Magnificence,
Spectabiles,
Honorabiles,
distinguished members of the Academic Senate, the Board of Trustees and the Scientific Board,
distinguished members of the academic community,
dear students,
colleagues,
and distinguished guests,
I would like to welcome you all to the Opening Ceremony of the 2024/2025 academic year, which, like last year, we have linked with the announcement of the University Wine. I would also like to use our meeting today to honour our colleagues who have received the Rector’s Awards for Outstanding Teachers or the Masaryk University Medals.
Let me begin my address by reflecting on how our University has performed over the past academic year. While I personally take international rankings with a pinch of salt, they do provide an important overall assessment that allows for international comparison of how we do things, and thus a useful guide to what, where and how we could and should improve.
In the QS World University Rankings published earlier this summer, our University was ranked 408th. We have thus managed to stay close to the top four hundred against very strong competition, considering that a total of 5,663 institutions from 106 countries were ranked. Masaryk University has followed up on last year’s historic 400th place in the same ranking, when we moved up more than 150 places. This year’s result confirms that last year’s improvement was no mere coincidence. Sustainability in the broadest sense and the internationalisation of education and science are our long-term priorities, and so I am very pleased that these areas are also reflected in the international ranking of our University. I am perhaps even more pleased with the improving indicators that reflect the quality of our graduates and their position in the labour market.
To complete this summary of the international standing of Masaryk University, I would also like to mention this year’s Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), which was published this summer and in which our university was ranked in the top five hundred (401-500th) for the third time in a row. In addition to the fact that we are once again among the top 500 global universities, I am particularly pleased that Masaryk University has improved its performance in three of the ranked indicators compared to last year. It performed better on the two indicators of publication activity, which is the number of publications in Nature and Science and the number of publications indexed by Web of Science, as well as on the indicator measuring scientific output per academic staff. Our research performance, and in particular the quality of our science, is increasing even in global competition, and this is excellent news for our University, which strives for scientific excellence.
I believe that these international achievements show that the University is moving in the right direction and that, together, we have managed in recent years to put in place some internal mechanisms to promote growth and development, especially in terms of quality and excellence. In this context, I also consider important Masaryk University’s involvement in the Czech Research Universities Association, which I have chaired since last August and where I am actively involved in formulating strategies to strengthen quality and excellence in the broader Czech university environment.
Coming back to Masaryk University, excellence is naturally linked to the funding and economic sustainability of the whole institution. This year’s record-breaking, growth-oriented budget, approved by the Academic Senate in May, is a case in point. The total budget of CZK 11.8 billion represents an increase of CZK 1.8 billion over the previous year. Getting there has certainly not been easy and is not a given, especially given the external circumstances of recent years. That is why I regard this budget, the highest ever in the University’s more than 100-year history, as an extraordinary achievement. I should add that I believe it is absolutely essential for our institution to invest in the future; we must continue to pursue projects and our other activities, share technology and also look for internal savings through greater efficiency.
However, there are still problems and significant room for improvement in many areas that we must continue to work on. And here I repeat what I have said many times before: one of our weakest points is the student failure rate, a problem we have been dealing with for a long time and which needs to be seriously addressed. Another area where we can improve significantly, and where I am becoming increasingly dissatisfied with our progress, is staffing policy. I believe that the quality, let alone the excellence, of any institution begins and ends with its people. I do not think we do enough, or perhaps we do not know how to find and attract good, excellent and outstanding staff, and I am talking about non-academic staff too, of course. Similarly, we are not doing enough to not only retain quality employees, but also to better motivate them to work for Masaryk University.
Yes, of course, we have produced a number of strategy and planning documents outlining our personnel policy, often very narrowly focused, I might add; but I am afraid the results remain on paper and the documents are produced just for their own sake and to impress audiences outside the university. When it comes to day-to-day, detailed, proactive HR work, that is where we fall short. It is as if, despite all our strategies and policy documents, we are incapable of implementing what is and should be the essence of real personnel management. I am therefore convinced that we need a much more proactive, systematic and high-quality personnel policy at the practical, day-to-day level. Any institution is first and foremost made up of people, their talents, their skills, and their energy. If we cannot work well with them, we will not move forward and it will hold us back, and no amount of buzzwords, policy papers and presentations will help.
I would also like to mention here the conclusion of the International Scientific Advisory Board of Masaryk University, an independent body of internationally renowned scientists that helps the university develop research strategies and provides independent advice on science issues, which reported in May this year that while our university has a top-class infrastructure, it needs to make progress in attracting top research talent at all levels.
Another area I often mention is graduate affairs, where we also have a lot to learn, although we are taking baby steps and have had some successes, such as the recent meeting of our alumni in Brussels, which was attended by members of the University management as well as representatives of several faculties. The meeting in the capital of the European Union, with people who work for a number of European institutions or NATO, showed how successful our university can be. The meeting gave us real examples and stories to confirm that we are a university with good teaching and research and that we offer studies at an internationally competitive level. I believe that Masaryk University is and can only be as good as its graduates. We should not underestimate the fact that alumni are the University’s best ambassadors and promoters of its brand. We should therefore put more and more emphasis on this area, both at University level and at the level of individual faculties.
So far I have talked about the conceptual, organisational and operational matters. But the university should be first and foremost a matter of ideas, a matter of spirit. And if it is to do so, it must be driven by a profound vision in its day-to-day operations, as well as in its growth and development. This vision must in some way reflect elements such as imagination, creativity, ingenuity, innovation, inspiration, intuition and insight, forethought and foresight. All these are and must be part of a true vision – a vision in the sense of a particular state of mind and attunement to something important, great and profound, which we allow to guide our actions so that they take on a deeper meaning.
In this place I must refer to the spiritual father of our University, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, and to the philosopher who most influenced his thinking and views: Plato. Following Plato’s example, Masaryk called for public governance to have a rational and substantive basis and to be able to continuously set desirable goals for our actions and lead society towards a better future.
How can we achieve this? A close reading of Plato reveals that he believed this could be achieved primarily through education and training, where philosophy plays a central role. Philosophy as an ongoing effort to explain oneself and the world; an effort to illuminate and clarify, and to seek a desirable order in both individual life and society, which also means protecting oneself and the world from instability and chaos. At the same time, however, we see in Plato that the nature of social and political order is always inevitably a kind of magnified projection of the specific kind of order within individual citizens. Plato uses the concept of the soul, so the key to a desirable and harmonious social and political order, according to both Plato and Masaryk, is the care of the soul, i.e. education and training. And in this process, the role of the university as an institution is central to contemporary society.
Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to conclude by wishing you and the entire academic community of Masaryk University all the best at the beginning of the new academic year.
I look forward to spending this evening with all of you.
Thank you for your attention.