Powerhouses are like shoulder pads

The university's plans for the future are reminiscent of the 1980s, says philosophy professor Ronald van Raak.

You might not notice as you stroll across the quiet campus, but major threats are heading our way. At least, if we are to believe the university’s Executive Board. Less money and fewer students. Any money that is available is increasingly going to defence and technology – and we don’t do that. Demographically, the number of young people is decreasing.

Fortunately, we are the university that rolls up its sleeves. We don’t wait to see what’s coming, but take matters into our own hands. A major reorganisation has been announced in response to the challenges of the future – and it is happening fast: faculties are to be merged into ‘powerhouses’. An expensive consultancy firm has already been brought in to manage the process.

It is good that the university is analysing the long term and has also provided more detail in an interview with Erasmus Magazine. In the future, investment may increasingly go towards ‘Science, Technology, Engineering and Math’ (STEM). What might this mean for an ‘engaged university‘ like ours? It’s a good question, and one that also touches on the EUR’s identity. 

I am part of ESPhil, a small faculty where a lot of responsibilities fall on the shoulders of a few people. But its small size also makes it flexible and gives it a clear identity: this is the faculty for philosophy. In the future, we could become part of a powerhouse with ESSB and ESHCC. I am sure that an ESSBHCCPhil would be far less recognisable.

What I object to is how predictable and unimaginative this plan is. Scaling up as the solution to every problem. An expensive consultancy firm brought in to guide the process – as if the university doesn’t have its own public administration experts. Bigger, with the promise that it will be more efficient and cheaper, even though we know this leads to more bureaucracy and more meetings.

I was pleased to read the contribution by my fellow columnist Chris Aalberts, who put into words how this kind of consultancy thinking fails to energise and enthuse staff. I also read with great interest the alarming vision of the future set out by marketing and management professor Gerrit van Bruggen, who predicted that the reorganisation would have to be reversed in 2035.

I don’t want to take over the position of our award-winning columnist and recognised fashion expert Giselle Timmers, but reading about these powerhouses made me think of the late 1980s, when I started university. It was a time when fashionable students wore enormous shoulder pads. They were very much in style back then, but today they look like a fashion parody.

The powerhouse strikes me as the university’s shoulder pad. A way of thinking about scaling up that was fashionable in the 1980s, but which now seems mostly inflated. Why not scale down? Alongside philosophy, for example, a faculty of public administration, and one of psychology, and one of history? That seems to me like less empty padding and a much clearer identity.

Ronald van Raak recently became a member of the University Council.