Colin Macilwain Reports on German and French Pursuits of University Excellence. (November 2, 2012)

In an extensive article in this week's Science's News Focus "France and Germany are pursuing parallel initiatives to bolster their best universities. Do they go too far or not far enough?"^(sub)  Colin Macilwain gives his assessment of how these initiatives are being realised although it is still very early days for France's, and it has just come through a significant change in government.

Below is the transcript of the interview Mr Macilwain gave to Science's November 2^nd podcast.

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Host – Kerry Klein

Say you’re an administrator at a research university, and you want your institution to increase its international standing. How do you go about doing that? Is money enough? And will a higher international ranking result in the ramping-up of research that you’re aiming for? Science writer Colin MacIlwain explores these questions in a News Focus about recent initiatives in Germany and France that attempt to do just that. MacIlwain spoke with me from Scotland.

Interviewee – Colin MacIlwain

For the past seven or eight years, many European countries, but in particular France and Germany, have been making determined efforts to reform their university systems and in particular, to develop a small number of universities that can compete internationally with places like Harvard and MIT.

Kerry Klein

And so we’re talking about, you know, a particular set of initiatives in Germany and in France. You know, what spurred these on exactly? You know, what do these two countries think that their research institutions are lacking?

Colin MacIlwain

Well, there has been a strong feeling among economists and policymakers globally for the past decade or so that very strong research universities, like Stanford, Harvard, the University of Cambridge in England, are important drivers for economic development and industrial innovation. And there has been a feeling among politicians in countries that don’t have places like that that they need to build places that will compete more effectively in that way. Also, science has become so much more international, so that the slower students and staff around the world make it imperative from a policy standpoint to try and build stronger centers of excellence like that.

Kerry Klein

And so what do these sets of initiatives entail? You know, how exactly do they work, and how are they different from one another in these two countries?

Colin MacIlwain

Well, in Germany’s case, they started off in 2006 with something called the Excellence Initiative, and there was a political consensus for that. And the idea was to select about a dozen major universities and support them above others with quite large block grants and also with some ancillary grants for particular laboratories or particular graduate education programs. In France, it was slightly different. It was a two-stage thing. They introduced legislation to change the way in which universities were governed so as to give presidents more autonomy. And then later, they started on a program somewhat similar to the German one, although in the French case the idea was to give them some grant support – the selected elite – and then to transfer them very large amounts of money to start private endowments of about a billion Euros each. But there’s been an election in France. The Socialist government has been elected there, and that raises uncertainty how the French initiative will take shape from now on.

Kerry Klein

Well, indeed. I think, you know, each of these countries has, you know, their own particular challenges in carrying out these sorts of changes, these sorts of reforms. So, I mean, how successful have they been so far?

Colin MacIlwain

Well, the German one has been running for a little bit longer, and it has certainly had a very major internal impact on the universities that have won. There’s a tradition in Germany of each professor in the university having a great amount of autonomy, and the central administration being very weak, and that has changed a lot already under this initiative in the universities that won support. That in itself has introduced a lot of strategic planning and thinking that was absent before, and it’s made a lot of changes, at least in terms of administration. Changes or improvements in research quality will take longer to materialize. And France is at an earlier stage, and there are similar problems with it being difficult to manage a university centrally, and really it’s very early days for the French initiative. And it is being reviewed at the moment by the new government there.

Kerry Klein

Well, so I think, you know, this whole set of reforms brings up the question, you know, what makes a world-class research institution? You know, what can bring up the quality and the reputability of work, and can money – and strategically placed money – do that? You know, I think both of these schools are relying a lot on international rankings. You know, how easy do you think it’ll be for these schools to really, you know, ramp up what they’re doing?

Colin MacIlwain

There are many different facets to making an international excellent research university, and university is a very sophisticated organism. I think that people know that they have quality if they are attracting the right caliber of students and staff. Their rankings are really banal with measuring that. They measure the things that can be measured. So they have a great appeal for political leaders who might not understand how a university works, but they can look at a list; they can look at a leak table. I was thinking it’s a little bit like ranking books by looking at the fifty bestsellers that are available in front of the bookshop. If you don’t know anything about literature, then that’s what you look at

       Unfortunately, it’s become politically pervasive globally to look for success in the rankings as it was to look at other features that don’t arise in the rankings. I mean, the rankings don’t consider whether a university is democratic. They don’t even consider whether people are able to speak their minds in the university, for example. They simply measured a lot of outputs that can be measured.

Kerry Klein

Well, so do you think that these initiatives will bring up the reputation of these institutions in other ways?

Colin MacIlwain

I think that there’s no question that the initiative – particularly in Germany and also in France, if it continues – will help these universities to do some things that they need to do, including retaining and attracting talented individuals, both from their own populations and from abroad. I think that they will be successful in that regard. I don’t think that they’ll make a huge difference, in terms of the position in the rankings, however, because everybody all over the world is attempting to do similar things at the same time, and also the rankings are inherently a little bit biased against the way in which French and German universities work, because French and German universities include a lot of independent laboratories which aren’t part of the university and which the rankings don’t recognize.

Kerry Klein

Of all the reporting that you did on this story, was there anything particularly interesting in here that you weren’t actually able to include in the article?

Colin MacIlwain

Yeah, there was. When I went to the University of Cologne, which it actually looks quite modern. They pointed out that it was, I think, the 600th anniversary of the university about 25 years ago. So the university is 625 years old. And, of course, the Reformation took place in Germany back then in the 16th century. And I thought to myself I wonder how many people have been here over the centuries and have sought to change it and to reform it, and how much difference all of these reform efforts have made, because the people are there and there’s a certain inertia in how they behave, especially places that are as old as that.

Kerry Klein

Yeah, that’s a great question. One can only hope that the current administration, you know, has these historical records to sort of work off of.

Colin MacIlwain

Yeah.

Kerry Klein

Well, great. Well, Colin MacIlwain, thank you so much.

Colin MacIlwain

Thank you.

Kerry Klein

Colin MacIlwain explores initiatives to bolster German and French research universities in a News Focus this week. His story is part of an ongoing series on the development of internationally renowned research universities