The Road to 2020
With the new year’s speech by the president of our Executive Board, Koen Becking, the dreaming
about Tilburg University 2020 has started. It is in these dreams that the ideas for our strategic plans
for the coming decade can be brought into greater focus in the months ahead. What role can Tilburg
University play in society, both now and in the future? The plan aims to provide a satisfactory answer
to such questions. Let us first have a look at the two main points of the speech: the financing and the
defining of a clear academic profile. How can we interpret and operationalize them?
In the coming years, Becking stressed, attracting indirect
carrot in the context of valorization? You have to provide an
government and contract research funding will increasingly
incentive to researchers to valorize, by including these kinds
become a prerequisite to properly finance the education
of valorization activities in the evaluative models being used
provided by and the research pursued at this university. In line
and by properly rewarding the performance of such tasks
with this development, as well as with other changes taking
through fair and equitable weighting in the workload system
place in both academia specifically and society at large, our
being used. In other words, valorization should be embedded
university is progressing towards an organization with a core
in the organizational processes relating to the university’s core
staff contingent and a larger flexible shell of external researchers
business in a professional fashion. In addition, valorization is
and other professionals. We want to bring more external parties
frequently viewed as being the polar opposite of education and
into our community as participants in our academic endeavors.
research. As if the relationship between these activities were
Additionally, and likewise in line with such developments of
somehow antagonistic. However, especially in the sciences of
the flows of funding, the profile of our university has become
our university, there is no conflict at all between these three core
of greater relevance. This profile is always connected to
businesses of a university.
valorization, the process of creating value out of knowledge.
And what about the stick? In the past decade, a great deal of
How can this crucial process of valorization contribute to
emphasis has been placed on measuring everything at the
success on the road to 2020?
university. Journal publications and citations became the
To make valorization a successful third aspect of the core
leading criteria for valuing academics. Valuation through
business of our university, in addition to education and research,
the use of such parameters creates calculating behavior and
you need a carrot and a stick. After all, teaching is a compulsory
fosters an individualistic attitude among researchers. When
task for a researcher. Research is individually important for the
everything an individual undertakes is scrutinized using strict
researcher in building an own scientific profile and achieving
and rigid parameters, the contribution to the common good
status in his or her field of research. So what could be the
decreases markedly. In this context, you need a stick in the
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Column Sylvester Eijffinger
form of submission of a list of valorization activities during the
performance reviews and by asking potential new colleagues
with respect to valorization, not only about their corporate and
organizational networks with respect to funding, but also about
their contribution to the common good.
Now, more than ever, universities are connected to and
embedded in the societies whose constituents they serve.
Given that this is the case, it is imperative for researchers to
ask what the university is and should be, what it contributes to
society and to culture, and what it could and should contribute
to it with renewed vigor. Complaining about specific Ministry
of Education measures imposed on our university only makes
sense if universities as a collective and Tilburg University on its
own can be said to have succeeded in formulating a powerful
view on their significance and how to increase their own impact
in society. If Tilburg University is indeed to be a scientifically
and financially viable organization in 2020, it is necessary that
it succeeds in implementing a robust valorization policy and
realizing this policy through judicious use of both the carrot and
the stick.
Sylvester Eijffinger
in collaboration with Annemarie Hinten-Nooijen (Academic
Forum)
Understanding Society
Academic Forum
where science meets society and life
Expand your horizon, take the time to reflect
www.tilburguniversity.edu/academicforum
Asset Magazine 11