[ANPPOM-Lista] Saving Britain's universities: The brains go into battle

[Carlos Palombini]

Saving Britain's universities: The brains go into battle Some of the
country’s most brilliant and brightest minds set course this week to save
our universities from the dead hand of interfering politicians and
bureaucrats
  [image: Hats off: Britain has some of the finest universities in the
world but is in danger of losing that status because of short-sighted
political action]
 Hats off: Britain has some of the finest universities in the world but is
in danger of losing that status because of short-sighted political
action Photo:
Getty Images

By Melvyn Bragg

7:51PM GMT 16 Nov 2012

ww.telegraph.co.uk/education/universityeducation/9683079/Saving-Britains-universities-The-brains-go-into-battle.html

This country has four great assets in the modern era. The first is our
talent for inventions that take the world by surprise and change it. The
World Wide Web is a good example.

The second is a gift for what I call high-quality niche. We can see it in
the whisky trade, now bolstering the north of Scotland, in the best of the
City, in hi-tech and in heritage.

Third is our skills, wonderfully exemplified in the double Olympics that
gave us per capita the top results on the planet, and in our creative
industries, again the biggest in the world for the size of country.

But last and best is our universities, which are second only to America’s.
Not only do they punch way above their weight in research and quality, they
also have an unrivalled ability to attract the finest overseas graduates.

Which is why a distinguished group of intellectuals gathered last Tuesday
night in central London. Like a covert meeting of an ancient cabal, they
had mustered to defend our universities, believing that they are in danger
of losing ground, direction and clout.

The scene, on a damp and misty evening, could have come straight out of a
Conan Doyle story in which Mycroft, the brilliant brother of Sherlock
Holmes, heaves himself from the Drones Club to meet the call of his
country. The gathering would have featured well in Trollope and maybe
George Eliot, too. Yet it would also have fed the prejudices of those who
think that this country is still run by a largely invisible Establishment
that meets amid grand semi-secrecy and changes the course of the nation. I
hope it does this time.

The initial call to arms had come from Sir Keith Thomas, Distinguished
Fellow at All Souls, the archetypal Oxford college of dreaming spires and
supreme scholars, a place where Cabinets have been created and high
learning pursued for its own sake for centuries.

In a letter, Sir Keith summoned 100 people to London to set up a Council
for the Defence of British Universities. And they arrived bang on time for
the six o’clock meeting in the magnificent Carlton House headquarters of
the British Academy, a house that was once the private residence of William
Gladstone. It overlooks the Mall, and has both Westminster Abbey and the
Palace of Westminster in its sights.

And so in they filed, the founding members. Some were our greatest
scientists: Sir Paul Nurse, Nobel Prize winner and President of the Royal
Society, Prof Sir Roger Penrose, Lord Rees of Ludlow, Prof Marcus du
Sautoy, Prof Richard Dawkins, Lord May of Oxford and more.

There were public figures, too: Lord Waldegrave, Lord Harries, former
Bishop of Oxford, Sir John Tusa, A S Byatt, Claire Tomalin, Lady Warnock,
Dame Jinty Nelson. All of us answering the call to stop the rot.

Once this assembly had been wedged into a room in the British Academy and
welcomed by its president, Prof Sir Adam Roberts, we set about shedding our
Establishment skin and laying into the task of establishing a cross-party
organisation that will, I think, bring to the attention of this Government
what it has on its hands and what it is losing.

Politicians in Britain have never been very keen on intellectuals or “arty
types”. For a while, neglect seemed to work. But now the intellectuals at
the universities and the arty types in the creative world have achieved
platforms of financial capability and world recognition that were once the
preserve of heavy industries and our Armed Forces. Which is why they have
become so ripe for plucking by the state.

The meeting – which lasted precisely one and a half hours, as it was billed
to do – was politely chaired, effortlessly unmelodramatic and spot on. Its
consensus was that British universities are in danger of suffocating
because of too much bureaucracy, too much government direction (or
interference, as it might better be called) and too little recognition of
the basic fact, brilliantly encapsulated by Prof Sir John Meurig Thomas,
that “planned discovery is impossible”. In short, the very greatest
discoveries, many of them made at our universities, have often come by
indirections.

Most of the time, business targets and commercial constraints just don’t
work in universities. Bureaucrats should be few and in the background, not
many and increasingly in the foreground. Those who do the hands-on work
should be given their heads. After all, it is their heads that matter.

Universities are to do with knowledge and imagination. When asked for the
most important thing about his work, Einstein replied “imagination – above
all, imagination”.

As we sail into the dark energy of the 21st century, what we need is to
unleash the imagination as effectively as the Romans unleashed war in 400
years of victories. Just as we have done over centuries in industry, in the
development of democracy and in the great dream of health provision for
all.

A secure, independent knowledge base is essential and British universities
are noted worldwide for their rigour and success. It doesn’t do to boast,
but why not in this case? Our universities are way ahead of any in Europe
and are on the shortlist of the greatest universities of the world. It’s no
accident that we’re also the only real challenge to America at the Oscars.
And on the bestseller lists.

And so the clarion call came out from All Souls, in one of the oldest
universities in the world. The first aim of nine (I love the nine – no
fooling around to make it look neat or correct, with 10 or 12) is “to
defend and enhance the character of British universities as places where
students can develop their capacities to the full, where research and
scholarship are pursued at the highest level, and where intellectual
activity can be freely conducted without regard to its immediate economic
benefit”.

Those who spoke did so as the guardians of something hard won, much
treasured and in danger. It should be regarded as a quiet social miracle
that our university system, which used to take about 6 per cent of young
people when I went in 1958, now accepts upwards of 50 per cent, without
busting the bounds of those universities. And, whatever the droning of
naysayers, it often results in higher standards, better research and
improved facilities.

>From my own experience as Chancellor of Leeds University, which has grown
apace like so many others, I see world-beating research in the medical
sciences, extraordinary progress and leadership in the environmental
sciences, groundbreaking work in textiles and literature. Those of us who
gathered in Carlton House Terrace are determined that this should continue
and not be diminished.

But this is more than a British issue. We attract the best students from
all over the world. How long will that trend continue?

The clumsy, short-sighted and incomprehensible block on students coming to
this country means that some of the cleverest and best young brains from
China, India, the Middle East and Europe are swerving away from Britain
into the open arms of Australia and America. These nations cannot believe
their luck. Our stupidity is their opportunity. And they’re grabbing it.

Take the example of Chinese students, who have come in numbers to Leeds
University (and many others). They are now finding it harder and harder
just to get into this country at all. But they not only bring income to the
city in the form of fees, they also provide future contacts and
relationships of immeasurable value in a world that is globalising faster
by the day. We are not just turning down students, we are shutting out the
future.

And so, like a clan in the Highlands that has gathered in secret caves to
defend its faith, the country, a way of life, those who turned up on a damp
night in autumnal London came together to share a cause: to let this
country’s young people achieve their full potential, magnetise the
attention of the rest of the intellectual world, disturb government into
positive action and to take these islands into another great chapter in our
story.
We have nothing to use but our brains.

-- 
carlos palombini
www.researcherid.com/rid/F-7345-2011
-------------- Próxima Parte ----------
Um anexo em HTML foi limpo...
URL: <http://www.listas.unicamp.br/pipermail/anppom-l/attachments/20121116/82ba77d0/attachment.html>