Theme 1: Revisiting universities’ contribution to economic growth?

As part of the contribution to society, universities have a mission to produce intellectual and scientific breakthroughs that create new economic and societal value and help to address pressing societal challenges, like climate change. Generated ideas are placed in the public domain, available to all to use for new value creation for society. Although this value creation is multidimensional beyond purely commercial value, most of policy attention is on the potential of universities as source of economic growth, with a premise that growth of the ‘university sector’ should thus be accompanied by overall growth of economies. Yet, the trend of universities’ growth correlates with a rich world’s disappointing productivity growth. Even with the wave of innovation in artificial intelligence, productivity growth remains weak, particularly in Europe. Does this mean that we have to revisit the contribution of universities to growth? Recent research seems to suggest we should.  Arora and his colleagues claim that when it comes to delivering productivity gains, the old, big-business model of science worked better than the new, university-led one.

In the post-war period, businesses had more responsibility for achieving scientific breakthroughs rather than universities, like Bell Labs (AT&T), generating several Nobel prizes. The golden age of the corporate lab came to an end in the 1970's and 1980's, at a time when university labs grew in size and impact. Today only a few firms offer anything comparable to the past.   This is the case for corporate researchers at big tech companies who are driving the current generative AI-innovation boom.   But in general, Arora et al find a net decline in corporate innovations and scientific breakthroughs from public institutions, with some exceptions, in general to ‘elicit little or no response from established corporations.

In a current world of grand societal challenges and weak economic growth, the analysis of Arora et al. incites us to revisit the contribution of universities to society and ask ourselves whether and how we could/should get more return from universities and how universities and the corporate sector should work together more successfully.

Theme 2: Academic freedom and activism

The free and unfettered search for truth is crucial for a university. A good academic education and quality scientific research require students and researchers to be open to a broad spectrum of methods, views and visions, both contemporary and historical. However, some methods, principles, practices and views may be perceived as offensive or disrespectful. How do we deal with such hurtful experiences? A climate has developed, especially at US universities, in which it is becoming more difficult to even allow ideologically contested issues to be raised in a lecture or in academic research. To what extent does this hinder truthful academic reflection? Should or should legitimate demands for fairness and inclusion (in the canon, in speaker positions, in substantive positions of lecturers and researchers) restrict the freedom of lecturers? How neutral should academics be? How can academics safeguard the right to be guided in their thinking and research only by the reasonableness of the matter itself? And how is that right compatible with the legitimate desire of other researchers and of students to see social justice as a goal for the university, and that in a university like KU Leuven that owes, in a way, its modern existence to the question of justice echoed in the student protest of May ´68?

Within KU Leuven, a guideline on academic freedom and freedom of expression has been drawn up in this context in order to be able to distinguish, in day-to-day operation, between the cases that can be facilitated by the university because they fall under academic freedom and the cases where the university only has to insist on respecting freedom of expression.

Theme 3: What makes university education special?

A university education differs from a professional education because, within a university education, knowledge and skills are transferred that transcend the practical exercise of a private profession. For example, university students are expected to demonstrate critical reflection and a capacity for abstraction in their thinking. This implies that instead of accepting insights on authority, they learn to independently assess the relevance of those insights and to critically question and test the assumptions on which all kinds of propositions, habits and conventions are based against general frames of reference. This is first and foremost when students learn to conduct research independently, for example how to consult historical sources, interpret texts, set up experiments, conduct protocols or analyse data. Moreover, to be able to make independent judgements about issues that have repercussions in different areas of existence, they will have to realise what is at stake in those different areas of existence. In other words, this presupposes a broad education. In this sense, one assumes that someone educated at university must be able to form a nuanced opinion about culture and politics, about social and societal developments or about the meaning and purpose of human existence. A critical-reflective university education thus creates support for decisions that transcend the technical aspects of a professional assignment. It strengthens the ability to take not only responsible but also creative social decisions in later life. In this sense, university education contributes to social ‘change power’ and is thus relevant to the future of our modern societies.

In the discussion on the kind of knowledge and skills to be imparted and tested within the framework of a university education, the question today also arises as to how universities should deal with the new ‘educational technology’. Many tasks whose success presupposes knowledge and skills can today be completed quickly and efficiently with the help of AI applications. How can the use of this new technology be reconciled with independent education, and what is the place of critical reflection? What kind of training is needed to use this technology responsibly? When assessing tests and essays, how will it be possible to verify that the reasoning and visions students develop are based on their own understanding, in a context where education is organised on a large scale? Perhaps the development of this kind of new technology, will only increase the importance of critical education at our universities.

We ask ourselves how intellectual education can continue to be guaranteed at the university of the future. Is it enough to offer students a purely scientific education or is more needed to teach students to think truthfully, critically and independently? Intellectual education was for centuries understood within universities inspired by humanism as familiarising themselves with a canon of classical texts and essays on history, literature, politics and philosophy and teaching students to participate in the discussions to which those texts gave rise. What took its place, and do the alternatives offer better results? In the Netherlands, people took the initiative to create University Colleges. These ‘honours colleges’ are part of large research universities and were inspired by Liberal Arts and Sciences programmes in the United States, with their strong emphasis on the student community, and by the lecture structure of Oxford University, for example. The idea was to create a small-scale, inclusive learning environment in which there is also a greater focus on broad university education. Do these initiatives add value or are there more efficient strategies to ensure such education? The question of the learning environment of future university education also arises. Initiatives such as ‘service learning’ aspire to break down campus walls and shape academic education in specific social contexts.