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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.