News & Views item - August 2011

 

 

 Cambridge Vice-Chancellor After 11 Months in the Job Shares Some Insights. (August 26, 2011)

Leszek Borysiewicz ("Borys") took over as Cambridge University's 345th vice-chancellor on October 1, 2010 succeeding Alison Richard when she completed serving her 7-year term. Prior to his appointment he served 3 years as chief executive of the UK's Medical Research Council. As a medical researcher he focused on viral immunology, infectious disease, and viral-induced cancer. He is considered to have made his reputation developing one of the two vaccines against cervical cancer.

 

Science asked Colin Macilwain to drop in on Professor Borysiewicz, who is nearing 11 months as Cambridge's V-C,  for a question and answer secession. The complete extended version of the interview is available to Science subscribers at  http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6046/1080/suppl/DC1. Here we reprint several excerpts.

 

First off he told Mr Macilwain: "we do not agree with [the government's] reduction of state support for teaching, we will continue to take in undergraduate students with the same approach to selection as before, and that we believe in the autonomy of institutions and not setting external quotas [on student numbers]. Those were very firm statements that represent the position of the university."

 

Q: But isn't the onus on you, and other vice-chancellors, to get out there and make that message more publicly visible?

L.B.: Well, we make it visible, but if the media doesn't want to hear it there is very little that we can do. I have made Cambridge's position clear; the various groupings [of universities] have made their positions clear. I don't know what you'd be proposing, civil disobedience?

 

 

Q: If Britain's universities are as good as they say they are, and fundamental to U.K. business and society, why is the country, as some would argue, going to hell?

L.B.: I could suggest three reasons: universities work in the medium- and long-term, they don't do quick fixes. Secondly, top universities focus on major problems that are difficult to solve; again, these are long-term problems with no quick fixes. And thirdly, while universities are repositories of knowledge, and it is important that these repositories are turned to the public good, we know that this translation takes time. The Medical Research Council's report on biomedical science, Medical Research: What's it Worth, estimated the translation time at 17 years.

 

 

Q: How are changes in teaching funding changes going to impact the balance between science and the humanities at Cambridge?

L.B.: At this university, we are not going to make any adjustment. There is, however, a possible problem for the humanities downstream. Once one begins to monetize the value of a degree, the question is going to be, how many will continue reading, say, medieval French poetry? I do worry about that. However all that we can do is be wary of any such skews, and act to maintain our balance as a university.

 

 

Q: What are your research priorities?

L.B.: Cambridge is going to maintain a very broad research direction, for two reasons. We attract academics by providing them with time and space and opportunity to follow their own instincts; and I also believe that major paradigm shifts in thinking, in the humanities or in sciences, can actually occur. But this is going to be difficult, because funders have more and more difficulty sustaining the investigator-led programs, which support this kind of science. They are instead moving towards "grand challenges," and Cambridge is going to have to respond to that. This year, we've identified strategic priorities to help us compete for large-scale funding in areas such as energy, cancer, infectious disease, neuroscience, and linguistics. In these areas, we're going to make sure we have the interdisciplinary to make us competitive.

 

 

Q: What have you achieved in your first year?

L.B.: Maintaining the unity of the university around the whole fees debate and making sure that we're able to sustain the research effort, while securing philanthropic giving—we've seen no fall off in that this year. Maintaining, and growing, our international position is the most important part of the job.