Just like when he took office eight years ago, Van Vught did not miss the opportunity of the Founder's Day speech to lash out fiercely against the damaging consequences of academic conservatism. According to Van Vught, universities that go too far in making scientists independent and in decentralization of management will be reduced to `a temporary and accidental residence of unrelated research groups and educational programs.' And that will lose us the war predicted by the parting rector magnificus.
Van Vught thinks that over the next years European universities will be involved in a determined and costly competitive struggle. Like their American counterparts, the institutes will invest every euro they can to get their hands on to build their reputation:
`They will, if they are allowed to, charge tuition fees that are as high as possible. They will try to be more selective and admit only the best students, whom they will lure with scholarships. They will try to recruit the best professors in the world by offering them the best and most expensive research facilities. With these top professors, they will strive toward the highest citation impact ratings and the most prestigious academic prizes. They will advertise their academic performance whenever they can and tell everyone that they are of excellent academic quality.'
Furthermore, according to Van Vught, most consumers of education would like nothing better than to be admitted to the most prestigious university, of which the degree offers the highest chance of social and professional success. The result: a greater consumer demand of rankings and charts as well as an increasingly ravenous financial hunger on the part of the institutes that want or must participate in the continuous academic rat race for reputation.
Van Vught thinks the Dutch universities have a good chance of reaching the much-desired highest regions of the future European hierarchy. But, in order to do so, they will have to make the right strategic choices at the right time.
Trans. Jeroen Latour
