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ENCUENTRO INTERNACIONAL DE UNIVERSIDADES ESTATALES
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What proved to be di cult, however, was something which often impedes the reformation of
universities: the selection of the reviewers. On the one hand, one desperately needed international
reviewers, because nearly all leading German academics were involved in the preparation of the projects
of their own universities and could not be asked to judge their own competitors – just as experts within a
university cannot really be asked to comment on their own colleagues. On the other hand, international
experts who knew the German university system were hard to nd; and in many ways which became
apparent only during the reviewing process, the international reviewers found it hard to understand what
the proposals were all about. After all, they aimed at rectifying or improving the situation in particular
German universities – and to what extent the proposals were able to achieve that was not apparent to
international reviewers with no prior knowledge of the German university system.
To concentrate on three di erent lines of funding, however, proved to be a very good approach to the
enterprise, for each of the di erent ‘programs’ was meant to promote projects with di erent objectives.
The rst line of funding was meant to promote Graduate Schools; that is to contribute to the
improvement of the teaching and the research environment of young researchers (PhD candidates). In
the two rounds of the reviewing process the proposals for 40 graduate schools were selected, each of
which will receive an average of 750 million Pesos annually. The second line was meant to promote
world-class research on a larger basis, in order to enable relatively large groups of scientists and scholars
to pursue a common research objective. All in all there were roughly 30 so-called ‘clusters of excellence’
established, each of which receives an average of 5 billion Pesos annually. For each of the three funding
lines, a supplemental allowance of 20% of the total sum is available to cover indirect expenses.
The third line was the one that was the most interesting to everybody: It was meant to fund the best
universities in Germany, which is to promote top-level universities. For Heidelberg, it was attractive not
only because of the amount of money involved, which is 10 billion Pesos per year; it was important mainly
because of the title ‘Elite University’ that went with it. All good German universities were of course
adamant to be recognised as such a certi ed ‘elite university’. The problemwith regard to this funding line
was obvious: How do you nd out which universities are really the best? The answer could be easy: Just
look at their achievements; at their rank with regard to the citation indexes, their output with regard to
publications, the amount of third party money they manage to get, their number of graduates and
post-graduates, the extent of their international networks, and so on. These would have been rather
objective criteria, and it would have been interesting to see whether the commission might have come
up with better criteria for rankings of universities – for the poor quality of the established rankings is no
secret any more.
But this type of evaluation would not have agreed with the spirit of the whole initiative, and therefore it
was agreed upon to select the so-called ‘elite universities’ on the basis of proposals for institutional
strategies, and in which the universities laid open their plans to improve the research in their universities.
Moreover, and quite sensibly, an ‘elite university’ had to get at least one cluster of excellence and at least
one graduate school. The evaluation of the proposals to promote the research of a university at large was
rather di cult and not entirely uncontroversial, because it depended very much on the preconditions of
each university. It is, after all, easier to improve something that is not so good in the rst place.
DIA 2: DESAFÍOS DE LAS UNIVERSIDADES PÚBLICAS PARA EL SIGLO XXI
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CONFERENCIA: “Estado actual y proyecciones de las Universidades Públicas de los Estados Unidos”
142
Jaime Chahín
142
CONFERENCIA: “Responsabilidad del Estado respecto a la Sustentabilidad de la
Universidad Pública Nacional”
154
Juan Manuel Zolezzi, Consejo de Rectores.
155
PANEL: “Financiamiento de las universidades estatales: antecedentes y perspectivas para el siglo XXI” 161
Juan Manuel Zolezzi
162
Luis Ayala
162
María Olivia Mönckeberg
172
Felipe Morandé
180
Hugo Fazio
185
CONFERENCIA: “La Mercantilización de la Educación, el ejemplo de la Universidad”
185
Roger Dehaybe
185
CONFERENCIA: “Enseñanza Superior, Universidades Públicas y Universidades de Clase Mundial.
Relación entre estos términos y las Políticas de Investigación y Desarrollo en Brasil”.
186
Hernán Chaimovich
186
PANEL: “Futuro de las Universidades Públicas en Chile”
193
Sergio Pulido
193
Jorge Las Heras
197
José Antonio Viera-Gallo
202
José Joaquín Brunner
205
Ennio Vivaldi
212
Ricardo Núñez
220
CONFERENCIA: Alcances y conclusiones del Encuentro
226
Francisco Brugnoli
226
CONFERENCIA DE CIERRE
232
Mónica Jiménez, Ministra de Educación
232
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