For social and corporate excellence

In preparation for the IAU Global Meeting of Associations 6, this issue - IAU Horizons, 21, 1 - offers reports on IAU priority areas, new projects and initiatives, especially LGEU, and upcoming events and conferences.
By Bernard Hugonnier. For social and corporate excellence
A large number of educational establishments now have the ambition to be part of the higher education institutions, which are recognized as ”excellent” in their country and the world. But what does this mean? For example, is it a question of recruiting the best professors and of selecting the best students? of offering the best courses? of developing the best research? of obtaining the best results in exams? of better preparing students to quickly get a job after graduation? or of facilitating the success of the largest number?
For the time being, we increasingly witness the development of a kind of ‘elitist excellence’ consisting in:
1. For the students: a strong selection at the entry, a highlevel competition between them, important personal work, a very dynamic system aiming at assessing knowledge, strict monitoring of attendance, a strong participation of the students during courses, a certain international mobility (often an academic year spent abroad).
2. For the professors-researchers: a selection of the ‘best’ on the basis of their research work or of their professional functions, an important obligation to publish, a fixedterm contract with an obligation of show ‘results’ (usually translated in terms of number of publications), a strong competition between them, an external evaluation based on bibliometrics and scientometrics. Download IAU Horizons, 21, 1.