor de a face fata diferitelor situatii, mai ales situatiilor de criza. Se creeaza programe de pregatire la nivelul Europei, astfel încât fiecare aeroport sa fie pregatit sa primeasca mai multe avioane, sa faca fata cresterii de trafic, sa stie cum sa managerieze ariile de miscare, sa fie pregatit pentru punerea în siguranta a tuturor bunurilor si persoanelor ce se afla în aeroport. În România, o facultate de aeronave exista doar la Bucuresti, iar pentru realizarea pregatirii profesionale a angajatilor sunt foarte putine posibilitati de a sustine cursuri de perfectionare. Pe aeroportul din Iasi, abia anul trecut am avut primul exercitiu de stingere a incendiilor în care s-a folosit un avion", a spus Catalin Bulgariu, directorul general al Aeroportului International Iasi.
Cei prezenti s-au aratat multumiti de discutiile din cadrul forumului. "Am ales Iasul pentru un astfel de eveniment, având deja în derulare un parteneriat extrem de fructuos cu Universitatea «Al. Ioan Cuza» si tinând cont de potentialul de dezvoltare al Iasului si al aeroportului în perioada urmatoare. Iasul este, în acest moment, al patrulea aeroport din tara, raportat la traficul înregistrat anual, dar tinând cont de potentialul turistic extraordinar al Moldovei si de investitiile anuntate, are o sansa de dezvoltare foarte mare", a spus Mihnea Costoiu, rectorul Universitatii Politehnice Bucuresti.
Si conducerea Universitatii "Cuza" a tinut sa sublinieze importanta unui astfel de eveniment pentru zona Iasului. "Dorim ca prin aceste manifestari sa creasca numarul de zboruri si companii aeriene la Iasi. De asemenea, credem ca aportul universitatilor se poate manifesta cel putin în doua directii – felul în care se pregatesc resursele umane pentru deciziile din aeroporturi, precum si felul în care universitatea poate contribui la securitatea cibernetica a aeroporturilor", a completat Mihaela Onofrei, prorectorul Universitatii "Al. I. Cuza" din Iasi.
Publicație : Bună Ziua Iași
Lansarea volumului "Maladii postcomuniste", autor Daniel Sandru
Astazi, 9 mai 2019, începând cu ora 18:00, la Libraria Carturesti din Palas Mall Iasi, va avea loc lansarea volumului "Maladii postcomuniste", publicat la Editura Junimea de catre prof. univ. dr. Daniel Sandru. Volumul va fi prezentat de scriitorul Radu Vancu, de politologul Lucian Dîrdala si de criticul literar Bogdan Cretu, evenimentul de lansare fiind moderat de scriitorul Lucian Vasiliu, directorul Editurii Junimea.
"Relativist sub raport ideologic, Sandru nu e si un relativist etic. Pentru el, binele exista. Iar actiunea politica, ca si teoria politica, au menirea de a-l pune în practica. Diagnosticând raul politic (nu întâmplator foloseste, în titlul cartii, metafora medicala a maladiilor!), el are convingerea ca exista si un tratament al lor. Exista un fond meliorativ al scrisului sau, o convingere ca lumea se poate face bine, un anume angajament afectiv si etic care, atunci când vine de la un teoretician al acelei forme de cinism superior care e politica, emotioneaza si convinge. Si mai ales te face sa crezi pe cuvânt ceea ce spune, aparent doar tehnic, politologul", reliefeaza Radu Vancu.
Pe de alta parte, profesorul Sandru arata ca: "Si totusi exista speranta. Ca liberal moderat, în sensul ideologic al sintagmei prin care cred ca îmi pot defini cel mai bine identitatea politica, adaug principiului libertatii dublate de responsabilitate, dar si valorii moderatiei pe aceea a meliorismului. Cred, cu alte cuvinte, ca societatea noastra se poate face bine, ca ne putem vindeca de maladiile ce par ca s-au înradacinat în cultura noastra politica, în stilul nostru educational, în mediul nostru intelectual si politic".
Publicație : Bună Ziua Iași
Congres de matematică la care participă profesori şi elevi din opt state europene
Peste 500 de specialişti în matematică, dar şi profesori şi elevi din opt ţări vor participa la Iaşi, în perioada 10 – 12 mai, la Congresul Math.en.Jeans. Festivitatea de deschidere a congresului va avea loc vineri, pe 10 mai, de la ora 9.00, în Aula „Mihai Eminescu” a Universităţii „Alexandru Ioan Cuza” Iaşi.
Congresul MATh.en.Jeans promovează o abordare diferită a matematicii, elevii formând „mici laboratoare” de cercetare aplicată. „Este vorba despre o reală oportunitate de a converti cercetarea matematică şi provocările actuale ale ştiinţei într-un dialog al spiritelor alese, întrucât echipele de elevi îşi vor prezenta în plen, în faţa colegilor şi a profesorilor, rezultatele cercetării. Organizarea acestui eveniment în premieră la Iaşi reprezintă o recunoaştere a şcolii de matematică ieşene, precum şi a întregii comunităţi educaţionale”, menţionează organizatorii.
Festivitatea de deschidere va fi urmată de prezentările elevilor în cadrul sesiunilor ştiinţifice, care se vor desfăşura în amfiteatrele Facultăţii de Matematică de la Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza” Iaşi. Colegiul Naţional, Colegiul „Costache Negruzzi” şi Liceul Teoretic de Informatică „Grigore Moisil” participă la congres în calitate de organizatori, având totodată şi echipe de elevi participante, care au pregătit o temă de cercetare propusă de un cadru didactic de la Facultatea de Matematică.
Vineri, în intervalul orar 16.30-17.30, va avea loc întâlnirea cercetătorilor şi a profesorilor, în paralel cu derularea conferinţelor destinate elevilor. La finalul zilei de vineri, participanţii la Congres vor vizita Colegiul Naţional „Costache Negruzzi” şi Colegiul Naţional. Prezentările elevilor vor continua sâmbătă, pe 11 mai, urmând ca în cea de-a doua parte a zilei să aibă loc Salonul Jocurilor Matematice. Festivitatea de închidere a Congresului va avea loc sâmbătă, pe 11 mai, de la ora 17.00, în Aula „Mihai Eminescu”.
La actuala ediţie participă elevi, cercetători şi profesori din Austria, Belgia, Franţa, Germania, Italia, Olanda, Republica Moldova şi România, fiind organizat de Inspectoratul Şcolar Judeţean Iaşi şi de Facultatea de Matematică din cadrul Universităţii „Alexandru Ioan Cuza” din Iaşi, având susţinerea Primăriei Municipiului Iaşi.
Publicație : Ziarul de Iași
Rectorul TUIASI, Doctor Honoris Causa al Academiei Forţelor Terestre Sibiu
Prof. univ. dr. ing. Dan Caşcaval, rectorul Universităţii Tehnice „Gheorghe Asachi” din Iaşi (TUIASI), a primit în cursul zilei de marţi titlul de Doctor Honoris Causa al Academiei Forţelor Terestre „Nicolae Bălcescu” (AFT) de la Sibiu.
Propunerea pentru decernarea celui mai înalt titlu academic a fost înaintată Senatului AFT de către Facultatea de Management Militar, iar prof. univ. dr. ing. Dănuţ-Eugeniu Moşteanu, ca reprezentant al acestei facultăţi, a specificat în Laudatio faptul că decizia a fost luată vizând atât activitatea ştiinţifică, cât şi cea didactică desfăşurată de prof. univ. dr. ing. Dan Caşcaval. „Considerăm că decernarea prestigiosului titlu de Doctor Honoris Causa de către instituţia noastră constituie dovada alesei preţuiri a activităţii sale profesionale, ştiinţifice şi didactice şi un omagiu adus unei personalităţi de excepţie a zilelor noastre”, a punctat prof. univ. dr. ing. Dănuţ-Eugeniu Moşteanu.
La primirea distincţiei, rectorul TUIASI a mulţumit comunităţii academice de la AFT Sibiu, declarându-se emoţionat pentru onoarea de a deveni membru al comunităţii, cât şi pentru faptul că aceasta a fost înmânată de către o instituţie de învăţământ superior din Sibiu, oraşul în care prof. univ. dr. ing. Dan Caşcaval are rădăcinile. „Am prezentat de multe ori Politehnica ieşeană, dar niciodată până astăzi cu atâta emoţie şi, mai ales, niciodată aici, în Sibiu, în oraşul meu de suflet. Şcoala de inginerie ieşeană s-a născut dintr-un vis frumos şi, poate, tocmai de aceea, a întâmpinat numeroase oprelişti, premeditate sau nu, până să devină Politehnica ieşeană de astăzi (...) Am încercat acum, profund emoţionat în faţa dumneavoastră, să vă aduc imaginea unei istorii începute acum 206 ani. Şi a făcut-o un sibian care acum iubeşte enorm Iaşul. Doresc să vă mulţumesc încă o dată pentru onoarea, imposibil de redat în cuvinte, pe care mi-aţi făcut-o de a deveni membru al comunităţii AFT Nicolae Bălcescu, o comunitate academică de elită şi o onoare care mă obligă şi care întăreşte legătura mea de suflet cu Sibiul”, a spus prof. univ. dr. ing. Dan Caşcaval
Publicație : Evenimentul și Bună Ziua Iași
Cambridge University hides bell over fears it was 'most likely' used on slave plantation
Precaution part of 'ongoing reflection about links between universities and slavery', says college
Gallery technicians install Edvard Munch's The Scream at the British Museum in London, ahead of the opening of Edvard Munch: love and angst exhibition, which runs from 11 April to 21 July
PA
The Daily Telegraph reported that the bell had been hidden but not physically removed. The site reported that it was presented to St Catharine’s by a former student working at a sugar company in British Guiana, now Guyana.
It comes as Cambridge University conducts an inquiry into whether it benefited from or contributed to the slave trade.
The two-year investigation is designed to acknowledge the university’s “role during that dark phase of human history”, vice-chancellor Professor Stephen Toope has said.
It will also dig in to whether scholars at the prestigious university reinforced racism over the centuries.
St Catharine’s senior tutor Dr Miranda Griffin said in a further statement: “It is important that the college, along with the rest of the collegiate university, acknowledges historical links to slavery and the slave trade.
“As an academic community, we will continue to conduct rigorous research into all aspects of our past and to reflect on our commitment to diversity, inclusion and asking challenging questions.”
Publicație : The Independent
Canadiens and Canadiennes in uproar as student paper takes stand on gender
A publication at the Université du Québec is ceasing to favour masculine over feminine in its language – not everyone is happy
The changes were slight, though Molière probably wouldn’t have approved.
Montréal Campus – the student newspaper serving Université du Québec à Montréal – announced in February that it would cease favouring the masculine over the feminine.
Wherever possible, non-gendered terms are now used, and when referring to a group of people, reporters write out both the female and male nouns, and include the feminine past participle in parentheses — for example, “Les étudiants et les étudiantes sont arrivé(e)s”.
This “feminization” of the paper’s contents, as the Montréal Campus editor-in-chief, Gabriel Bernier, wrote in an editorial, sought to “re-establish balance in the matter of gender equality”.
But reaction to the initiative has been quick and vicieuse. “It’s barbarity,” thundered the Quebec author Denise Bombardier. The Journal de Montréal columnist Richard Martineau devoted a column, a cable TV appearance and a chunk of his daily internet radio show to pillorying the paper, which serves the nearly 40,000 students at UQAM, long considered a hotbed of social activism in the Canadian province.
News articles reporting on Montréal Campus’s decision were flooded with what Bernier called “violent, ill-informed” comments – including a death threat, duly reported to Montreal police.
The reaction perplexed Bernier, 22, a journalism student at the university. “We’re not activists, we’re journalists. We didn’t invent a language, we just want to make it more egalitarian,” he said.
Written French was not always particularly strict on the subject of gender, with writers using often interchanging masculine and feminine forms.
But in 1647, the grammarian Claude Favre de Vaugelas argued for the restoration of what he called the “purity and clarity” of the French language. Chief among his bugaboos: the tendency – de rigueur at the time – to use both the masculine and feminine in a sentence.
“The masculine gender, being more noble, must predominate whenever the masculine and feminine find themselves together,” he wrote.
A member of the Académie Française, the powerful body overseeing the rules and usage of the language,De Vaugelas was able to ensure that his recommendation became standard linguistic practice.
The Académie has been characteristically hidebound ever since.
In 2017, it issued a “solemn warning” regarding gender-neutral language, saying its use would only invite “disunity”, “confusion”, “illegibility” and ultimately pose a “moral danger” to the language.
Only five of the Académie’s current 36 members, known as “Immortals”, are women.
Quebec has actually been notably more receptive than the mother country to gender neutrality in the French language.
L’Office Québécois de la langue française – which enforces the province’s language laws – recognized the legitimacy of female job titles such as mairesse for female mayors and autrice for women authors in 1979. The Académie, meanwhile, first announced it would allow for the use of female versions of job titles in February.
And in a notable departure from the Académie Française, the OQLF offers free online courses on “feminizing” the French language. When it comes to gender neutrality, “we’re far ahead of France,” said Hélène de Nayves, a terminologist at the OQLF.
Part of the reason is Quebec’s early embrace of its robust feminist movement, which has led to one of the more socially progressive societies on the continent, complete with liberal abortion laws and a low gender employment gap.
“Unlike in France, the push for changes in the language to reflect gender equality came from the population, not from linguists and researchers,” said De Nayves.
Apart from the criticism and occasional death threat, the only issue for Montréal Campus has been space-related. Namely, using both the masculine and feminine eats up more column inches in its paper edition. Thankfully, it only publishes two paper editions a year. Like many smart newspapers, it now flourishes online.
Publicație : The Guardian
Can the Netherlands’ old masters brush off populist attacks?
Dutch universities are conspicuously and consistently successful. Yet their funding is declining and their embrace of internationalism has put them on a collision course with the populist right. John Morgan assesses the mood in Leiden, Rotterdam, Amsterdam and Maastricht
On a sunny afternoon in mid-March, the near-carless peace of central Leiden is perturbed by the sound of distant sirens. In Utrecht, a city less than an hour’s drive away, three people have been killed by a Turkish-born gunman in a suspected terrorist attack, and there are huge numbers of police at Leiden station. But Leiden’s canals and cobbled lanes remain a picture of the Dutch Renaissance; a white flag bearing the number 444 in red script flies from Leiden University’s clock tower, commemorating the palindromic anniversary of the foundation of the Netherlands’ oldest university, in 1575.
The long history of universities in the Netherlands – the universities of Amsterdam, Groningen and Utrecht were next to be founded, in the early 17th century – is one explanation for their prominence. However, diversity and egalitarianism are also strengths of the Dutch university sector, in which ancient universities are complemented by more modern or specialist institutions, also highly regarded. These include the Eindhoven University of Technology – at the heart of a booming regional “innovation ecosystem” led by locally based multinational technology firms such as Philips – and Erasmus University Rotterdam, named after the 16th-century father of the Northern Renaissance, who was born in the port city but who would struggle to recognise its gritty, post-war reincarnation, the antithesis of nearby Leiden.
Taken as a whole, the Dutch university system is a stellar performer. In terms of prestigious European Research Council grants won, only Europe’s three most populous nations – the UK, Germany and France – outperform the Netherlands, a nation with a population of just 17 million. And when the figures on awards between 2008 and 2017 are adjusted for national population size, Switzerland, Israel and the Netherlands lead the rest by a distance, according to figures from the Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU). The country’s performance is all the more noteworthy considering that its R&D spending is modest, exactly in line with the European Union average of 2 per cent of GDP and well behind Switzerland and Israel (see graph).
“The Dutch, like the Brits, get much more out than they put in – like the Swiss or the Israelis,” says Robert-Jan Smits, Eindhoven’s president and, in a former role as the European Commission’s director general for research, one of the architects of the ERC. “This all proves that the [Dutch] system is performing extremely well.”
That verdict is underlined by the fact that 12 of the Netherlands’ 13 mainstream universities (the country also has an open university and 43 universities of applied sciences) are ranked between 58 and 184 in Times Higher Education’s latest World University Rankings.
Pieter Duisenberg, the VSNU chair, says: “We have these 14 universities in a very compact regional cluster, and cooperation…is really a core activity, within the Netherlands [and] internationally.”
Such consistency of performance is a result of the fact that the Netherlands is “a pretty egalitarian country – every university gets the same funding” from the government and there is no US-style culture of philanthropy, says Carel Stolker, rector magnificus of Leiden University. And he is “fine” with Leiden’s 68th place. “Maybe if you gave me more money I can become better, maybe enter the top 50 of the world. But who cares whether it’s number 50 or number 100 or number 70?” he asks.
The egalitarian spirit is also reflected in Dutch universities’ relative lack of selectivity at undergraduate level. Completion of the post-high school diploma earns students the right to enrol, and selection is only employed for the 11 per cent of courses where demand exceeds the number of places.
But the sirens are audible figuratively as well as literally, at Leiden and across the nation’s university sector. One major concern is funding. Dutch institutions’ prowess at winning EU grants is just as well, given the relative paucity of funding on offer domestically, critics claim, with the amount of competitive funding won from Brussels now outweighing the amount offered by domestic funders the Dutch Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).
Moreover, the government’s direct block grant of €4.2 billion (£4.9 billion) a year – 53 per cent of which is for teaching and 47 per cent for research – has declined by 25 per cent since 2000 on a per-student basis as enrolment numbers have increased. There is a growing feeling that such a trend can no longer be sustained without a dilution of standards – particularly given the near-universal reluctance in the Netherlands to raise tuition fees from their relatively low level (at least by UK and US standards) of €2,060 (£1,769) a year in 2018-19.
“The success we have now is based on the policy and the infrastructure of 10-20 years ago,” says Martin Paul, president of Maastricht University. His home country of Germany is ploughing billions of euros into its Excellence Initiative in research, risking the creation of “a reverse stream” of researchers away from the Netherlands into its larger neighbour, he warns.
Smits notes the EU’s target for member states to raise their R&D spending to 3 per cent of GDP by 2020. There are “good kids in the class” who have hit the target: Germany, Austria and Sweden. But although the Netherlands is now achieving budget surpluses, it is “still a very Calvinistic country and people don’t like to spend money”. The government needs to realise that research spending is actually “investing”, Smits says.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science agrees that "public and private investment in R&D are crucial to future economic growth in the Netherlands. Due to the structure of the Dutch economy, the Netherlands has, since 2011, set a target of 2.5 per cent on R&D spending." To that end, he adds, the government will, from 2020, "invest up to a total of €400 million extra in research and innovation" and "is encouraging increases in private spending". He concedes that, in terms of direct funding for universities, “the trend of the total budget per student (education and research) is decreasing for research universities”. But “if only the educational budget is taken into account, the educational budget per student has increased between 2004 and 2017 and will continue to increase from 2018 onwards”.
The widespread concern about funding levels culminated in the first university strike in the Netherlands’ history on 15 March, which brought 40,000 schoolteachers and academics on to the streets of The Hague. It was led by a group of students and academics, known as WOinActie (“Science Educators in Action”), formed in 2018 in response to the government’s imposition of a €184 million “efficiency cut”. According to the group’s founder, Rens Bod, a professor of digital humanities at the University of Amsterdam, overburdened academics worry that “they cannot any longer give students what they need”. The group plans further lobbying of members of parliament; if that does not succeed, more “drastic” action will be mounted: “something like a strike during exam week”, Bod says.
Academics “do not go on strike very easily”, adds Duisenberg, the VSNU chair. “The fact that they are [doing so] is something we have to take very seriously.”
But some Dutch politicians seem less concerned about funding problems than they do about Dutch universities’ enthusiastic embrace of internationalism, which they see as a threat to native culture.
In 2017, there were 48,507 international students in the Netherlands (about 71 per cent of whom were from the EU), equating to 17.5 per cent of all university students. Such recruitment levels have been enabled by a widespread use of English as the language of instruction. In 2018, 30 per cent of undergraduates at Dutch universities were taught solely in English, 23 per cent in both Dutch and English and 47 per cent solely in Dutch, according to VSNU figures. However, at master’s level, 71 per cent of students were taught solely in English.
At Erasmus University Rotterdam, for instance, even the campus signage is all in English. You will search in vain for the Dutch translation of “faculty club” or “food plaza”. Rutger Engels, the institution’s rector, says this reflects institutional pride in its status as “the most diverse university in the Netherlands”, with more than 100 countries represented on its ultra-modernist concrete campus, in a city where 50 per cent of the population are immigrants.
Dutch researchers also started to publish in English “longer ago than some countries, like Germany or France or Italy”, in order to collaborate with colleagues abroad, Engels adds. Such international outreach is “in the mindset of Dutch professors”. But critics fear that as well as threatening to make the Dutch language obsolete, more teaching in English means ever greater numbers of international students and a mounting risk that Dutch students become crowded out.
If there is a defining battleground in the controversy over the use of English in Dutch universities, it is at Maastricht, where international students make up about 53 per cent of the student body. The university is based in the historically Catholic deep south of the Netherlands, in a city whose proximity to Belgium and Germany gives it a very different look and feel to its counterparts in the historically Protestant north.
After years of campaigning, the lobbying group Better Education Netherlands (BON) filed a lawsuit against Maastricht and the University of Twente last year, arguing that their decision to offer psychology degrees in English breaks a law stipulating that teaching and exams should be in Dutch except when there is an educational reason to do otherwise. BON argued that the universities’ motives for using English were, in reality, financial. However, in July, the court accepted Maastricht’s contention that psychology is international in nature since those who expect to go on to become researchers will have to communicate their findings in English.
Paul notes that there is the option for Maastricht students who expect to become practitioners to take their psychology degrees in Dutch. But such concessions are unlikely to assuage the likes of former Leiden law lecturer Thierry Baudet, the 36-year-old leader of the anti-multiculturalism, anti-EU party Forum for Democracy (FvD), who – against expectations – won the largest share of the votes in the Netherlands' provincial elections on 20 March (although that amounted to only 14.5 per cent of the total). Those elected to the country’s 12 provincial legislatures go on to choose the members of the Netherlands’ upper house of parliament, the Senate, two months later.
In his campaigning, Baudet made great play of the Utrecht attack, which occurred just a few days ahead of the election. And in a victory speech, he included universities among the supposed leftist elite forces that have “undermined” Dutch civilisation – “the greatest…that ever existed” – accusing them of having “abolished” the use of Dutch. His party subsequently announced a “hotline” for supporters to report examples of supposed left-wing “indoctrination” in schools and universities.
All this illustrates how deeply political the language debate has become. Prior to the conclusion of the BON court case, the dean of Maastricht’s Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Anita Jansen, published a blog on the university’s website accusing Ad Verbrugge, the BON chair, of pursuing a “right-wing populist struggle” and of being a Baudet sympathiser. Verbrugge, a Leiden PhD graduate in philosophy and an associate professor at VU Amsterdam, was reportedly associated with the FvD in its former guise as a thinktank (it became a political party only in 2016).
For Paul, the debate over teaching in English is “a fake discussion”. In reality, he argues, it is not about teaching but about “a general societal worry that the threat comes from outside and that internationalisation, globalisation is the threat” – even though international companies based in the Netherlands need staff with good English, while there are vacancies in Dutch science and engineering companies that can only be filled by overseas graduates.
Stolker notes that “a lot of Dutch students want to study English courses because they believe it helps them in terms of their employment prospects”. But it is “challenging…for the broader public at large to understand that added value”, he admits. “And language is identity.”
In May, the VSNU issued a new internationalisation strategy, in the context of which, Dutch universities thinking of switching a Dutch-language programme to English will coordinate with others to ensure that at least one Dutch-language version of each bachelor’s degree remains available somewhere in the country.
In response to the controversies, the Netherlands’ ministries of education, finance and economic affairs are currently carrying out a cross-departmental study on the value of internationalisation in universities. Paul says that the study’s agenda is “not hostile” to universities, but it is unclear what the make-up of the governing coalition will be when the report is published – and, hence, how it might react. The spokesman for the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science says that the “main aim” of the study is to “identify opportunities and threats of student mobility (in particular, incoming student mobility) and to propose policy and/or measures that enlarge [its] positive effects…and decrease or mitigate the negative effects.”
“Our biggest challenge is if there would be legislation against internationalisation,” Paul says.
Australia, Germany and the Scandinavian nations “see the international [student] influx as essential to maintain their economic power,” he argues. It would be “tragic" if "the Netherlands, which has been the front-runner on this, [now] does the opposite”, he adds.
Condemnation of Baudet’s victory speech was widespread among higher education figures, including Ingrid van Engelshoven, minister of science, education and culture and a member of the centrist Democrats 66 party. In a tweet, she described Baudet's attack on universities as "nasty" and said: “Society is built on the work [and] knowledge of scientists [and] lecturers. We must protect academic freedom, not make it suspect.” Meanwhile, Paul responded to the establishment of the FvD “indoctrination hotline” by telling THE that “as academic communities, we need to take a strong stand against anybody who is trying to undermine our academic principles”.
But before Baudet’s win, there was already a debate over free speech and ideological bias in Dutch universities. Curiously, the VSNU’s Duisenberg was a key figure here since, in his previous role as a member of parliament for the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), which leads the governing coalition, he was co-proposer of a motion passed in 2017 by the Netherlands’ lower house that asked “the government to request advice and consideration” from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences about “self-censorship and limitation of diversity of perspectives” in universities and research institutes. But, when asked by THE, he insists that he does “not have an agenda” on free speech and ideological diversity.
The academy voluntarily responded to the motion, issuing an advisory memorandum – based on anecdotal examination of notable controversies – that found “no signs of any systematic restriction” on “freedom of scientific practice”.
But Leiden’s Stolker, a prominent defender on free speech in universities, points to the case of Afshin Ellian, a professor of jurisprudence at Leiden, as well as a newspaper columnist and high-profile critic of Islamism. “When he teaches – whatever he does – there is always [the necessity for] security around him,” says Stolker. He also cites controversy over classroom discussions of Turkey and China. “So I think freedom of speech is an issue,” he says. The academy's report was “too easy” on the sector, he believes.
Leiden has professors with radically differing political viewpoints who are “very vocal” on mainstream and social media, Stolker continues. “Again and again people ask me to intervene as a rector.” This also extends to questions about Baudet. People ask him: “How is it possible he did his PhD at Leiden: don’t you feel responsibility for what he is doing now?”
But Stolker responds that he does not have a position on the political views of Leiden academics. Moreover, as rector, he is “responsible for free speech in this university”. Leiden has a long-standing tradition of appointing “adversaries” with different viewpoints to professorships. “I very much feel responsible for that tradition,” says Stolker.
Nevertheless, Stolker tweeted in response to the FvD “indoctrination hotline” that it was an “idiotic” attempt to attract attention.
Stolker also gets pestered about Paul Cliteur, professor of jurisprudence at Leiden, who was co-supervisor on Baudet’s thesis and is another columnist and high-profile critic of Islamism and multiculturalism. Cliteur was the number two on the FvD’s list of candidates, so will be taking his seat in the Senate.
Cliteur has his own definition of diversity. While his current PhD candidates include a “liberal Muslim”, he is “not on the lookout for [students] with a different skin colour specifically. Because I think that’s not a good criterion for diversity. Ideological diversity – that’s what counts in a university…We should be against identity politics.”
He says that “80 per cent” of Leiden scholars are left-wing: “Is that diversity?” he asks. And while “in general, Leiden University is a very tolerant – in the best sense of the word – community, I do not think that Amsterdam University would be that tolerant”.
Cliteur confirms that Baudet’s political movement had its “cradle” in his Leiden PhD thesis, published as a book in 2012 under the title The Significance of Borders: Why Representative Government and the Rule of Law Require Nation States. “The multiculturalist philosophy is an assault on national coherence, and it’s dangerous,” he adds.
Despite his academic background, the FvD leader directs his attacks on supposed cultural elites “more strongly than most other populists” towards higher education institutions, according to Matthijs Rooduijn, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Amsterdam, who blogged an analysis of Baudet’s victory speech.
“This message also fits well with his climate change scepticism…He hopes to mobilise ‘ordinary citizens’ against conspiring and left-wing elites that, according to him, are destroying our cultural identity,” Rooduijn adds.
And even if the FvD hotline does indeed prove to be nothing more than a publicity stunt, Baudet’s anti-university rhetoric is worrying, says Leo Lucassen, a high-profile commentator on the left and director of the International Institute of Social History at Leiden, where he is professor of global labour and migration history. “It buttresses or creates a climate of intimidation or fear in Dutch society. What he is doing is undermining trust in institutions in general.”
Another paradox of Baudet’s university association is that he consciously seeks to “exude the aristocratic air of a Leiden University fraternity member” – as an article in The Nation magazine recently put it – in what may be part of an attempt to appeal to university-educated voters. Exit polling after the election suggested that about 29 per cent of FvD voters have a higher education – below the 35 per cent of the general population “but high for a European radical right-wing party”, according to Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad.
Baudet’s “dandy image, being an intellectual, helps certain people who are higher educated to vote for him”, Lucassen agrees.
Baudet’s success follows the second place achieved in 2017’s general election by Geert Wilders’ right-wing populist Party for Freedom and cements the sense that this brand of anti-elitism is an increasing force in Dutch politics. In such a climate, the risks posed by the language controversy may be sharpened further, with Dutch universities repeatedly targeted as part of “the globalist elite”, divorced from the cultural identity of “the people”.
There also may be questions over whether, given the relatively civilised debate on free speech at a place like Leiden, Dutch universities are prepared for an all-out, US-style culture war. But although a white flag may be flying from Leiden University’s clock tower, Dutch universities are not without their own armoury given the high public esteem that they have built up over more than four centuries, with many of their academics enjoying high profiles in the Dutch media as commentators.
They will also receive large amounts of moral support from other nations, which have always admired the Dutch higher education system’s international outlook and the success that has come with it. If the global tide of populism can breach even the tolerant Netherlands' socio-political dykes, they may well reflect, then universities everywhere should worry.
Publicație : The Times
UK schools are failing on higher education preparation – so universities must help
Better outreach and greater involvement in exam boards could raise expectations and standards for disadvantaged would-be students, says Martin Stephen
That only 5 per cent of white working-class children gain places at the UK’s leading universities is a national scandal. But those commentators who lay the failure at the door of admissions tutors are wrong.
As someone who has spent my career in English secondary education, I attribute much of the blame to my own sector. The truth is that after 13 years of education in one of the world’s richest countries, disadvantaged students in England still largely lack the necessary knowledge base to thrive on a demanding university course – particularly in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
Universities are not social engineers, and, besides, it is too late to prepare a student at 18 for a rigorous degree course in maths or physics. The London Academy of Excellence – a large, selective sixth-form college in a poor part of London, of which I am the founding governor – shows that such preparation is perfectly possible in state schools. It is simply not being done enough.
That said, it is not good enough for universities to simply throw up their hands and wait for the schools to get their acts together. For a start, they need to put the millions of pounds they spend on access schemes to better use. In their current guise, such schemes – as well as summer schools – too often attract only those already on the path to university, rather than changing a school culture that stops a university application from even appearing on a disadvantaged student’s radar.
There needs to be a sea change in the perceived market for access schemes. It is no use focusing on older pupils. Minds are often made up by the age of 14: schemes need to start with 11- and 12-year-olds, or even earlier.
Moreover, universities need to break the habits of a lifetime and become directly involved in raising school standards. They are too like the hapless farmer who is anxious to harvest the corn but takes no interest in sowing or nurturing it. The most obvious way to do this would be to become involved again in the examination system.
English exam boards are quasi-commercial organisations, in competition with each other and divorced from their end-user. None want their exams to be seen as more difficult than those of their rivals. Yes, A levels were recently made “harder”, but boards have the power to lower grade boundaries, so the actual improvement in standards has been minuscule.
There is absolutely no career incentive for university lecturers to become involved in marking A-level scripts, but this is the route to power in exam boards. And nothing will really change until university people take some of those senior positions.
Universities also need to bring their weight to bear on school inspection. I recently helped to found a new sixth-form STEM college in the Midlands, dedicated to supplying leading universities. In the approval process, next to nothing in the huge volume of papers to be filled out related to what a top student needs to get into a top university. It was as if academic issues were unimportant, the emphasis being on safeguarding and the teaching of “British values”.
Of course, universities cannot take over school inspection. But they could be an immensely powerful lobby to ensure that preparing students for demanding degrees was one of the things that those inspecting sixth forms should prioritise.
Another major problem for disadvantaged students is the lack of top graduates – particularly in maths and science – among their teachers. Such graduates not only deliver the knowledge: they are also superb role models. Yet we continue to labour under the delusion that a physics graduate from Imperial College London must be able to teach a remedial class of 14-year-olds just as well as an A-level set.
One of the reasons that independent schools are so successful in preparing their students is that their maths and science teachers are allowed to teach their subjects. Universities could not only be a powerful lobby for the role of the academic teacher in schools, they could also put their weight behind the larger, specialist sixth forms that are particularly attractive to graduate teachers.
In addition, universities should consider encouraging their research students to spend half a day – or even a whole one – in schools whose pupils would otherwise never meet someone with a degree in maths or science.
Universities may have been abused recently by politicians, but the top ones still enjoy a respect at Westminster that teachers do not. They need to use that power better, pushing for what they need if they are to meet the political imperative to improve their intake of students from disadvantaged backgrounds without having to lower entry standards – or see those students drop out later on. The restoration of maintenance grants could be a good place to start.
Universities do not need to take over secondary education. But they do need to be prepared to influence it, rather than merely complain about it.
Publicație : The Times
Vacuous value statements miss the point of higher education
The unfettered pursuit of knowledge is every university’s core value – even if management doesn’t always see it that way, says Dennis Hayes
The lists of “values” that appear on many UK university websites often capture some of the fine qualities that their staff display.
But, despite the importance of “excellence”, “creativity”, “integrity”, “diversity”, “ambition”, “impact” and “professionalism” to daily academic life, none of these common buzzwords denote genuine values. Nor do “rigorous”, “people-orientated” or “high-performing”.
As such, the University of Exeter – which names “community”, “challenge” and “collaboration” among its corporate values – is right to worry that mission statements can represent a “meaningless set of words”.
Real values are those that are constantly fought for and defended, such as freedom of speech. They are not discovered by working parties and tick-box surveys, or through activities such as brainstorming with Post-it notes. If the superficial results of such exercises are imposed by management on compliant staff, the only “values” that are subsequently embodied are cowardice and disingenuousness.
Determining corporate values via committees and consultations also guarantees that no one owns them. As the product of bureaucracies, they are not even the vice-chancellor’s or management’s values, much less the academics’: they are “our” values. They belong to that abstraction, “the university”.
This corporate fiction is a very different entity from the conception of the university as a community of scholars – academics and their students – united, as it were, in dispute over different philosophies, beliefs and practices. It is not surprising that those who would manage such academic anarchy are attracted to the idea of imposing some coherence on seeming incoherence. But the reason that managers put so much time and effort into generating superficial corporate values is that they have forgotten the purpose of the university. They fail to recognise that anarchy represents the true value of their institution.
The university is a place for the pursuit of knowledge without fear or favour. A fearless and favourless pursuit will produce intellectual diversity and conflict. Academics are interested in what is true and this means that they will be logical, honest, rigorous, innovative and creative but, above all, will put everything to the test of criticism.
The University of Cambridge, to its credit, gets very close to recognising this. Its “core values” are freedom of thought and expression and freedom from discrimination. Whether it can hold to both of these when some ideas are now said to be discriminatory and harmful is questionable – as highlighted by the recent controversy over the withdrawal of a visiting fellowship to controversial University of Toronto psychologist Jordan Peterson after a photo emerged of the right-wing professor posing with a man wearing an anti-Islamic T-shirt. But at least Cambridge’s core values tacitly acknowledge that problem of squaring this circle.
Universities would be better off reflecting and discussing their real epistemological values rather than running with fads and fashions in an attempt to attract students or research and consultancy money. But academics have been remiss in their duty to defend those values. For instance, they have placidly accepted the recent increase across the sector in mandatory training on how to think. It used to be training in political values such as “equality, diversity and inclusion” but today it is often about “unconscious bias”. This is a dangerous project aiming to undermine the role of conscious, rational thought.
All such mandatory training is a threat to academic freedom, and academics used to have a moral and a legal right not to be told what to think. But our recent caseload at Academics For Academic Freedom suggests that the enforcement of groupthink is on the increase.
As a grassroots campaign group, our supporters have told us about the many quiet reminders they have received to adopt the behaviours expected by their institution and not to criticise it on social media. One supporter was even subjected to a disciplinary investigation for criticising the idea that the victims of alleged ill treatment should always be believed.
Instead of avoiding trouble. It is high time that academics started fighting back – and standing up for their profession’s real values.
Publicație : The Times
Europe ‘losing ground’ to US and China on AI research
Leading professor who backs creation of ‘Cern for AI’ calls lack of decisive government action ‘disturbing’
Europe faces a serious threat to its future prosperity and the safety of its citizens if it does not act soon to properly coordinate its publicly funded research into artificial intelligence, a leading professor has warned.
Holger Hoos, professor of machine learning at Leiden University, told Times Higher Education that the continent was “losing ground every week” to the US and China in the discipline, describing the lack of decisive action at a governmental level as “disturbing”.
Professor Hoos, who works at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science, is one of the driving forces behind the Confederation of Laboratories for Artificial Intelligence in Europe (CLAIRE), which is pushing for formal pan-European cooperation on AI research, including establishing a central hub that would have a global impact similar to that of the Cern lab for physics in Switzerland.
He believes that without firm action, European universities will continue to lose top AI scholars and students to industry and institutions in other parts of the world, particularly in the US.
But Professor Hoos was also concerned that the current fragmented nature of public research on AI in Europe risked ceding too much control of the discipline’s ethical direction to large multinational companies.
“We have been letting, to some degree, industry run with it for too long already. The public has an important stake in this, and therefore the public should invest – if only to ensure that we have free access to the same kind of cutting-edge AI research,” he said.
Professor Hoos added that there was a risk of Europe becoming “dependent on AI technology developed elsewhere”, which “could be a very serious financial and economic hindrance to the prosperity of Europe”.
“If we were completely dependent on aircraft or automobiles or mobile phones produced elsewhere, it would not be advantageous to our economy. With AI being such a fundamental set of technologies, it is even more important that we do have a stake in this.”
As well as a Cern-type central hub, the CLAIRE “vision” is also to massively ramp up funding for European AI research, strengthen existing research networks and identify major regional labs as “centres of excellence”.
It has already gained support from more than 1,700 academics across the continent, from national governments including Italy and the Czech Republic and from some 700 AI experts working in industry.
While he recognised that reaching such “ambitious” goals would be “unimaginable” without European Union backing, Professor Hoos argued that, as is the case with Cern, cross-national cooperation “should be not be limited to the EU and the [European] Commission”, especially given that Brexit would leave the UK – a major player in AI research – outside the bloc.
He also said that although the commission was thinking about the challenges posed by AI “very carefully” – last month it published “ethics guidelines for trustworthy AI” drawn up by its High-Level Expert Group on AI – “honestly, I am hearing too little from them, and what I am hearing is by far not ambitious enough”, especially given the ongoing talks over the next framework programme for research to replace Horizon 2020.
If action was not taken, he said, the drain of talent would worsen and Europe risked not having the expert capabilities to deal with the ethical and safety problems posed by AI.
“Considering the rate at which [Europe is] bleeding talent and our decreasing share of global scientific publications in the field…I firmly believe we are losing ground in [the area of] AI every week. It is disturbing not to see more decisive action,” he said.
“My main worry about AI is that because of the shortage of talent and the enormous demand, once we dip too deeply into the talent pool and have people who are too weakly qualified or unqualified to develop, deploy and work with AI systems that they don’t understand, then some pretty bad things can, and probably will, happen.”
Professor Hoos’ views were echoed by Thomas Metzinger, professor of theoretical philosophy at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, who represented the European University Association on the European Commission’s expert AI group. Although he believes that Europe has taken the “intellectual lead” on AI ethics, he has criticised the guidelines as being too industry-dominated.
Professor Metzinger said it was vital that top humanities academics such as the next generation of philosophers coming through were able to work alongside computer scientists if major research hubs were set up.
“Ideally, young philosophers should be co-located [with the computer scientists] so they see what real cutting-edge research is,” he said, adding that “governments in Europe literally need hundreds of really well-trained experts who know…what is really going on in AI.”
Publicație : The Times
EU fees change could cost English universities £7 million a year
But THE analysis also suggests windfall for institutions if fall in student recruitment is modest
Some English universities could lose up to £7 million each year if undergraduates from the European Union are charged the same fees as those from outside the bloc after Brexit, a Times Higher Education analysis suggests.
If the feared drop in EU student enrolment materialises, the loss of fee income would be high enough to push four institutions into deficit and worsen shortfalls at many others, according to the figures.
However, the data also suggest that, if institutions kept the fall in student numbers well below 40 per cent, then they would actually increase fee income because of the extra amount that they would be able to charge such undergraduates.
The analysis comes after it emerged that the government may scrap the home fee status of EU citizens studying at universities in England from 2021-22. This would likely mean such students being charged the same as those from outside the EU and losing access to public loans.
THE looked at the effect such a change might have on undergraduate fee income for English universities, assuming that each “lost” student cost £9,250 (the current maximum annual fee) and that universities charged those remaining an extra £6,000 a year (based on the latest figures for average overseas fees compiled by the Complete University Guide).
Using data on 2017-18 student numbers from the Higher Education Statistics Agency, the analysis suggests that if English institutions lost 57 per cent of their full-time EU undergraduates, the total annual drop in income for the sector could be about £185 million. A 57 per cent drop is the average sector change in EU enrolments predicted in a study on the impact of such a policy carried out by London Economics for the Higher Education Policy Institute in 2017.
The THE analysis shows the drop in income would be £2 million or more at 35 institutions, more than a quarter of the English sector, with this rising to more than £7 million for institutions with large cohorts of EU students. The figures are also likely to be an underestimate as sub-degree undergraduates, part-time students and postgraduates were not included.
Such a fall in income would inevitably hit universities with the heaviest reliance on EU students the hardest. For 32 universities, it would amount to at least 1 per cent of their total income from all sources.
More than a quarter of English universities failed to record a surplus in 2017-18 of more than 1 per cent of total income and the analysis suggests four institutions would be pushed into deficit by the EU fee change.
However, the results become very different when a lower drop in EU undergraduate numbers is applied across the board: any fall lower than 39 per cent would lead to universities increasing their income overall and if the drop was limited to 30 per cent then 50 institutions would get at least £1 million a year more.
The London Economics analysis split different types of universities into clusters and suggested the fall could be nearer 40 per cent at some institutions. It also showed how a fall in the value of the pound would make the UK even more attractive as a place to study and lead to universities making even bigger net gains.
Nick Hillman, director of Hepi, said some of the opposition to the potential EU fee rise reflected “a basic misunderstanding” of the actual dynamics of such a change.
“If universities were certain they could do well financially from EU students after Brexit, they would presumably spend more money on searching for potential students the way they do in countries outside Europe,” he said.
Publicație : The Times
Thinktank wants national survey of university staff well-being
Higher Education Policy Institute says it is ‘shocking’ that no such dataset exists
Speaking as the Higher Education Policy Institute published a report on the issue, Rachel Hewitt, the organisation’s director of policy and advocacy, said that it was “shocking” that there was no information publicly available on the well-being of higher education employees.
“If universities are collecting this information, they are not being open about what the results are showing,” Ms Hewitt said. “This is at a time when staff in universities continue to be under pressure, with increasing workloads and insecure contracts rife.
“We need a consistent, public dataset on the well-being of university staff.”
In her report, published on 9 May, Ms Hewitt says that data on well-being would have to be collected by a neutral body, “to avoid politicisation of the collection and results”. She nominates the Higher Education Statistics Agency or the Universities and Colleges Employers Association.
Ms Hewitt says the questions could follow the model used by the Office for National Statistics in surveys of the general population, which asks respondents how satisfied they are, how worthwhile they feel the things they do in their life are and how happy and anxious they felt yesterday.
The paper acknowledges the likely concern that the data could be turned into a league table, but adds that “if we avoided collecting all data because it might feed new league tables and unfavourable headlines, we would end up with no evidence basis for policymaking”.
The Hepi paper also argues that well-being data need to be collected about students and warns against the conflation of mental health and well-being.
Staff and student well-being need to be understood together as both groups are “strengthened by high levels of well-being in the other”, the report says.
“If we are to get a grip on the mental health crisis in universities, we need to be collecting the right information to understand it,” Ms Hewitt said.
“At the moment, statistics on well-being and mental health are often combined, despite these being two separate issues with different ways they can be tackled.
“For universities to take the necessary action to address this issue, they need to better understand what they’re dealing with.”
Publicație : The Times
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