Present, Past and Future of Universities. Science and current situations

The university: a “business” role model?
The role of the university is essential for the development of science and for the benefit of society. Universities were originally centres for learning. Centres in which the interest of society was really their main mission, the progress and integration of knowledge for the well-being of society. I say unfortunately “were”, because currently, in countries like the United Kingdom, but also in the United States and private universities in many countries, they follow a “business model”. According to this model, if the university can develop a technology that results in economic benefit, great, but the mission of training quality human resources can be neglected.

Also, the regulation in many private universities is neither good nor clear, and the quality of these human resources is very variable. Even in those universities that have different campuses, that is the same university, but located in different places, and the same career in each one of them, they do not have quality parameters that can ensure that their students are obtaining the same experience, not only academic, but also professional training, which is very important in universities.

So, in this “business model”, unfortunately, students are just customers. We see this as university professors in generations of more than 10-15 years, students are very focused on exam results. Their priority is not to learn, they do not come for the love of knowledge and even in class they ask themselves, what is going to be in the exam? Instead of what else can I learn? What other books can I read to learn more about this? They focus on the fact that if it comes in the exam, I read it, I cover it; and if it doesn’t come in the exam, don’t tell me more. For the same reason, this relationship is a circle that is not virtuous, but instead becomes a vicious one, because these new generations are setting the example to the generations that will come after them.

We also see the difference with first generation students, those whose families did not have access to higher education before them. There are some policies to expand inclusion in the university, and it is about detecting and supporting students who are bright from a young age in elementary, middle, and high schools.

So, the role of universities really varies depending on whether the mission is really to foster human resources and benefit society, or it is that “business model” in which what really matters is the number of students who pay, and if they are foreign students, even better, because they pay more it is so in the British context. Students with disadvantageous socioeconomic circumstances may not have time for college because they need to work to support their families or need to care for their children.


UNIVERSITY AND INTERNATIONALIZATION
In terms of science, historically, knowledge has always been seen as a tool of power. Maintaining information, both in science and in any other area, is key for the leaders of national organizations, and science is no exception. We have seen in many armed conflicts that technology has defined who wins. We have seen that the greatest technological advances occur, unfortunately, during wars and armed conflicts.
COVID-19 was a watershed, humanity had never experienced a pandemic in which it would have had the ability to intervene. Of course, we remember the Spanish flue, the black plague, etc. There have been enough diseases throughout the history of humanity that have decimated the number of people on planet earth, but we have never had the technology, the access to knowledge to be able to combat and have an effective strategy to face them as we do now. It is not only technology in science, but also in microbiology, virology, genetics, etc. Of course, if we compare it to 100 years ago when we were trying to explain ADN, it is fantastic that in one century we have made such a wonderful technological and scientific leap thanks to interdisciplinary and multinational collaboration.
For science, international collaboration is indispensable. Those of us who dedicate ourselves to science do not do it for money. Our greatest satisfaction is to contribute to society, to the training of human resources, to finding the cure for a disease or the solution to a problem.
Economics is not the main motivation of scientists. If we want to help solve a problem, those of us who work in science are not interested in being the only person who can do it. We fully understand that we need multidisciplinary strategies that will speed up the discovery of that cure or the establishment of a new technology.
The media has favoured inter-American, transatlantic or global international exchange. Internationalization is also a very important motivation. Of course, we are constantly evolving, and with the electronic age and the Internet there is no excuse for not having international collaborators from different areas.
With international exchange come other challenges, such as the development of intercultural or cultural habilities in which individuals who have never been exposed to other cultures, have some difficulty understanding other circumstances, and other ways of collaborating. Despite this, the media has been fantastic in allowing us access to these collaborations.


THE COVID-19 VACCINE AND THE UNIVERSITY- BUSINESS COLLABORATION
As an engineer I know a little about many areas, but that doesn´t mean I am an expert in physics, for instance. I know my limitations and there is no point in me studying a physics course so that I can do a project on my own. The progress of science made it possible to create the COVID vaccine in record time. A vaccine had never been created and approved in such a short time, in almost less than a year. What has been done today could not have been conceived in the time of Edward Jenner. When I say one year, I do not only mean that it was designed based on prior knowledge, but also that clinical tests were carried out, first in the laboratory, on animals, and then in clinics, on human beings, generating sufficiently reliable data for approval. It was a faster approval route, but no drug, no vaccine is ever approved for clinical use if there isn’t enough data to prove it’s safe and effective. We must prove that it does not harm the patient and that it does help: efficacy and safety. The first thing we must emphasize here is that, in that one-year period, the vaccine was designed, tested, approved, and used.

In matters of medical advances, there is always pharmacovigilance: it is very important, even after approval, to monitor any adverse effect that may be associated with the vaccine.

Most of the population had the option. The vaccine was never mandatory, especially at the beginning, and someone who was not convinced of the safety of the vaccine could reject it. But in terms of risk-benefit, if you risk not having the vaccine and dying, or if you risk being the .001% that has an adverse effect compared to the 10% mortality that COVID had in the first months, for most people, it is a no-brainer.

The vaccine developed at a university had to be produced in huge quantities. A system of priorities had to be established, to favour people with the highest risk of mortality. In terms of the role of the university in creating these vaccines, it is very important to emphasize that the scientists were recognized in the first instance when a solution was sought and there was a very strong collaboration between the university and the private sector. The best example is AstraZeneca and Oxford University. It is not only the collaboration, but also the mission of the private sector, which was really to make sure that human beings continue existing in 100 years. This collaboration led to the idea of manufacturing the vaccine at cost value, selling it to countries without profit. Not all pharmaceutical companies did this, but for AstraZeneca, it was very clear that this had to be the case for the benefit of society. In the private sector, it is very rare that a company does not take advantage of a problem such as the pandemic.
In terms of collaboration between the private sector and the university, this has been very interesting. As we move to the endemic phase, annual vaccination is considered, which brings new responsibilities for universities and pharmaceutical companies.

Scientists have played a leading role since the beginning of the pandemic when the general population wants to understand what is happening, wants to understand and distinguish what is real information and what is not, and only listening to scientists, trying to understand that information can be filtered.

Unfortunately, scientists’ recognition is short-lived, especially when their opinions differ from government policies. Let’s see, for example, the disputes regarding the use of masks, social distancing, self-isolation of positive cases. Because they are unpopular measures, governments avoid them so they won´t lose influence and they may even discredit scientists.

There was a report very early on in which the approximate duration of the pandemic was clearly projected, between 18 and 24 months. The idea was received with scepticism, even among some members of the scientific community. Many colleagues in the Department of Life Sciences predicted that the duration would be at most a couple of weeks. This is explained when you have not had a previous experience of this type.


SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE AND CLIMATE CHANGE
We have abused so much of nature, of the environment, since humanity as a race has been egotistical in thinking that all resources are for human consumption. As in the case of the pandemic, scepticism reigns because the data that does not bring economic benefits to governments and companies is mistrusted. Oil industry businesses, for example, are the number one source of income in many countries, even though there have always been natural disasters related to obtaining oil at sea and on land. Even so, better regulations have not been achieved. There have been some bioremediation measures, but capital to implement them is scarce.

The role of the university regarding climate change, when the university really has the benefit of society as its vocation, then we see that there is no better place than the university to lead these movements. It is the best forum to generate knowledge, discuss, exchange ideas, form alliances, find allies that allow progress in the mission or in the desired project. Academics have known about climate change for decades and it is not just global warming, but any change in the climate, temperature, precipitation, the number of cloudy days or sunny days in any given region. However, it is only now that it is gaining enough importance among the general population. Misinformation has played a primary role, manipulated by people who have no social interest, but whose only interest is to continue exploiting natural resources without any consideration for the balance of ecosystems.

And we see the forest area that is being lost in the Amazon, we see the change in the use of the forest or areas with vegetation to make way, of course, for cultivation. We also have the problem of food security, because in the end everything is linked, because the crops that are not being designed to maintain the fertility of the land. These lands, where they are being cultivated, will be depleted of nutrients, and will cease to be fertile at the end of a few cultivation cycles. So, it is not really a sustainable system that is being sought. At the university we are not only looking for technologies to have a sustainable approach, but we are incorporating the sustainable approach in as many aspects as possible of the curriculum. The best example of sustainable technologies is the environment, and we would like, as I said, bioremediation technology in which we can eliminate the contamination of soils, seas, waters, rivers. Including emissions in which there is a certain technology that is placed in the chimneys of the factories in which it is filtered, and those emissions already come out free of heavy metals, because everything stops at that filter.

Sustainable technology must be present in all areas of knowledge and technology. One of the examples in the UK, is that we were very fortunate to have very early in the pandemic kits to test at home whether someone was infected with COVID or not, using paper chips and chromatography. If 2 bars appeared, just as in pregnancy tests, there was an infection. But the level of waste that it produced because everything went in the trash, I haven’t done the estimate of how many bags with that went in the trash, but it’s certainly not sustainable. The university must anticipate these situations and promote their avoidance.

Something important that must also be mentioned is the role of world leaders in these two situations, both in pandemic and climate change. We see that the countries that did better during the first stage of the pandemic were those countries whose leaders were women, for example, New Zealand, Germany, etc. In which really the priority at that time was that there were no deaths, no matter who, no matter what age, the priority was to have zero deaths. They made very difficult decisions, not popular with the population and businesses, but with good results in the end.

In the same case, in the differences in leadership between men and women we see climate change, and we see that many movements, especially community movements, are led by women who have different priorities. The priority is the community, it is our small society, not the country itself, but the community in which we live that depends on these natural resources and that we cannot risk what our ancestors have done in the generations prior to them, and in what they want to leave to future generations in their communities, the priority is to protect their legacy, their cultural, environmental and community heritage that is so important. It is important to see the differences in leadership styles, and of course now in the universities that is translating into a question of the diversity that is being sought, gender diversity, gender equity and equity of ethnic groups.

It is very important that the individual is taken for what they contribute to the institution and the organization, not for their appearance or their external circumstances, which are totally irrelevant. We see that in matters of diversity and equity, universities are still behind. Although we want to believe that we are among the most advanced institutions, we are still behind. At the highest levels, women are underrepresented, even though, as we have seen, female leadership priorities have fared better when it comes to the pandemic and climate change. The critical mindset that is cultivated in universities must be applied even in a self-reflective way if we want higher education institutions to resist the strong blows of the present.

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