Rector Universidad de Caldas, Colombia.
To begin with, I have to tell that the weeks, the days and even the hours before starting my first appointment in Boston I doubted about how useful Eisenhower Fellowship -EF experience could be to me. That was because of several reasons: first, my youngest child delivery was few hours before the introductory seminar –I really wanted to be at home. Secondly, in 2001 I spent four weeks around the USA invited by the Department of State in one of the well regarded “International Visitors Program” –so I said to my self: I already know this. Third: being a President of a Public University in Colombia is always like being in a rollercoaster thinking that you are the driver just because you are in the front sits –so I thought it to be risky to be absent from the office for such a long time. Fourth: our countries are so different in development, wealth and so many things, that I really did not see much use of this.
However, EF experience, no matter how hard it is to be away from your family for so long (bring your spouse whenever possible) has made a tremendous difference for my professional and personal life. In the introductory week there was a very important workshop that tried to focus the goals of the experience. As a result, I focused the tour around three main questions (out of several more I had at the very beginning). They were:
1.How could I help to raise in Colombia an ever stronger private and governmental support of science, technology and innovation as the key factors for long time development?
2.What are the best practices I could “copy” or at least adapt for my university regarding university and university research management? And also innovation.
3.Make useful links for Universidad de Caldas’ faculty and students take real advantage of my experience, i. e. come to the USA and do a PhD, and similar.
Findings
The goal of understanding best practices in university management and university research management gave me the opportunity to go through eleven of the best and most famous universities not only of the USA but also of the entire world. Let us not forget that, despite the fact that the origin of contemporary university is European, it is widely recognized that the research university model of the USA is the best in the globe.
Of a total of 4.000 higher education institutions in the US, about 150 are regarded as research universities. The typical research university RU that I visited had some or all of the following characteristics:
1. Of the total amount of students between 30% and 60% are postgraduate students of a PhD or at least of a master level.
2. The public RU are much bigger in number and undergraduate students, but not always. For example: Stanford and Duke University are private and have a total number of students of 12.000 each. The University of Texas (public), in the campus of Austin has 53.000 students.
3. At every university, be it public or private, all undergraduate students and profitable postgraduate program students (business, law, medicine and so on) do pay tuition. The cost of a student, however, is not completely fulfilled by the payment of the tuition.
4. Their annual average budget is around 1.8 billon dollars, of which 20% or 30% comes from outside grants for research projects. Normally, universities do not fund research projects of their faculty, institutes or the departments. University investment for research is only for lab improvement and similar.
Beneath this you can find a real and longstanding social contract that I may summarize this way: you, research universities get the best people for research and they, the government, give you the money on a competitive basis; government does it because economical growth and social progress is correlated to the advancement of science, technology and innovation. After the Manhattan Project which led to the building of the atomic bomb, President Roosevelt asked what they have learned from that. The answer was the “Vannebar Bush” report, also remembered as “Science- the Needless Frontier”
[1]. In short, it suggested the strategy that I just summarized. After more than half a century USA 24 federal government and departments give tenths of thousands of millions a year for research (the amount of money is so big that is better not to have the final figure for someone coming from a developing country!!), in North American universities. Private sector also funds research, using mainly two ways: contracting the research or paying for having the privilege of knowing first the research advances. However, private sector funding of research is very low: it counts for no more than 18% of MIT research budget or 2% of Cornell University. I think the relationship between public policy, politics, private sector, science and technical development is perfectly developed with this –as well as the foremost known example: the space career with NASA leading it (which I also visited).
5. This means that the total amount of research money is directly related to the scientific strengths of the faculty and their capability to capture as much money as possible from the source of funding. Universities do have infrastructure for supporting the efforts in the search of government grants and private sector contracts. (Typical supportive infrastructure for this is summarized in the attachment 2).
6. Competition is at the heart of research universities: they compete for the best students (and so they have a lot of scholarships), for the best faculty members and for money from the outside.
7. Innovation (translating research into commercial goods or services) via patent licensing is very important for society and universities for leading towards economic and social progress. It is also an important source of funding for some universities, but not as important as some have said.
8. The growth of every university (of buildings, for example), no matter if public or private depends directly on its capability of fund raising. In the USA, there is such a deep and expanded culture of donations or gifts that it is literally unbelievable to any one from Latin America, not only because so many people gives money, but because of so much they give. They have done that for centuries already. So you can find buildings, important faculty positions, schools, scholarships with the last name of any private citizen that donated it. A striking example is the school of music of University of Texas; they got a gift of 55 millions dollars from the Butler family last June.
9. As a consequence of this, the annual budget of a RU is dedicated mainly to operations and not to investments.
10. Medical Schools are very important for research universities: human health research is a good source of external grants and of a multidisciplinary approach of science itself. Universities have their own hospitals that are not only the place for training and research, but also very profitable.
11. The main goal of Presidents or Chancellors of every university is to get as many donations as possible. Internal academic affairs and decision making depend mainly on the provost –who is very autonomous, and sometimes in the faculty senate, regarding only strategic decisions.
12. USA universities are bottom up. Faculty members are very autonomous regarding academic and research decisions; deans are also very autonomous regarding budget decisions at the school or college level. The faculty senate is a very active board but only regarding critic academic decisions –not administrative. It is said that Harvard is almost Balkanized because of the strong power of the deans and the weakness of the President. Some said that leading faculty is like leading cats. In short, I have also found in USA’s universities lots of academic freedom, some managerial disorder (but not much) in the midst of a very strong and deeply rooted scientific environment which is the very difference with most of Colombian universities.
13. Regarding budget of the university as a whole only the board and the president do have something to say about it. Deans are more autonomous for their school or college budget.
14. And least but not last, research universities are big, maybe too big in administrative spending. The rate of administrative employees for each faculty member and student is enormous nonetheless they have vast campuses and services.
Learning and probable initiatives
It is completely useless and even depressing trying to compare US and Colombian universities as if they were comparable. Behind the huge differences that exist between them, there are two very different historical, economical and even ideological bases. The founders of USA came directly from the European scientific legacy, whilst Latin Americans came from Spain, a country which, at the time, was almost put out of sight from the progress that Enlightenment and industrial revolution meant for the world between XVI and XVIII centuries
[2]. If a society like the one of USA believed from its initial years in the power of the reason, it is not surprising that it gave so much importance to universities and their research capabilities much more than a century ago.
What can be useful for me, my university and my country after my Eisenhower Experience? Many things (For more details please see the attached Action Memo)
First and foremost is my total commitment with supporting any effort of significance towards building ever stronger capabilities for research in Colombia as a whole and of the Universidad de Caldas and all other universities of the nation. What is strikingly different between Colombian and USA universities is that the ones of the later are completely committed to research whereas the ones from my country are still too much about either political debate (public universities, with some very respectful exceptions between and among them) or simply forming professionals at the undergraduate level (most of private universities).
Being clear with my first question, now I have to prioritize which actions I have to support. I will start with those at my University. I have confirmed that the prioritization we have given in Universidad de Caldas in the “Plan de Desarrollo” to postgraduate offers for the next 10 years is right (although we could add more emphasis in IT development). However, it has to be back lashed by real effort of having faculty members and students with the appropriate level for research. For that we should work in the following direction:
1. Scientific strengthening: A reflection for the board and faculty members of my University: if we really want to improve our capabilities for having a bigger budget funded by external sources we have to understand three things: first, it is completely necessary to increase significatively the number and proportion of faculty members who have Phd (now is only 10% and the plan is to increase it to 25% un the next ten years). Second, for doing so wee need to invest and have a concrete plan that makes sure that most of the new faculty members have PhD degree or are going to obtain it in short time. Third: faculty needs support from the administrative area to search for grants, to write projects for grants and that may need an internal administrative reform. The first two things where well understood years ago by Universidad Nacional and Universidad de Antioquia.
2. Scientific strengthening: To exploit the scholarship opportunities that LASPAU and BID have for all Colombians that have the will to do a PhD in the USA. And to help to create and develop new programs (with national and local governments) for Colombians to do PhD at the USA, like the Chileans have done.
3. Scientific strengthening: To obtain the best possible advantage of the existing scholarships for pursuing PhD (or at least a train ships or doing joint research) in USA universities for Universidad de Caldas students, alumni and faculty members. The priority will be with the eight USA universities that already opened the door for my institution (See Action Memo).
4. Scientific strengthening: English is a need that we specially have in Universidad de Caldas: we have to build a strong and lasting program for all students and faculty members improve their English for them being eligible for a PhD program in most good universities around the world. Without English there is not only the possibility to become admitted but also the accessibility to knowledge is very limited.
5. Academic Level of Students: Universidad de Caldas should try to improve the academic level for some of the undergraduate programs we have by making it more much more competitive to be accepted as student for first semester. We should have a goal that for every program we make sure that there are at least three contenders for every student admitted. It could mean several reforms. One: to add another factor to the national test as the measure for student acceptance; it may be the student position obtained during every year of high school. It could also mean to offer grants for the very top students admitted to some or all programs; if the student is already excepted from paying tuition he will receive financial support monthly, conditioned to maintaining as one of the first of his class. We should also look for the best students in Colombia (not only from Caldas) and attract them with that funding. It also means a better marketing of the university and of this specific scholarship programs and perhaps a reform of the alumni and communications office to start looking for gifts. This will have one important goal: to make our alumni (and others) interested in doing donations for the development of the University. It is true that there is not the culture of private giving in Colombia; however I ask to myself, aren’t we universities the ones designed for making this type of social improvements? It also reminds me the idea and need that the President of Universidad de Caldas be a person with more external priorities than internal ones.
6. If we make it to be a real competition for becoming a Universidad de Caldas Student, the prestige of our university will last longer and will make us stronger for some other purposes like accreditation, improving quality of the programs and more.
7. Commitment with human and culture improvement as a key goal of any University that really wants forming leaders. At Universidad de Caldas we should open an optional course, directly supervised by the President or Provost, with the support of our Department of Philosophy based in the very same idea of Harvard Classics. I will ask my faculty to update the Harvard Classics for the last 90 years of intellectual development. Any student who takes the course (which should be not a class but a seminar in which students are always writing essays about their readings) will be honored in his degree ceremony. We shall give it a nice and attractive name: “Curso de Clásicos”.
8. This experience has confirmed to me what some people have said: having a school of medicine is a very important way to improve scientific development in this century because of the amount of interdisciplinary research that arises from it. I have also confirmed the need we have or our own university hospital.
In answering the question stated at the beginning of the EF experiences “How could I help to raise in Colombia an ever stronger private and governmental support of science, technology and innovation as the key factors for long time development?” besides all what I said up until this point, there is still one important goal and action:
9. The goal is to make national government and political and private sector leaders aware of and understand that we need a national commitment for science and technology and that cannot be fulfilled if research is not founded primarily by the national government. There can not be serious effort towards having a country with serious research capabilities if there are not both: good researchers at the universities and money given for researching - it means money that is not expecting a direct and prompt revenue. Private sector also has to find its way thought R&D but that is not enough source for obtaining permanent and national science and technology capabilities as they can be obtained with university research. We need something like that long time “Social Contract” that there has been in the USA.
10. The actions are several. I will highlight only that one important lesson for me as a President and for my colleges in public universities is the need for us to having a strong organization that really and strongly represents us in front of the national government and the Congress. What we have now (SUE) is completely weak because our meetings depend on the Ministry of Education will and we don’t even have a budget. So we can not do lobby correctly and we can not communicate properly. It is quite important but the path may be very, very difficult. Some one has to lead this; even more important, is to define the goals properly. I think I have some good partners for this in some other universities. It is definitively important. If some one in Colombia is responsible for pressing for that public pressure on ST&I are the presidents of the universities.
An action for Colombian Leadership needed:
11. I would also try to get together the other Colombian fellows in a new Foundation for Leadership, with the support of Eisenhower Fellowships in Philadelphia. I will of course insist to my other Colombian Fellows that the mission of it shall be related whit the idea of supporting scientific leadership and support. (See Action Memo for more details).
Finally, about the EF experience itself I just want to highlight some few things: first, EF experience is much more useful when some agreements for joint work are permitted in some of the appointments. I did so (see Action Memo) and those agreements will be very important for my university. Second, being the experience an individual one (with your own interests and questions) is very enlighten. Third: I can also say that the personal experience is great (however hard is to be so far from my family): feeling like a student once again, exploring libraries, bookshops, cities and museums was of great additional value. I have to highlight the visits to San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and to the Arts Institute and MCA at Chicago. I found there three exhibitions about war and human feelings that really shocked my soul, so I ended up crying in one of them -and I have to say that I am not a romantic pacifist. Fourth, to get involved with the EF fellows from Latin America is also important. I feel I have some real new good friends and I have learned a lot from them.
From most of the people I met I had something to learn. However being at MIT campus for a week, talking to the Chancellor of Duke, enjoying the generosity of Professor Gilbert Merx from Duke –who was like real sabio- and the same friendship from Robert De Simone in University of Texas and from Kevin Costa in Berkley (who ended up being son in law of Mario Bunge) was such an enriching time. And the almost psychotherapy session I had with the Ladoris Cordell, special advisor to Stanford President, stills makes me think about my long term future.
* * *
To have universities with strong commitment with scientific research is a long time and difficult purpose for any given country. Eisenhower Fellowships has thought me how to obtain them and that it is possible. Thanks so much to EF. Thanks Valen, Susy and Meme for your patience and support; I have learned how important you are for me.
[1] Nature 156, 130-132, 04 August 1945. It is fantastic to realize that in the year they deliver this report with such a long term impact in a scientific Journal, in the very same year in another scientific Journal –Foreing Affairs- other deployed the strategy for the Cold War and it also was almost fully accomplished during almost half a century.
[2] See the books of Douglas North and Ruben Sierra Mejía. The later author reminds us how Spaniard authorities of the XV thorough the XVIII centuries burned foreign books. I will add that when I went to Spain in 2007 a researcher of Universidad Politecnica de Valencia told me that Spanish Universities only started to build scientific capabilities two decades ago. Before that, he said, their universities did not even have a scientific environment. You, Colombian universities, still lack that necessary environment, he said.
