Thank you everyone for being here, and good afternoon.
It's really exciting to see all of the faces here today,
and I was just
commenting to a couple of our colleagues that it feels
like the first Advancing
the Human Condition symposium was like two minutes ago,
and here we are the next year.
I am extremely excited and pleased
to introduce our keynote speaker for this year,
Jose Antonio Guzman Cruzat.
We extended this offer to Jose Antonio,
and he immediately said, "Yes."
Michelle and I held a couple of Skype conversations with
him and he has traveled
over 5000 miles to be here with us today,
so thank you so much Jose Antonio.
Jose Antonio is a dear colleague and
we went to grad school
together at the University of Pennsylvania,
and he has a beautiful heart
and always super ready to help his colleagues,
and his incredible commitment
to advancing people through education.
A little bit about Jose Antonio.
He was born and raised in Santiago de Chile,
and he received his Juris Doctor degree
from the Universidad Catolica de Chile.
He has been associated with the Universidad de los Andes,
English, Spanish, my brain is going crazy,
since its inception, where he taught constitutional law,
and he also held
an administrative post at the College of Law there.
He also served as the provost,
the Vice President for Academic affairs,
and under his tenure as vice president,
the institution went through an accreditation process,
which I believe it was the first
accreditation process of your institution,
and became the highest-ranking accreditation
in the Chilean system.
He also led the beginning
and the installation of
the general education program for undergrad education.
Higher education or tertiary education
and other countries is different,
so we don't have this concept of a core system,
so that's one of the things that Jose instituted as a lot
of the higher-ed programs
were very professional in nature.
We had an amazing conversation yesterday at El Centro,
hosted by the director of El Centro Veronica Montes.
Our students were very intrigued by the concept of not
having Gen Eds in other parts of the world.
Jose also created
the research council to address issues of
policy and has also
instituted the office of research and development.
As I mentioned,
he did his undergrad in Universidad Catolica,
and he received his Master's degree from
Harvard and his doctorate
from the University of Pennsylvania.
His dissertation focused on factors to enhance
the quality of teaching
excellence in Chilean universities,
and I was always incredibly impressed by
the fact that he wrote his dissertation
both in English and Spanish.
He wrote the first in Spanish,
and he mentioned that yesterday
that he feels like that's not such a big deal.
He wrote two books while we were struggling to do one.
He did this again with his amazing humbleness.
This is just really not big, it was huge.
Let me see what else I can tell you about him.
He recently has been asked to serve
a second term as President at Universidad de los Andes,
and he's considered a thought leader in higher education.
We've been having amazing conversations
about how to serve our students in different parts of
the world and this being very energizing for
me just to share
the work that we have been doing here at Virginia Tech.
So I am honored to have
Jose to come and
share his thoughts with all of you today.
Thank you. [APPLAUSE]
Well, it's a great honor to be here this afternoon.
I would like to thank
Virginia Tech University and the organizers of
this seminar for inviting me to speak today.
Especially, I want to thank Mercedes
Dr. Ramirez Fernandez for suggesting my name.
I'm blushing with all the things that she said about me.
I did these two books thanks in fact too,
thanks to Google Translate which is
very effective as usually,
you think better when you write in
your first language and then you have to translate it,
so it was a way to
think better about the things that I
was writing at that time.
I really love this topic.
It's going to appear at some point in
the presentation that I prepared for this.
Let me see if I can find it.
Apparently, my presentation is not here.
[BACKGROUND]
Here we are.
I've found it. Thanks a lot.
As I was saying, I think that this topic is a passion for
me as a President of a young University,
I have been thinking a lot about
this because many things depend on reading well,
the future of universities,
that's why this topic is really interesting for me.
Our era presents us with
many challenges that were unthinkable 50 years ago.
It's commonplace to say that the world changes very fast,
and those changes are driven by technology,
by globalization, by immigration.
There are three aspects of
this change that could be summarized in three words,
and I'm going to talk about
a little bit about these three things;
culture on the one hand, technology and demography.
I think that the three of them have a great impact,
or can have a great impact in the future of universities.
Culture is changing in
an increasing way in the recent year,
it has been changing very fast.
In Chile, I think that cultural change
has been probably slower than here in the US,
but it has been fast enough.
We were just talking about this with Veronica,
how Chile has changed in the last let's say, 20 years.
Our societies have been democratized in every way,
today all ideas are good,
all life options are fine as long as you
don't harm your neighbor.
All cultures are of equal value,
so the way in which we see culture
has permeated everything and that's a global phenomenon,
and I think that Chile is part of
what happens all over the world.
Students enter the university with
a very different attitude than the one that we
had 30 years ago when we entered college.
They are millennials, and that means that they
believe that they have the world open to their desires.
They are tech savvy,
they are quite individualistic,
they don't have a well-defined career plan
and maybe they don't care too much about that.
Their professional development is not
necessarily the most important part in their lives.
Let's say that they are critical
in many ways of the previous generation,
and they would rather avoid the costs their parents paid,
or their parents suffered because
of their commitment to their jobs.
They are moved by
different courses than those
of the people of my generation,
and regarding their values,
I think that this generation,
they deal much better than us,
than my generation with diversity in many different ways.
In terms of the relationship
of millennials with their instructors,
this relation is much more horizontal.
Sometimes they behave as customers
who come to the university to buy something.
They have few problems in
questioning what a teacher says.
They are connected to Google during class
and they are reviewing and validating
the things that are said in class.
They are much more capable than
us in handling technology,
and that gives them a huge advantage.
This is an example that recently
a colleague told me that in a marketing class,
a group of four students were doing
an assignment and they took about 90 minutes to
build a very fine web-page and to design
a social media study using Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram.
They just used an hour and a half and this is amazing.
That was probably impossible sometime ago.
These are some of the skills that they have.
On the negative side,
it seems to me that many of our students are less clear,
let's say, about the meaning of their lives.
They move quickly, though
they do not always know where to go.
In many cases, this is a case in Chile and I think
that you have a very similar issue here,
a lot of alcohol,
a lot of drugs,
a lot of partying,
and a lot of mental illness.
This is a very interesting picture of what happens
in terms of the concern of
Student Affairs offices here in the US.
This is a comparison between what
happened five years ago and what is going on
right now in terms of how
these mental health issue
is a concern for us too in affair offices.
This is all over the world.
This is a news from a newspaper in Chile in last weekend.
It shows how mental health of students
is a pending issue for universities and it's
a big deal for us right now in
my university and in
many other places and we have to deal with that.
With regard to technology,
I mentioned that there were three factors.
On the one hand, culture,
then technology and finally,
we're going to talk a little bit about immigration,
which is also very important what is going on in Chile.
But with regard with technological change,
I see two aspects.
First, the way in which it will affect
the labor market all over the world.
Second, the change it can bring to universities.
How university are going to be
affected by the technological changing
in many different ways.
For the first point, I think that
professionals are changing very
quickly and therefore they
are endangered and in some cases,
technology becomes obsolete in months.
That's a thing that we have
to be aware of and we have to address it in some way.
I recently spoke to the dean of our med school.
Sorry. So you were not seen anything.
[LAUGHTER] I didn't know that.
I wasn't looking at the screen.
But I was telling you that I
talked to the dean of our med schools not so long
ago and he was telling me that he thinks
that the medical profession is
going to change very quickly in the next years.
Due to diagnostic imaging,
due to that big data analysis,
and especially due to
the increasing costs in health care all over the world,
some things are going to be
very different for doctors in the near future.
We have to be aware of that and try to find a way to
change as institutions in order
to address these changes that are coming.
I think that if the same thing will happen
with journalists, with lawyers,
with designers, with architects,
professionals are changing, as I said, very quickly.
It's interesting to figure out what
is going to happen with education.
Will it be the case for educators?
How do we take care of the change that will come?
What are the skills that, let's say,
undergraduate students need to develop?
How do we prepare them for change and flexibility?
That's an important question
that we have to ask ourselves.
What's the role of graduate education in this context?
Especially continuing education in
Chile it's a big deal right now.
We'll come back to this issue in a moment.
But in terms of how this is going to affect universities,
how our universities are going to
change or be forced to change
in terms of the way in which they deliver their goals,
we don't know if,
call it campuses, will be necessary in the future.
We have to ask ourselves about that.
Will it be some day possible to fully
customize the learning experience of our students?
What will be their business model of
the higher education system
with large economies of scale,
with global reach, with
education that is going to be almost free of cost?
We don't know. Many things can change in
some way and we don't know what's going to
happen and we have to ask ourselves about that.
It's important part of our job
as administrators or faculty members.
We have to think about the future
of universities in this regard.
In terms of demography,
demography is also a big deal for universities.
In Chile, the demographic changes is very powerful,
as in many other countries.
In terms of birth rate, Chile has dropped.
Right now is 1.6 children per woman,
along with a high increase in
the birth rate of immigrant women.
Both things are happening in Chile right now.
Immigration has had an explosive increase,
I'm talking about Chile, mainly with
people coming from Haiti,
from Colombia, from Peru, from Venezuela.
These immigrants usually have
very poor professional skills and some of them,
they don't even speak Spanish.
They do have quite a huge immigration
coming from Haiti and they don't speak
Spanish and it takes them a long time in order to learn
the basic concepts of Spanish and
that's an issue that is going to be very important.
Usually they go to work in
those places where Chileans don't want to go.
That's also very similar to
what happens here in many other places.
Since the Chilean economy is doing
well and the employment rate is high right now,
immigration has not produced a major social problem.
But it anyway poses
many challenges in terms of education,
in terms of housing,
in terms of health care.
In this context, again,
it appears very important to me
the continuing education in order
to figure out how
to empower these people
coming from other countries to Chile.
I think that is a great challenge
for Chilean universities.
I want to introduce, let's say,
a first caveat regarding
this reflection, our universities.
We must consider whether universities can
change and if they
can change at the pace that is required.
Whatever the social and technological changes,
the governance challenges,
has to cope with
these things that are changing and that will be huge.
It requires strong leadership, in some cases,
transformational leadership, and enthusiastic
contribution of every university audience.
It is not easy to change when
everything is working apparently well.
But if you wait for problems to
become evident, it may be too late.
Usually faculty members are relatively
skeptical about changes and at the same time,
they have a greater autonomy to determine what
happens in their classrooms
or what happens in their labs.
In order to produce the change that the society
may require because of the challenges
that the society is passing on universities and we
have to produce an effective change.
Institutional vision has to be capable of aligning
administrators and faculty members,
overcoming possible skepticism.
That's an important issue for universities.
We will come back to this at the end of this talk.
We have been talking about the challenges that
universities are facing in terms of culture,
in terms of immigration,
in terms of technology,
and now I'm going to talk
a little bit about the way in which
we as universities can
address these challenges that we're facing,
and from that point of view,
I would like to address these four points.
On the one hand, what's the guiding role of universities
in influencing the cultural debate
that we're having in our society,
and that is done through education, through research.
Secondly, unrelated to the research,
I believe that it's very important
for universities to create,
as it was mentioned before,
bridges between different disciplines,
and this is a very important challenge
and a very difficult one.
Third, I think that universities have to be hubs,
meeting points for people,
the ideas, their points of view, their interests.
Finally, in fourth place,
I will consider a little bit about
the certifying role that
higher education institutions have
to play regarding the new skills
needed by 21st-century society.
Concerning the first point I mentioned in Latin America,
it is common to call
universities the critical conscience of society.
That's a very fancy title.
In our country universities are,
let's say, the most important agents
of cultural influence,
and that maybe not the case here or in
Europe because you probably
have a huge influence by the press,
by other organized groups like
Think Tanks or also a very robust,
editorial world that also is shaping
the cultural debating in
societies like the US or European societies.
But in Latin America,
we usually call universities,
as I said, the critical conscious of society.
Usually, our societies expect from
universities an orienting view
about the cultural debate, they're,
let's say, an important pillar of
democracy in our countries,
and I think that here is also the case,
and so we have to think about this.
What is our responsibility and what is our role
regarding the way in which the cultural debate
is developed in our countries.
This is especially true at least I'm talking from
the TDM perspective because the lack
of confluence of most institutions
and I'm talking about political parties,
about Congress, our churches,
universities' prestige so far
remains intact at least in Chile probably
are the most prestigious institutions
in Chilean society in order to shape,
as I mentioned before, the cultural debate.
I think that we have a special responsibility in making
sense of this social change
that is going on in our society.
We have to think and we have to have an opinion about
what is valuable and what has to be preserved,
what should change in society?
How is progress and change
assimilated in the most harmonious way?
Universities are a place
for social reflection and they have to
make an effort in
understanding the challenges of our time.
This task is not always
easy because scholars are, let's say,
conservative by nature, and this is just a coincidence.
That's a picture of Justice Scalia
speaking in our university.
But scholars are usually conservative by
nature because hierarchy and university organization
is somewhat based on the passage of time,
achievements, and experience rather
than creativity and disruption.
So all of us have to
have been pressuring ideas over time,
and it's very difficult for us
to get rid of them when a young
person or a disruptive way of
thinking challenges us in some way.
This conservatism has, let's say,
a good side and a bad side.
Good because there is so much to keep in our societies.
University is treasure with
the wisdom of past generations
and they have to pass
this wisdom to the future generations,
and that has to be kept.
Bad because we don't always connect with
innovation and with the ways
of seeing the world of young people,
and this disconnection produces
a gap between generations.
Universities must offer their views on cultural change,
address them with the various perspectives
with academic freedom,
with hard data, avoiding political correctness,
distinguishing between facts and opinions.
Universities could be a place for reflection
of our society being an efficient marketplace of
ideas in which the standard of selection of
these ideas is the intellectual rigor
with which these ideas are presented.
It assumes that the processes of selection of
faculty members are fair
and that people of any school of thought,
of any background have access to these institutions.
In this way, universities can be
true marketplace of ideas.
At the same time, this marketplace requires that
intellectual work is also validated in a fair way.
If there is free speech and academic freedom,
if there are diverse points of view,
then ideas flow and compete,
and this should be always
the case in public universities,
because we owe to
the whole society and everyone has to have
access to universities in order to develop their ideas.
But if these assumptions are not met,
the marketplace of ideas
will be only apparent and we have to be aware of that.
There are two main ways to
carry out this task of social reflection,
and there, as we know teaching and research.
I'm going to talk a little bit about teaching,
and I think that the pertinent curriculum
has to be a point we're talking about
this society there is changing a lot
and people need to make
sense of what is going on in society.
In this context, I think that a pertinent curriculum with
general location has to build
upon a panoramic vision of world and society.
That's why I think that general location is
now more important than ever
because it helps students to
make sense of our world, of our culture.
I'm talking about the general location
aimed at making sense.
I think that is important,
but that's not always the case,
and I think that in this context,
humanities and arts,
are very important part of general location,
are very important part of this effort.
Regarding research, I think that is very
important what Ernest Boyer,
whom probably most of you know well
called scholarship of integration.
By that, he meant in
scholarly effort in finding coherence to the variety of
scientific knowledge
in building bridges between disciplines,
science becomes more specialized every day.
There are relatively few scholars working in
integrating in relating ideas,
in putting together knowledge
into a coherent perspective.
Different sciences look at
the world with different lenses,
and usually, those lenses are conflicting among them.
Yet the observed world the object of
our study is one and it is coherent in itself.
We have to ask scholars,
we have to find a way in order
to look at the world or our objects of
study from different perspective
and being able to integrate
these perspectives in [NOISE] a coherent approach.
For example, in our university,
we just began a couple of years ago with
a trans-disciplinary center for studying aging.
People are getting older in Chile and we
have to confront that challenge.
That means that you have to study this issue,
this big issue in terms of law,
in terms of economy,
in terms of medicine,
in terms of engineering.
Many people from different disciplines
have to work together in order to
address something that is very important for the society.
Interdisciplinarity aims to create
bridges between different sciences.
But we all know that this is very difficult,
that usually schools and
departments work off an insulated.
They lack incentives in
most cases to work with colleagues from
different areas and we have to be aware of
that and try to correct that in different ways.
I think that universities must strongly support,
foster this effort in order
to create bridges between disciplines.
Otherwise, I think that the consequence will be
the projection at Infinitum, let's say,
of this specialization, which could
transform universities in something totally irrelevant.
Because everyone is going deeper and deeper in
their own disciplines that
they don't talk with other people.
So some cases there are
things that nobody reads and so this idea of
working together with other people from other areas
is a very important part of
the challenges that we're facing as society.
I believe that a challenge of our time
is to make sense of
this fast-paced change that affects us.
Universities are stewards of science and truth
and thus they have a key role to play in this regard.
Third, I think that it's
important to highlight that universities have
to be hubs crossroads where people
from different backgrounds meet and work together.
That is going to be an important part of what
is going to happen in universities in
the future and I put here three reasons,
and there are three factors
that point to these in our time.
On the one hand, people need to
create relationships of trust.
Second, individualism is growing and with it loneliness,
and finally, people have much more free time
and we have to be aware of that people have more time.
In terms of degradation
of trust relationships among people,
I think that this is fundamental.
Universities have been very good
in creating social and professional networks.
Those who go to universities are expecting that.
In a context of greater social disintegration,
relationships based on social networks,
on Facebook, on LinkedIn,
Instagram are not enough.
Through trust, so we
needs a personal acquaintance with others
and universities can be
that place in order for that to happen.
Universities are not only providers
of knowledge and skills,
but also of personal relationships.
I think that's very important.
Is this generation more individualistic than others?
We don't know, but it seems that most people
have now weaker routes where their families,
ethnic groups, or communities.
That was the case 50 years ago and that's a fact,
we have to deal with that and in some way,
I think that universities can do
a great job in integrating people,
as I said before because individualism means loneliness.
This is just an anecdote,
but I think that it's important.
People living alone is increasing,
especially in large cities.
Maybe it doesn't call your attention,
but in Chile, it's a very clear phenomenon.
This is a statistics about this
and how it changed between 2002 and 2017,
people who are living alone in Chile,
it has been growing very fast.
Those who are insulated may need the university
to be a meeting point, a social hub.
It is also relevant, as I mentioned,
the greater availability of
free time and the fact that people live longer.
In this context, universities will
be the next public square,
the point of confluence,
a privileged place to cultivate
social relations and common hobbies and in some way,
we have to think about that.
In this context, I think that continuing education,
executive education
offers a tremendous opportunity for universities.
It is one of the central lines of my university,
and I think that many other universities
are going in that same direction.
We as your university are investing
a lot of money in business intelligence in
order to know what type of programs are of
value and interest of
these potential students and at the same time,
we're spending money in marketing for this purpose.
I think that is going to be
an important part of the sustainability of universities.
I repeat I'm talking from the perspective of Chile,
maybe not the case here, but for us,
this is an important thing and is very important in
these contexts of the future of
universities in terms of sustainability.
Continuing education could become
a very important part of
our revenue and then me and maybe as I said,
a key for future sustainability.
In addition to that, our online education is
growing very fast and it's being leveraged
by the solid reputation of our university and
I think that is weaker than
the personal relationship that
I mentioned before but is also
an important phenomenon that is going
to develop in the coming years.
Along with continuing education,
I think that cultural activities promoted by
universities are also going to be increasingly important.
In our case, and this is the case
in many universities in Chile,
we have plans to open much more
our campus to the surrounding community,
offering activities and facilities for them.
That's part of our mission and
that's the most important reason for doing that.
But in addition to that,
I think that we have to solidify a relationship
with these families that live
around our university and close by.
They are going to send their children to
the university or they are going to be patients
of our teaching hospital
and I think that
we have to be aware of and it's important.
I believe that all these elements aimed at
creating a long-term relationship with our audiences.
Universities will be no longer
places where when one goes to study for five years,
rather it becomes a lifelong partner for communities.
Finally, as I mentioned,
that the certifying role is also very important and we
are certifiers of knowledge and skills for our students.
It's probably the core of what we do or not the core,
but a very important part of what we do.
They're two very different situations.
On the one hand, what is required
for college education is
very different from the needs
for graduate at continuing education.
In the first case, I think that as I mentioned before,
what we need is
a very solid general education
which could foster with faster skills.
Such as critical thinking,
the ability to integrate knowledge
from different disciplines to develop
complex projects or oral and written expression,
teamwork, resilience,
integrity, loyalty, sense of purpose.
These are very important things that
are very valuable for students,
for the society, and for the labor market.
I think from my perspective,
that's the most important part
that we have to do with our undergraduates.
They are fundamental in order to acquire
the technological skills that they will need
in their jobs and to handle technology.
But we have to be aware that
if the world changes in a hurry,
ability to adapt is
the most important thing to
survive and to continue being relevant.
If college students develop these skills,
they will come back to graduate school or to
continue education program to
learn about more specific things.
But this is the base.
Volatility in
the labor market requires technological skills.
But those skills must be
grounded on a solid base of general education.
In the case of professional and graduate studies,
I will stress again
the importance of continuing education,
which is key to the renewal of
skills required for technological change.
Cycles of technical knowledge are changing very fast.
They are becoming shorter,
and professionals need help to stay up to date.
I also believe that mid-career programs
will become every day more important.
People are left behind by
the fast evolution of the labor market and in many cases,
they need to reinvent themselves.
That's why mid-career programs will be,
are, and will be every day more important.
Regarding the certifying role that
universities play in society,
I would like to raise an alert.
There will be a strong pressure to discover new models of
certification that are less expensive than universities.
We don't know the value that the market will
grant in the future to
MOOCS or other programs that are online,
but it could be big.
We don't know if it's going to be possible to
build an academic curriculum skipping college.
But I think that the threat is
real and we have to be aware of that.
It is necessary to have
institutional flexibility in order
to adapt to these contingency.
That something that can happen
and we have to prepare for that.
In this way, I connect with the last part of
this presentation which has to do with governance.
Minutes ago, I mentioned a caveat about the challenges
involved in getting universities to change and evolve.
In this regard, I am an optimist,
but I think that a strong leadership is required.
One empowered to promote effective strategy,
which involves being able to build
very strong support for
these plans among the members of the faculty.
That's something that has to
happen in order to change in many cases.
It is very clear the need for institutional strategy that
enables flexibility to adapt to political,
social, and technological challenges.
Universities need to evolve together with society.
On the other hand, I think that is very clear for us that
university governance cannot underestimate
the science and authority of faculty members.
I would like to
highlight this idea that without academics,
there is no university.
We are the core of
any intellectual endeavor like universities.
Universities rely heavily on the preparation and
knowledge of their scholars
in order to advance their institutional goals.
Professors cannot be replaced.
Therefore, leadership must be conceived at
the service of academic activity
and carefully respect its autonomy.
How is this delicate balance and
tension between the administration
and the faculty addressed?
Is something that we have to
ask ourselves and try to answer it.
William Bowen and Eugene Tobin say that,
''Nimbleness implies a need
for a well-understood locus of authority,
with administrators expected to listen
carefully to those with
ideas and expertise to contribute,
but then to have the confidence and courage to decide.''
I think that this is the key
in order to have a very healthy governance
that makes possible for a university
to be flexible and to be at
the same time intellectually rigorous.
That's part of the question.
Is not easy to solve,
but we have to have this in mind.
This factor I think when I see things
from my perspective has undoubtedly
contributed to the quality of universities here in
the US in contrast to what happens in Latin America.
Latin America is very common that
universities are governed democratically.
The president of a university is not our case,
but in most university is selected by the faculty.
That is very tricky.
Sounds good, but it doesn't work very well,
and universities get stuck and they don't change.
Status quo is the general rule
and we have to be aware of that.
It is necessary that prescience and governing bodies have
wide powers to decide about the definition and
execution of strategic plans because otherwise,
their institutions could get lost in
an infinite possible alternatives
that members of the community consider important.
In some, our society is changing very
fast in terms of culture and technology.
We have to make sense of it and we must
guide our society in understanding change.
For that, we have to be flexible and wise.
We have to keep what has to be
kept and change what has to be changed.
Universities have been here for
800 years because they're very important for society.
I'm sure that these institutions will
survive and will continue to be
stewards of our cultures. Thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE] This is a very nice view
to Santiago from my university.
Are you going to take some questions?
Sure.
[inaudible]
can ask a question [inaudible]
Can you hear me?
Yes, very well.
Thank you for your thoughts.
A major theme of
many of the conversations that we
had last year and that we probably won't have this year,
centered around the question of dealing
with issues of inequality,
and inequity, and injustice.
One of the really crucial responses
to that kind of work within the context
of the university is that it's political.
That kind of work,
that kind of political agenda,
is not necessarily something that universities should
embrace or focus itself toward,
especially the public universities.
The first part I want to ask you is,
how do you respond to that
within the context of your institution?
Then the second part is, to an extent,
is it possible for a university
to move away from what I'm asking as to a great extent,
an acceptance that inequality exists,
to asking the question whether inequality needs to exist?
Thank you for your question.
On the one hand, I will tell you
a little bit about how is
this issue thought about in Chile.
I think in Chile,
I mentioned that, let's say in terms of race,
our population is very
homogeneous and because immigration
is something that is new for us.
It's something that has happened in the last 10 years.
But anyway, the point there is social-economic status.
It's not about race, but social-economic status.
In Chile, there is
a very deep distance
between people that are
well-off and so in terms of equality,
in terms of money,
there is a huge difference that we're
trying to address as a country.
It's probably
the most important political issue right now in Chile.
In many ways, that is
very similar in terms of the discussion to
the race problems that you are facing here in the US.
For that reason, the previous government
created a national policy and aimed at
promoting free tuition as a way to promote that
people can go to any university without
the problems of having to pay that.
Any way, it can be in place for a long time,
a very good national system
for scholarships and soft loans,
but the previous government wanted to go forward in that.
I don't think it's a good idea
from my perspective because
what suffers is quality in universities
because the country doesn't have
the money in order to do that.
Because there are many other social problems
that have to be addressed in terms of health care,
in terms of Social Security and many other areas.
But I think that let's say we had,
and we still have a very
generous voucher system in Chile,
but the main point in the case of
universities is not money.
If you are smart enough,
you can get to any university as you're going
to find the money coming from the government,
coming from private scholarships.
The main issue is the correlation between
the course that you need to apply to
university and the social-economic status.
Because if you are in Chile,
everyone gets into the university,
they will take a national test called PSU,
[FOREIGN] and you will get a score and with that score,
you apply to the university.
So since there is a very strong correlation
between social-economic status and
this course that you are going to get in that score,
that means that universities are very stratified,
but for that academic reason.
I think that we should try to address
this thing through affirmative action.
In our case, in the case of our university,
we are able to use 15 percent of
our cohort to do whatever we want.
The other 85 percent has to be connected
with this course that the students
take and that's the national policies.
That's part of the rules.
But with the other 15 percent,
we're trying to do that,
and we're trying to promote people from
different backgrounds to come to our universities
because I think that enriches,
in every way, the experience of our university.
We have been trying to do what many universities
here in the US do and I think that's an important part,
but it's very tricky.
Then student affairs is
a very important part of the equation.
Students who come from different backgrounds have to
feel very comfortable in our university.
I think it's a case,
but it means a lot of work in order to do that.
The second part of
your question is also very interesting and it's
connected with what I said
about critical conscience of society.
Universities have to be places where these things are
discussed at a very high level.
As I said, with data,
with very good information.
This context is different
with what happens here in the US,
but I try to avoid politics in our universities.
This is not about politics.
Universities are not about politics,
but about data, but about knowledge.
We have to be aware of politics,
but that should not be the main concern of universities.
I think that what we have to do
is to encourage our faculty and put
the incentives in order to be part
of the national conversation regarding these topics.
I think that you have to measure
the activity of your faculty in terms of teaching,
in terms of research,
but also in terms of presence in the national debate.
You have to do that. It's not always the case.
I think that research is very important.
I think that that's not a good thing.
I think that we should promote
some of the things that faculty have to
do in order to be this critical conscience of society.
Okay.
Stratified when presented as
the main focus of
filing in the university.
It seemed to be centered only
around practical
considerations [inaudible]
That's a very interesting question
and very difficult question to answer.
I think that's the main thing that
the president and dean of school has to deal with.
It's because, as I mentioned,
faculty members are very focused
on their areas and they go very deep in their studies,
and that's the core of a university.
At the same time you have to
guarantee their academic freedom,
so they have to do,
in some way, whatever they want.
That's part of the academic profession.
But at the same time,
I think at least from
my experience, it's about conversation.
It's about creating spaces
in which you can talk about things.
Because everyone is concerned
about the social topics and things like that.
They have their own view
about the solution for these topics.
But they are really passionate about
that and they want to make things
better in many different ways.
I think that you have to create
a conversation between the faculty
and to put incentives in order to do that.
It's very difficult, if you don't address that.
You said well that I am talking from, let's say,
a practical perspective,
and in some way this is part of my role.
I'm a president of a university
and still I also teach and do some research.
That helps me a lot in order to
understand the motivations of the faculty.
But it is very tricky.
But it has to be solved in some way.
Otherwise, universities are not
going to be able to change.
So it's very difficult to do,
and I think that's the core of
academic governance and we'll
have to find a way to do that.
All right. Thank you.
President Sands is unable
to be here because he is traveling,
but he asked that we
offer you this gift from one president to another.
Thank you very much.
For coming to our campus and sharing your thoughts.
So thank you very much. [APPLAUSE]