Dear colleagues,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Let me welcome you to the New Year 2024 and wish you all the best. As always, my hope for all of us is that the new year will be better than the last.
I would like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank you for all the work you have done for Masaryk University over the past year. Thanks to you, your skills and commitment, Masaryk University achieved many successes last year. Perhaps the most tangible manifestation of all these achievements is our position in international rankings, with the QS World University Rankings, published this summer, placing our institution in the top 400 universities in the world for the first time. Prior to this, we maintained our previous year’s position in the top 500 universities in the ARWU rankings. In the autumn, we saw a massive improvement in our position in THE World University Rankings, where we are now ranked 601-800 in the world. And in the new QS World University Rankings: Europe 2024, we are ranked 161st out of 688 European universities.
While international rankings should not be overestimated, we should not disregard them either, as they take into account parameters that are important for the development of our university and for continuous quality improvement in a number of areas. That is why we can be proud of what we have achieved together and I think it will also motivate us to continue our work.
There are, of course, challenges and problem areas where we need to step up our efforts. These certainly include the quality of education, which is sometimes underestimated. We often focus on research excellence, but sometimes lose sight of the fact that research, let alone excellence, cannot be achieved without quality education. And it is in the quality of education that we unfortunately lag behind in international comparison. I am of the opinion that this is partly because we often fail to look beyond the walls of our individual departments, institutes, workplaces or faculties, and that we are sometimes too concerned with our own particular work. If, at certain moments, we could step back a bit and look at things from a broader perspective, it would do us a lot of good and it would allow us to grow and improve.
Standing here at the beginning of a new year, it is of course impossible not to reflect on what happened at the end of last year at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague. I was deeply shocked and personally affected by this brutal and senseless act, which is unprecedented in the modern history of our country. I would also like to thank those of you who have shown your support and solidarity with the victims and their families in the wake of this atrocity, including by making a financial contribution.
Regarding specific measures taken by Masaryk University in connection with this tragic event, I would like to assure you that we immediately discussed the situation at the MU Emergency Board. I also personally discussed it with the head of the Regional Police Directorate of the South Moravian Region, Brigadier General Leoš Tržil, and I also took part in a meeting with representatives of the Ministry of Education. Of course, we will continue to coordinate our next steps with other Czech universities and with members of the Czech Rectors’ Conference.
I want to reassure everyone that we are taking the situation very seriously and approaching it with a sense of great responsibility. At the same time, however, we are looking for rational solutions that will not unduly disrupt the day-to-day running and operations of our university, whose historic mission is and has always been, above all, to provide an open and free space for free people.
However, despite the turbulent and difficult times we have lived through in recent years – or perhaps because of them – I would like to wish you all the best for the New Year, especially faith and hope.
Sincerely yours
Martin Bareš
Rector of Masaryk University