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The future of the university: everyone can contribute

23 Oct 2018

What will Radboud University look like in 2025? This is the question that the Executive Board will be asking about on campus in the near future. ‘The opinions and ideas of students and employees will be incorporated into the new vision for the future,’ promises President of the Executive Board, Daniël Wigboldus.

The current Strategic Plan, which contains the university’s goals and ambitions, is only three years old and will be in effect until the end of 2020. However, the Executive Board has already begun taking steps towards creating a new vision document, which is expected to be finalised in September 2019.

‘The world around us is changing so quickly,’ says President of the Executive Board, Daniël Wigboldus. ‘In the area of technology, for example, which has substantial impact on the way we provide education and conduct research. Or in politics: in the allocation of research funding, valorisation is playing an increasingly large role. According to Wigboldus, universities have to deal with a variety of those types of issues. ‘And we have to get ready to address them – we have to get into position.’

At the same time, the Executive Board wants to ‘take their time’ with the new Strategic Plan. ‘We want to take a broad approach to collecting input from the organisation for our new strategy, and that is why we are starting this discussion now. Everyone is invited to contribute.’

Sessions

For this reason, the university is organising five sessions for students and employees in November and December. Each session revolves around two themes that the Executive Board is eager to hear the students and employees discuss.

One of the themes is the university’s growth strategy. Wigboldus: ‘Our current plan states that we will consistently choose quality. When it comes to attracting students, quality is more important than quantity: we think it is more important that the right student ends up in the right place rather than just attracting a lot of students. At the same time, we have been seeing a structural, significant increase in the number of students over the past few years. This automatically leads to discussions about quality. How do you maintain it?’

‘The Board has also begun to take a more nuanced look at language policy’

The process that the university wants to follow to arrive at the Strategic Plan can be compared to the way the university’s internationalisation strategy was developed. At that time, different discussions were organised where people could share their opinions as well.

‘I remember a brilliant discussion in the Cultuurcafé,’ says Wigboldus. ‘People really disagreed with each other; you’re entitled to your opinion.’ The Executive Board had a good experience with the process used to reach a new internationalisation strategy. ‘It was dynamic – we learned a lot.’

Impact

An interesting debate is always good. But what happens next? ‘When you look at our new internationalisation strategy,’ says Wigboldus, ‘you can clearly see the influence of the preceding process on the final document.’ The Strategic Plan will be written after the sessions, and will be presented to the participational bodies. A new Strategic Plan is expected before the start of the next academic year.

Wigboldus mentioned that the impact on creating the new internationalisation strategy has compelled the Board to take a more nuanced look at language policy and other areas of interest. ‘We have very purposely chosen to declare ourselves a multilingual university.’ You have to consider what the best language is for each programme. We will not force a programme to be in English from on high. This differs per faculty, per programme, or even per course.

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