This week, Chalmers’ annual reports and submission to the Ministry of Education were finalised. An opportunity to summarise the year that has passed, but also to reflect on the mission of universities. This is what I wrote in the report:
The accelerating pace of technological development means that the future is rushing towards us at breathtaking speed. At the same time, the world order we long took for granted is wavering. The epicentre of economic power is no longer as securely anchored in the Western Anglosphere with which we have aligned ourselves throughout the post-war period. China and the United States are competing for supremacy, and the EU will fall behind if it proves too slow to act.
This is an existential tech race – a self-evident reality in industry, but here it concerns entire nations – a race in which the capacity of technical universities to deliver relevant engineering education, research breakthroughs and innovation has a vital function, for competitiveness and future prosperity, but also for society’s ability to achieve sustainable transformation.
Does this mean that the best university of the future is the one that runs the fastest? The one that can best adapt to constantly changing demands and expectations from the outside world?
No, not really. Do not misunderstand me: a sharp analysis of our times and a continuously updated connection to the absolute research frontier are essential in order to calibrate operations correctly.
But what is decisive is being excellent at what makes a university a university. Creating space for highly qualified thinking, an environment in which the very best individuals are given long-term conditions to explore what still lies beyond the boundaries of human knowledge. When this truly succeeds, it becomes a dynamic and creative environment that attracts talent from across the world. An academic environment where quality requirements are extremely high, yet where research is also allowed to fail at times – it must be so if the unknown is to be explored. Only then can the breakthroughs be truly pioneering.
It may sound paradoxical: a slow way of working, with ancient traditions – yet at the same time a spearhead aimed at the very newest.
This is the great strength of academia. Systematic and general methods for problem-solving, analysis and the handling of new knowledge – both creating it and transmitting it further. The scientific method can be applied again and again to new problems, and it has a natural way of dealing with new results that overturn old theses. Academic education is always, to some extent, principled. It provides a competence that can be applied to constantly emerging fields.
This means that universities equip society for the unknown. Higher education institutions build capacity for change through education, research, innovation, upskilling and reskilling.
Chalmers is working intensely with a coherent strategy to become, within a couple of decades, a technical university of international top class. The single most important element concerns creating precisely those long-term conditions for a research-leading faculty. Greater resources per individual, dedicated administrative support, and in various ways conditions that can make it in the international competition for talent.
This means that the entire organisation is engaged in a process of transformation – a new academic career structure, research institutes under development, excellence programmes, intensified fundraising, a review of the structure of operations support, and much more. Although the overall direction is clear, this naturally entails pressures – yet at the same time I hope that many, both those active here at Chalmers and in our wider environment, can feel that these are deeply meaningful changes. It is about fulfilling Chalmers’ potential and making as indispensable a contribution to society as we are possibly able.
Martin Nilsson Jacobi, President and CEO of Chalmers University of Technology
Under the headline "President’s perspective" the President and CEO for Chalmers University of Technology, shares his reflections on current topics that concern education, research and utilisation.