BEIJING, October 17 (Xinhuanet) – On October 10, Representatives from the Association of American Universities (AAU), the Consortium of China 9 Research Universities (C9), the Group of Eight Australia (Go8), and the League of European Research Universities (LERU) issued Hefei Statement on the ten characteristics of contemporary research universities at the C9 annual presidents meeting in Hefei, China.
During the C9 annual Presidents Meeting on building world-class universities, Presidents or vice Presidents from C9 universities (including Fudan Univeresity, Harbin Institute of Technology, Nanjing University Peking University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Tsinghua University, University of Science and Technology of China, Xi’an Jiaotong University and Zhejiang University) and delegates from AAU, Go8 and LERU jointly signed on the Hefei Statement on ten characteristics of contemporary research universities, which was witnessed by Officers from the State Council Academic Degrees Committee and the Department of Postgraduate Education, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Hefei City’s Mayor, and delegates from MIT, University of Hong Kong, Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Nowadays, governments around the world are starting to take as a given the achievements of research universities, forgetting what is necessary to sustain their performance. Policy in many countries is taking an ever more instrumentalist view of universities, a view that ties their roles and purpose to producing the knowledge and skills necessary to operate in a modern economy and to performing research that supports national development. For the absence of a supportive environment, research universities will be unable to impart the major competitive advantage and global recognition that all nations seek from them. It is important to reinforce the message that research universities play a unique role that complements but does not duplicate the roles played by other institutions within the broader innovation system, and the key characteristics that make research universities effective should be identifies.
The Statement points out that, universities also are storehouses of knowledge and broad capabilities that provide an underlying state of preparedness -a kind of information - and capacity-based insurance and broader vigilance - that business, government and communities can draw upon to help deal with the unexpected and unknown. And research universities are distinguished by the quality, breadth and depth of their commitment to research. Research universities are now increasingly under pressure to shift from fundamental to applied research to produce short-term benefits and to narrow their curricula in pursuit of increasingly instrumental educational objectives. It is critical that all relevant policies recognize the broad, pervasive and long-term benefits of university research and education and provide the support and environment that will ensure that these institutions continue to flourish; sustaining the foundational characteristics that make research universities an invaluable part of any national infrastructure. And the four signatory groups to this statement commit themselves to work together to advance and uphold the ten characteristics, work within their own members their realization and promote the foundational value of these characteristics in the development of higher education policy.
The participants shared their views on how to poster world-class research universities, the way to meet the challenges of a changing world, and missions and roles of world-class research universities. The meeting will last for two days and future discussions will go ahead, leading to future cooperation. As Mr. Michael Gallagher, Executive Director of Go8, said: "All this things create an opportunity for students and young faculties particularly who want to work together. The door has been opened by this friend work goings.” And Prof. Bernd Huber, President of LERU and LMU München, called for cooperation as well: “What we’re doing here is that we want to think about the potential for cooperation between the leading research university networks and some of the most prominent in the world."
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