News & Views item - August 2005

 

 

An International Alliance of Eight Possibly Ten Universities. (August 21, 2005)

    From July 24-26 at the Yale Club in New York Australian National University's Vice-Chancellor, Ian Chubb, hunkered down with nine other university representatives from  ETH, Zurich, the National University of Singapore, Peking University, the University of California (Berkeley), the University of Copenhagen, the University of Tokyo, Yale University, and Cambridge and Oxford -- who indicated that, subject to internal processes, they will soon join the alliance to make it an Alliance of ten (AoX perhaps?) universities -- to determine initial areas on which to concentrate.

 

It sounds very grand, but from a parochial viewpoint just what will it do for Australian tertiary education?
 

According to Professor Chubb, the chair pro tem, "It is our aim to make this the premier alliance of universities in  the world, and, essentially, it should allow each of us to achieve more than we would be able to achieve on our own."

 

More specifically the following initial points have been agreed:

Professor Chubb went on to say, "In the longer term, we plan to seek corporate/foundation/government support for research projects; perhaps convene a forum to share knowledge about the commercialisation of research and the legal and academic framework in each country; work jointly on benchmarking; develop shared positions on key public policy issues."

 

So far no comment has been forthcoming from the Minister for Education, Science and Training, Dr Nelson.
 

 


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