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ENCUENTRO INTERNACIONAL DE UNIVERSIDADES ESTATALES
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Heidelberg University, luckily, turned out to be one of the two big winners in 2007; we received three
graduate schools, two clusters, and the title ‘elite university’. And we were, together with the Technical
University of Aachen and the Free University of Berlin, the only university whose success was not doubted
during the nal evaluation process. However, the decision as to which kind of proposal we wanted to
submit, and which kind of university we wanted to be in the future, was anything but easy. In a di cult
and animated process of discussion, it turned out that the large majority of the sta wanted to defend the
concept of the comprehensive university with a broad scope of subjects. That is the tradition of
Heidelberg, which has served us well for centuries, and which should not be thrown over board because
of money that is spent within ve years. Moreover, it allows us to react exibly and to tackle the big
questions of society, questions like aging, which can only be resolved by having recourse to disciplines
like the bio-sciences, psychology, the social sciences, law and the humanities. The whole university
decided either to win or to go down with ying colours – and we were lucky. We persuaded the reviewers
that it was worth while to reward a comprehensive university.
Our proposal was titled “Heidelberg: Realising the Potential of a Comprehensive University”, and the
major aim is to promote excellence not only within the di erent disciplines (that is a necessary
precondition), but also to promote interdisciplinary dialogue, mainly between the natural and
bio-sciences on the one hand, and the social sciences and humanities on the other hand. Since nobody
can know which elds and which disciplines will be crucial in tackling the most pressing scienti c
enterprises in ten or twenty years, it seems unwise to get rid of whole areas of expertise because they are
not of paramount importance today. After all, we may need them in the future. In Heidelberg, we opted
for the comprehensive university, but other universities had di erent priorities, and so it turned out that
the diversi cation of German universities has been one result of the whole initiative.
One main problem that became apparent during the nal selection process was the tension between
academe and politics. The committee responsible for the nal evaluation was comprised of both
academics and politicians. And while the academics only looked at the quality of the projects, the
politicians mainly wanted a more or less even distribution of the money throughout Germany. Moreover,
the positive results of the distribution of the funds seem now to be counter-acted by a policy which aims
at giving funding to those universities which did not get anything, or which did not come out of the
process as well as politicians thought they should. It is quite obvious that there is a tendency towards
awarding those non-winning universities, which do not have the nancial advantages of the excellence
initiative. That is quite understandable from a political point of view, but it is, of course, detrimental to the
whole objective of the initiative, which was meant to identify and promote excellent universities in order
to improve their position and visibility on an international level.
4. Concluding Remarks
If one looks at the complexity of the situation, the diversity of universities, their manifold functions, and
the necessity of networking in an increasingly globalised world, it seems di cult to come up with a
coherent, clear cut conclusion. From the point of view of research universities in Europe, I would like to
stress the following points.
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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