Speech by dr. Alexander Rinnooy Kan, Chair SER (Social and Economic Council of the Netherlands) on the occasion of the opening of the 2009-2010 Academic Year of Eindhoven University of Technology,
Monday 7 September 2009
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Out of the one hundred oldest institutions in Europe, more than ninety are universities. The only political institution on the list happens to be the parliament of the Isle of Man. Some universities are so old that the date of their foundation cannot be established with any real accuracy. At the celebrations for the nine hundredth anniversary of the University of Bologna – Europe’s oldest – I asked the rector how his university could be so sure that it was in fact 900 years old. His answer was “That’s simple: one hundred years ago, we were 800 years old.”
But just because something is old, it isn’t by definition valuable. On the other hand, it is – by definition – tenacious. What makes universities so tenacious? Perhaps not least because of their inherent ability to distance themselves from the fads and fashions of the day, from the squabbles of local rulers, and from the unpredictability of local politics. Universities have also been able to survive because they understood that they were part of a larger whole – going well beyond national borders – namely the international academic community. Every serious university is an international university.
That is just as true today as it was 900 years ago. And like 900 years ago, even international universities are still to a large extent dependent as regards their day-to-day concerns on local financing. Until such time as we have a global government, that will continue to be the case. I hesitate to conclude that universities can obviously survive a great many years of local mistreatment – for fear of putting mischievous ideas into the heads of local rulers here in the Netherlands. But it’s true all the same: good universities are pretty well indestructible.
Fortunately, universities do – normally speaking – end up receiving the local support that is ultimately indispensable for them. This is sometimes generous support and sometimes only miserly support, but it is always provided on the basis of well-understood self-interest. After all, good universities provide very good value for money at local level. They attract interesting researchers and teaching staff, who are very often ready to help solve local problems. They create valuable employment. They support and reinforce the local culture and the local economy. Perhaps most importantly, they attract interesting students, from both home and abroad. And the rector has just shown what kind of students those are here in Eindhoven.
Universities compete for those high-quality researchers, teachers, and students. It is in the interest of the region, the country where they are located for them to do so successfully, and it is therefore perfectly reasonable to keep close track of how well the universities are doing in the international competitive struggle that goes on within the international academic community. This explains the broad interest in rankings, lists, benchmarks, and other types of comparative “consumer research”. This is also why it makes sense to critically compare the Dutch universities from time to time – or, more ambitiously and more importantly, the overall Dutch knowledge generation system – in a number of respects with the systems in neighbouring countries with which they can be compared effectively. Let’s say: the countries of the OECD. It was precisely with that in mind that – six years ago – such a comparison was carried out, purely in financial terms: What was the total expenditure for knowledge per head of the population in the Netherlands compared to expenditure in the neighbouring OECD countries?
Many of you will remember that we were rather shocked by the results. Contrary to what we had expected, the Netherlands was not at the top of the OECD ranking but – sadly – somewhere in the middle, surrounded by countries which we are perhaps prepared to lose from at soccer or with which we cannot really compete as a holiday destination, but which we expected to beat by a mile as regards being a knowledge-based economy. But we didn’t beat them by a mile! And that was why the Knowledge Investment Agenda was set up, a ten-year plan to get us back up among the top OECD countries.
We are now half way into that ten-year plan. Many of you will know that progress has been made, but that so far, it will be insufficient for us to be back in the top of the OECD knowledge ranking in five years’ time.
All of us were therefore extremely interested to hear of the Dutch Government’s aim of “taking the development of education, knowledge, and innovation – within a timeline to be determined – to at least the level of the OECD average”. Even though we would be delighted for the Government to apply the OECD comparison systematically and as broadly as possible, we would also regret it if the OECD average suddenly came to represent this country’s level of ambition. If anything were to run counter to the country’s ambition to excel internationally, it would be the objective of embracing that average as our final target. After all, it was precisely the depressing finding that we had fallen back to an average position in the OECD ranking that inspired the introduction of the Knowledge Investment Agenda in the first place.
The Government has agreed that next week, on Budget Day, we will receive detailed information about how this country’s knowledge ambition will in fact be achieved. In response to questions, the Prime Minister has assured the Lower House of Parliament that the Knowledge Investment Agenda “continues to be an important source of inspiration”. On the occasion of this festive celebration of the opening of the academic year here in Eindhoven, let me not spoil the party and assume that I have been mistaken and that the Government does not intend abandoning our aim of returning within the coming five years to a position at the top of the OECD rankings on per capita expenditure on knowledge generation. Of course, we all know, the next few years are going to be problematic ones for Government budgeting. Nevertheless, other OECD countries are facing similar problems and will need – for similar reasons – to reconsider where to set the specific priorities for public financing. It therefore remains entirely appropriate to compare our own priorities in knowledge generation with those of other countries. And I agree with the Government that such a comparison is very valuable, also on all the other dimensions of our knowledge generation system for which the Knowledge Investment Agenda previously set the targets, targets that concerned the output of the knowledge generation system – in other words: its results – rather than the input – i.e. money.
Comparing, then, the ambitions of the Netherlands with the current OECD average, as I have done in preparing for this speech, is very instructive. It should not surprise us, for example, that our Dutch ambitions in basic skills such as reading, writing and arithmetic exceed the current OECD average, that is to say, exceed the current level in countries such as Iceland, Moldavia, Slovenia, Armenia and Ireland, the group currently defining that average. Indeed, it is hard to imagine that our five year national goal would be to match the current reading and writing skills of young Moldavians, with due respect for that nation, of course. Our ambitions for business innovation are also higher than the current OECD average, which is currently being achieved in countries such as Slovenia and Portugal – also countries that the Netherlands ought to be able to beat. We already do so today, in fact, although only by a narrow margin. In other respects, however, an international comparison produces some unwelcome surprises. The Dutch five year target level for appreciation of entrepreneurship, for example, is exactly the same as the current OECD average, which will put us in five years where Hungary and Malta are today – somewhat embarrassing for a country that invented modern entrepreneurship 300 years ago. And to strike a sad note for a technical university like this one: where our total output of science graduates is concerned, our level of ambition in five years’ time is below the OECD average today, and consequently below the current level of countries like Italy and Portugal. Even a modest analysis such as this is therefore a reason for shamefaced self-reflection.
Ladies and gentlemen, our firm intention for the next few years should therefore be – and continue to be – to carry on benchmarking the Dutch knowledge generation system in general and Dutch higher education in particular against the performance of nearby countries, with the firm objective of beating the vast majority of them in global knowledge market. That needs to be the ambition of the Netherlands, but it should also be the ambition for Europe as a whole. After all, the European Union will need to compete with the rest of the world on precisely the same dimensions of excellence – or rather: aim to distinguish itself positively from the rest of the world on those dimensions – so as to ensure that Europe can remain an attractive and prosperous continent. The Social and Economic Council of the Netherlands recently advised the Dutch government on the new Lisbon strategy, which is supposed to make Europe the most dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world. Our recommendations emphasise the need for greater attention to be paid to the European knowledge area, the symbolic embodiment of Europe’s ambition of making the totality of the European knowledge-based economy much more than merely the sum of its parts. Against that background, Eindhoven, with its university, has a great deal to gain.
The starting position of Eindhoven – of “Brainport North Brabant” – is after all an excellent one. One can also carry out an international comparison in this domain, and doing so quickly reveals the high quality of what is happening in and around Eindhoven when viewed from the perspective of European innovation. In the European ranking of innovative regions, North Brabant – in particular the area around Eindhoven – is this country’s top representative, in a commendable twentieth position. That’s fine, but I’m sure you will agree that it is not good enough. If there is one city in the Netherlands that is in a position to move up in that European ranking by means of creative interaction between knowledge institutions and innovative industry, then it is this one. The students – both Dutch and foreign – who register here do so because of their firm conviction that they can contribute to that advance, and of course in the conviction that they themselves can benefit enormously from it.
Unlike the University of Bologna, this university knows exactly when it was founded. But that does not in any way detract from its position as a fully fledged member of the international academic community, a community within which prestige is determined by performance, and within which age neither offers extra security nor youth an excuse.
In the difficult years now facing us, the Netherlands expects a great deal of Eindhoven and its university: undiminished dedication to academic excellence; undiminished readiness to support the industrial innovation in this region, which is so vital to this country; and an undiminished, top-quality contribution to technological higher education in The Netherlands.
Please allow me to wish you a successful and productive academic year.
Thank you.