Blog - Page 2

As we mark the European Day of Languages, it’s worth taking a closer look at the statistics published today.

From a university's perspective, perhaps the most surprising aspect of the industrial strategy is that the Commission underplayed all that universities do to support industrial growth.

The Commission President, Jean-Claude Juncker, underlined in today’s State of the European Union speech, his aspiration for the EU to become first “in innovation, digitisation and decarbonisation.”

With this quotation Louise Richardson, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford, appealed to university leaders at the Times Higher Education World Academic Summit in London to confront the rise of populism with courage and integrity.

The High-Level Group chaired by Pascal Lamy was charged with crafting a vision for the EU’s next Framework Programme focusing on ‘excellence, openness and impact, and how to maximise their impact’ (Annex 1). This slightly awkward formulation suggests three interdependent (and compatible) priorities for EU-funded research and innovation, but the primacy of one: impact. This raises a fundamental question: are openness and impact always compatible with excellence—and what happens when they are not?

‘Lab-Fab-App’ – the Lamy Report’s title is peculiarly out of sync with its main message: the critical importance of research and innovation for the future of Europe. And a title that will do little to endear it to social media users ‘in the hood’ shows at a glance that bringing science closer to the citizen is not as easy as it appears.