During their bimonthly update last Friday, the Executive Board repeated their wish to harmonise the faculties at UT. I appreciate the effort to keep the university community informed, and I have no doubt that the intentions of everyone involved are genuinely good. But as both an academic and a member of the UT community, it is my duty to voice widely raised concerns: why, and for who is harmonisation necessary?
Decisions should be taken only when they clearly benefit the university’s primary processes: research and education. Supporting processes exist to enable these, not the other way around. Yet this push for harmonisation appears to be driven primarily by the needs of supporting processes, while research and education are expected to bear the brunt.
It is not so much the harmonisation itself, but the impression that this inversion of priorities is no longer recognised as problematic. Increasingly, it seems that research and education are expected to adapt to administrative structures, rather than the reverse. Where have our core academic values gone?
Wilhelm von Humboldt’s model of the modern research university, founded on the inseparable connection between education and research, led to extraordinary scientific, technological, and societal advances of the last two centuries. Of course, valorisation and societal impact are important, but they should remain consequences of excellent research and education, not substitutes for them.
Successful universities are open to criticism, willing to debate difficult issues, and prepared to take different opinions seriously. A university full of yes-men has stopped thinking critically. One member of our community told me that he deliberately skipped the meeting ‘to stay sane’. A painful example of how parts of the organisation look at the current situation.
Of course, running a university requires making many practical and organisational decisions. But every significant decision should be tested against a simple question: ‘Does this demonstrably improve the quality of research or education?’
If the answer is not a clear and defensible ‘yes’, then we should be extremely cautious. Universities are complex systems. Actions that are insufficiently understood or justified can easily have unintended consequences that may damage precisely those activities for which the university exists.
In the discussion around harmonisation, there were no convincing arguments showing how it would improve research or education. On the contrary, it can negatively affect both in several ways. Should we, then, proceed simply because management believes it is the right thing to do? That is not a healthy way for a university to operate.
In companies, management serves the interests of shareholders. Democratic governments serve the people they represent. Universities should resemble the latter much more than the former. A university is not a company.
Leadership would be wise to reflect on the purpose of their role. As leader of a research group, my primary responsibility is enabling my colleagues to perform better research and provide better education. My task is to listen, understand what they need, and present those needs to higher levels of management. It is not to impose my own ideas, unless I can clearly demonstrate their benefit. I hope the same principle applies throughout the organisation.
As the Rector remarked during the meeting, universities should argue against unnecessary regulations, rather than simply pass them on internally. That is precisely the role of leadership and the Rector Magnificus: protect and enable primary processes, minimise impact of external constraints, and stand up for our rights against government.
My concern is that we may gradually be losing sight of the core principles of universities. I genuinely worry that we risk undermining the very institutions that have driven knowledge, innovation, and societal progress for centuries.
In universities, knowledge creation and creativity are the primary sources of value, the rest is secondary. When artificial intelligence increasingly outperforms humans in routine tasks, the need for critical thinking, independent judgement, and genuine creativity becomes even more important. If we want to educate people who can do what machines cannot, we must not only teach those values; we must also embody them in the way we govern and organise our universities.
We are academia, not an enterprise.
