After months of negotiations, the chairmen of the executive boards and the leaders of the university councils of the three technological universities have agreed on the administrative structure of the future 3TU federation.
The agreement, signed two weeks ago at a meeting in Utrecht, brings the academic community one step closer to a 3TU federation. Formally, the three executive boards and university councils still have to approve the final version of the agreement, but that is not expected to affect the agreement.
The agreement also covers the procedure for dealing with disagreements among the three chairmen, who form the highest management layer in the federation. These arbitration procedures have been a topic of discussion for the past months.
For example, a previous version of the text dictated that if a chairman could not reach an agreement with the other two, he could be forced to resign. That went a bit too far for the university councils. `That did not seem like a sensible way to deal with their differences,' explained Geerten Schrama, chairman of the Twente University Council. The paragraph on forced resignations has been scrapped in the final text. `Now, if they do not reach an agreement, they simply do not decide anything,' said Schrama.
At the Utrecht meeting, the university councils expressed their concern that the enthusiasm for the 3TU process at the separate universities appears to be waning. `You can tell that we are losing momentum,' Schrama warned. The university councils urge the respective executive boards to try harder to convince their employees of the advantages of the 3TU cooperation. `We have asked them to make it clear to their staff that they still support the plans for the 3TU federation. They promised to do so,' said Schrama.
Trans. Jeroen Latour
