Conference on Promotion of Nordic Higher Education and Research

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Good morning to you all of you. It is with great pleasure that I welcome you today to this Conference on behalf of the Danish Presidency of the Nordic Council of Ministers.

The theme for our discussions today is how to profile Nordic higher education and research in international comparisons. I have been looking forward to this Conference.

It is the first time that so many Nordic stakeholders have gathered to discuss how we can use international comparisons as a tool to profile Nordic institutions within research and education both at European level and globally.

What challenges are we facing?

The theme of today's conference – how can we promote the visibility and profile of Nordic higher education and research – is crucial in relation to the challenge we are facing in the Nordic countries just now. This is true both in economic, political and social respects.

The repercussions of the international financial crisis, along with demographic changes, with a population getting older and older, exert a pressure on all of the Nordic countries as far as prosperity and welfare are concerned. There is a high rate of unemployment among very young and newly educated people in all the Nordic countries. Jobs are being squeezed by competition from countries outside the Nordic region.

It nearly goes without saying that the present economic crisis, along with the challenges of globalisation, calls for new solutions. Here, investments in education, research and innovation will come to play a decisive role.

Education and knowledge, and our ability to convert this into innovation and growth, will quite simply be the key to keeping the Nordic countries as a leading knowledge and welfare region. But it is a condition that we can make all our strong points in this area visible.

The challenge from Asia

Last weekend I was in China to inaugurate the new Danish University Centre in Beijing.

The Chinese economy is powering ahead despite the financial crisis, and a country such as China is currently turning out three million engineers a year – in eight years there will be as many Chinese engineers as there are inhabitants in all of the Nordic countries. According to Danish enterprises operating in China, the new engineers are also exceptionally capable. At one-tenth of the Danish pay!

The European Commission has estimated that if the present trends continue, by 2025 the European Union and the United States will have left their leading scientific and technological position to Asia – and not least to China.

To ensure that we are geared to the challenges facing us when the winds of change are blowing – then we need to be creative and good at exploiting the areas where we are strong already in the Nordic region.

We must make a tremendous effort if we do not wish to be overtaken completely by the Chinese. We need to strengthen the common platform we have in being 25 million people bound together by culture and language.

We must strengthen the considerable human and economic resources that already exist in the Nordic region today in the form of a well-educated population. In the Nordic countries we have welfare models with strong democratic roots and great social cohesion – this is a strength that we should make use of.

It is also one of our common Nordic values to make room for diversity. To see the potential in eccentric minds and oblique approaches. In fact, we know this already from *Grundtvig's rhymed epistles: "Freedom is our watchword here in the North, freedom for Loke as well as for Thor".

As a region, we must be better at exploiting our common strengths – if we are to measure up to the global challenges. Knowledge and innovation, together with the ability in the Nordic region to cooperate on what we are really good at, are basic conditions for solving the global challenges.

The development of green growth strategies is being focused on by all Nordic countries. This should be an obvious area in which we can cooperate on a Nordic basis, utilising the fact that it is also a field where we have a rather strong position internationally.

ESS, the European Spallation Source, is another example of Nordic transnational cooperation where we utilise the large knowledge and research potential concentrated in the Øresund region.

Sweden and Denmark have joined forces to host the ESS, which will be located in the Øresund region. The facility itself will be built at Lund, and a data centre will be established in Copenhagen.

ESS is planned to be ready for service by 2020 and will then be the world's strongest neutron source – it could also be called the world's largest microscope. A research centre like this will attract the most talented researchers and students and tip the scales of knowledge in favour of both Sweden and Denmark.

ESS will promote the education and research environment throughout the Øresund region, and will also attract innovative knowledge enterprises, which will have a significant and positive impact on industrial developments in the region.

Promoting the quality of Nordic higher education and research

But how do we make it visible to the rest of the world that the Nordic countries have something quite special to offer in terms of quality in education and research? How do we make the Nordic countries a magnet for students and researchers?

Here, of course, we are competing with the rest of the world. All parties wish to be able to attract the most capable students and the most talented researchers. It has been quite obvious from the ranking lists known to all of us that Nordic educational institutions have found it a little difficult to find their way into the lists.

I am quite aware that measuring the quality of education and research, and for an educational institution to see itself as a figure on a ranking list, can be slightly controversial to some. And I do understand that there are many viewpoints on how to define quality and how we can measure it.

Another point is that educational institutions have different profiles – both professionally and, not least, if we look at their pedagogical methods. To develop the personal competencies of students may for instance be regarded as a quality in itself.

I admit that it is a difficult task to have all this reflected – in a fair manner – in the methods used for international comparisons. But the universities are crucial both in educating highly qualified manpower and in carrying out pioneering research – and so ensuring growth and prosperity in the Nordic countries.

Strong education environments have a positive impact on the surrounding society. It is therefore a declared aim of the Danish Government to have a Danish university among the ten best in Europe in 2010. Another aim of the Danish Government is that all Danish universities should retain or improve the international ranking they have today.

So I very much welcome the European Commission's initiative to develop, at European level, new ranking systems with assessment indicators adapted for European higher education.

In its new "Europe 2020 Strategy", the European Union has also focused on global benchmarking of higher education. But how do we manage to profile Nordic education and research institutions in these international comparisons or ranking lists?

How do we make it visible what the Nordic institutions of higher education are especially good at – and what can contribute to making the Nordic countries an attractive region for education and research? The Nordic challenge now will be to put focus on the assessment indicators that may particularly describe the high Nordic quality that we all know is there.

It is my hope that the Conference today may contribute to bringing us a little closer to the factors that define the very special Nordic quality in education and research. This is a prior condition for many more Nordic education and research institutions finding their way into the ranking lists.

And it is also a condition for the rest of the world being able to realise how good we actually are in the Nordic region in the field of of higher education, research and innovation.

I am sure that greater international visibility and impact will be the way forward in terms of challenging the lack of growth and innovation that can be seen in the Nordic countries at present. For even if we are good – we can always be better. Action speaks louder than words. As Danish Science Minister it is therefore with particular interest that I look forward to the outcome of this Conference.

Welcome, and have a good conference.

*Grundtvig: Danish teacher, writer, poet, philosopher, historian, pastor, and politician (1783-1872). In Danish, the words are: lad det være vor løsen i Nord, frihed for Loke såvel som for Tor.