Par Isabelle Ficek. Aboutissement d'un long processus, Aix-Marseille Université, un mastodonte de plus de 70000 étudiants, s'est substituée le 1er janvier aux trois universités du bassin. Yvon Berland en sera élu président demain.

Et de trois. La recomposition du paysage universitaire via les fusions d'établissements s'accélère. Après la fusion pionnière qui a donné naissance en janvier 2009 à l'université de Strasbourg, deux nouvelles fusions, préparées de longue date, sont effectives depuis hier.
Avec la naissance d'une part d'Aix-Marseille Université, issue de l'université de Provence, de l'université de la Méditerranée et de l'université Paul-Cézanne, soit un mastodonte de 70000 étudiants, 7500 salariés, cinq champs disciplinaires (arts, lettres, langues, sciences humaines; droit et sciences politiques; économie et gestion; santé; sciences et technologies), 12 écoles doctorales, 115 unités de recherche, cinq grands campus...
Et d'autre part celle de l'université de Lorraine, qui regroupe, elle, sous le statut juridique de grand établissement, avec une forte dominante ingénierie et technologie, l'université Henri-Poincaré Nancy-I, l'université Nancy-II, l'université pluridisciplinaire Paul-Verlaine de Metz et l'Institut national polytechnique de Lorraine (INPL), qui comprend lui-même sept écoles d'ingénieurs dont l'Ecole des mines de Nancy. Un autre poids lourd de près de 55000 étudiants, 7000 salariés, 8 écoles doctorales, 80 laboratoires, pour un budget d'environ 550 millions d'euros.
La bonne masse critique
En Lorraine, l'idée a germé en 2008, poussée par les collectivités territoriales et l'opération Campus de rénovation immobilière. L'un des enjeux est notamment de figurer parmi les 5 à 10 meilleures universités européennes en ingénierie. Mais aussi d'être un levier fort de développement pour la région. Pour Aix-Marseille, l'idée est plus ancienne et figurait notamment dans la profession de foi du néphrologue Yvon Berland en 2004, lorsqu'il a été élu à la présidence de l'université de la Méditerranée. Ce dernier sera d'ailleurs élu demain président d'Aix-Marseille Université. « Nous avions la volonté de rassembler tous les champs disciplinaires de la connaissance dans la même université, explique Yvon Berland. La visibilité de notre offre de formation, avec des sciences et technologies dans trois universités, de l'économie et gestion dans deux, était médiocre. » L'occasion aussi, développe-t-il, de « pouvoir mettre en place des conditions de travail homogénéisées et d'améliorer notre visibilité à l'international ».
De fait, ces deux fusions, déjà prises en compte dans le dernier classement de Shanghai à l'été 2011, se sont traduites par des bonds de ces universités, l'UDL figurant dans les 300 premiers, quand Nancy-I était dans le Top 400. Aix-Marseille Université, elle, est montée dans la tranche 102-150 du palmarès (contre le Top 300 pour Aix-Marseille-I et II). Les deux entités portent aussi un projet d'Idex et font partie des 9 présélectionnés encore en lice pour ces campus à vocation mondiale du grand emprunt.
Les investissements d'avenir et particulièrement les Idex, qui impliquent une gouvernance forte, risquent d'ailleurs d'accélérer encore les fusions et les rapprochements. Et les débats autour de la bonne masse critique des établissements d'enseignement supérieur. Une fusion est en préparation à Bordeaux ainsi qu'à Toulouse et d'autres projets, plus complexes, existent dans la capitale, autour des Idex.

Da Isabelle Ficek. Culmine di un lungo processo, l'Università di Aix-Marseille, un colosso di oltre 70.000 studenti, è stato sostituito il 1° gennaio, le tre università del bacino. Yvon Berland domani sarà eletto presidente.
E tre. La ricostruzione del panorama universitario attraverso fusioni istituzionale sta accelerando. Dopo la fusione pioniere che ha dato alla luce nel gennaio 2009 presso l'Università di Strasburgo, due nuove fusioni, preparato per lungo tempo, sono efficaci ieri.
Con la nascita di una quota di Aix-Marseille University, dopo l'Università della Provenza, l'Università del Mediterraneo e l'Università Paul Cézanne, un colosso di 70.000 studenti, 7.500 dipendenti, cinque campi disciplina (arti, lettere, lingue, scienze umane, diritto e scienze politiche, economia e gestione, salute, scienza e tecnologia), 12 programmi di dottorato, 115 unità di ricerca, cinque sedi principali. Più...

By Jan Petter Myklebust. Three top Swedish institutions - Stockholm University, the Karolinska Institute and the Royal Institute of Technology-KTH - are discussing a merger which would create the largest university in Northern Europe.
Professor Kåre Bremer, rector of Stockholm University, confirmed that the talks could lead to a new university being organised in four scientific areas: medicine, technology, natural sciences, and humanities and social sciences. Under the plan the Karolinska Institute could cover medical sciences and KTH would focus on technology, while from 1 January Stockholm University would be reorganised into two main areas: natural sciences, and humanities and social sciences (including law), Bremer said.
"The present names will be kept as today, and the new university can be established without a demanding reorganisational process, in a timeframe that a new board will find suitable," he said.
"Geographically, the three units today are located close to each other, and already collaborate in a large number of projects, activities and by the use of scientific equipment."
A merger would create an élite institution responsible for 40% of Swedish research with 70,000 students, more than 6,000 staff and a budget of more than SEK9 billion (US$1.3 billion).
"The merger would mean that the international position of Stockholm and Sweden in higher education and research becomes visible to a much greater degree that today," Bremer said.
The merged institution would likely be able to compete for place in the top 25 of the Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities.
Already, formal agreement has been reached on the establishment of a major life science project by the three collaborating partners and Uppsala University.
Peter Gudmundson, president of KTH, said: "We see a clear tendency throughout the world regarding the associations between medicine, technology and natural science becoming stronger.
"KTH sees amazing potential by coming closer to Stockholm University and the Karolinska Instititute in this joint effort. This is one of our most important efforts so far."
When he published the 2012 budget, Minister of Education Jan Björklund called for more university mergers in Sweden, and said these had to come from a bottom-up process in which the government would not interfere.
This autumn, Bremer ordered a feasibility report on the collaborative project to benchmark it against major university mergers elsewhere.
Tim Ekberg, managing director of Södertörn College and a previous senior officer at the education ministry, wrote the report after asking deans, pro-deans, heads of schools and administrative leaders for their views on "a more systematic collaboration between the three institutions".
Most said that a merger would be a natural and good continuation of a process already under way. But representatives from Karolinska were opposed to a merger, preferring to see increased cooperation with Karolinska remaining an independent élite medical university. See also Sweden: Minister says universities may merge.

By Robert Visscher. Plans for three major Dutch universities to merge are opposed by more than half of their academics and students, according to a survey published today.
The University of Leiden, Delft University of Technology and Erasmus University Rotterdam hope to collect more research money by cooperating intensively and may even merge in due time.
But they face strong opposition.
The survey shows that 61% of academics are against the merger. Only 7% of scientists and 10% of students think merging is a great idea. The survey was conducted by Erasmus Magazine, the university magazine of Rotterdam.
At Delft University of Technology even more people oppose a merger. A survey by the university newspaper Delta shows that 72% of scientists and students are against it.
Most people are concerned that the three universities - with 55,000 students between them - will become a gigantic moloch, destroying its constituent parts. They fear bureaucracy, redundancies and the loss of their universities' good names.
The three universities all have different areas of excellence. Delft is especially known for applied technology, Rotterdam for economy, management and medicine and Leiden for fundamental beta sciences, law and humanities.
"The specialties of the three universities complement each other," said the president of the executive board of Delft University of Technology, Dirk-Jan van den Berg. "By cooperating we could attract more research money, better scientists and students."
He emphasised that universities in emerging economies are getting better every year and the rich universities are getting even richer. "At the moment we are doing well in the rankings, and we want to keep it that way. In order to do so we should cooperate.
"We could, for example, set up research cooperation between biology at Leiden, nanobiology at Delft and medicine at Rotterdam. We will bring together world class departments, attract more research money and make the departments become better than they already are."
The three universities have stressed that it is too early to talk about merging.
"Currently we are looking at how different departments could complement and strengthen each other. We're not discussing a merger at the moment," said Jacco Neleman, spokesperson for Erasmus University Rotterdam. The survey held at Rotterdam shows that only 4% of academics and students oppose cooperating at all.
"There is definitely support for more cooperation," Neleman concluded.
Cooperation has been discussed, partly in secret, by the three universities since 2009. The discussions related to a strategic agenda that every university has to provide in May 2012 to Under-secretary of Education Halbe Zijlstra. The universities decided to develop this agenda together.
"The merging of universities has become an international trend," said Frans van Vught, internationalisation expert and former rector at the University of Twente.
"Several universities in Denmark, Germany and England have merged, for example. All for more or less the same reason: to compete internationally and to create a larger investment capacity, particularly in research.
"I believe the merging of the three Dutch universities could result in an excellent university. But only if they focus on bringing the best departments together.
"To be successful internationally as a university one has to be rich, rather than very big," Vught said.
Many oppose merging because of the poor reputation the Netherlands has regarding mergers in higher education.
In 2003 several universities of applied sciences (hogescholen) merged as Inholland, becoming an institution with 37,500 students. In 2005 an education inspection concluded that the level of education of several courses had declined. In 2010 the Dutch press reported cases of diploma fraud at Inholland.

By Jan Petter Myklebust. Sweden's coalition government is to tackle a sharp drop in student numbers by allocating more funding to universities where there is a strong demand for places, forcing less popular institutions to seek mergers to survive, Education Minister Jan Björklund has warned.
In an article in the leading newspaper Dagens Nyheter, Björklund said that "demography is now on our side for promoting university mergers", given an expected 25% drop in the 20-year-old age cohort over the next six years.
"We intend to make student choices of universities an important factor in the channeling of resources, so that those universities with a high demand for study places will receive more funding compared to those institutions that experience less such demand," he said.
Institutions less in demand would face many challenges, he warned, adding that it was in their interest to seek mergers with larger, research-intensive universities, or with research institutes, to secure their resource base. But university leaders and higher education experts have warned against making a simplistic assumption that large institutions are better than small ones. Björklund's article followed the minister's keynote speech at the annual meeting of the Association of Swedish Higher Education, titled "Quality Before Quantity".
In an unprecedented move, the ministry sent a text message to all university college rectors urging them to read the article, titled "University Colleges Need to Merge with Stronger Universities".
Björklund said initiatives for mergers should come from institutions themselves. The government did not intend to take decisions on mergers, but was convinced they would improve quality and strengthen the position of Swedish universities internationally.
"Institutions are facing major challenges that will change the higher education landscape in Sweden," he said.
To facilitate the process, the government has allocated SEK20 million (US$2.6 million) for 2012 and SEK75 million for 2013 to cover the costs of preparing university mergers.
The minister said the government would want to retain higher education opportunities across the country, but these would primarily be in professional training like nursing, teaching or engineering. Currently there are 37 higher education institutions in Sweden, catering for 440,000 students, a figure that has doubled in the past 20 years. Resources for research are concentrated in 10 institutions. Björklund said many higher education courses did not have a satisfactory link to research and the goal was that most university professors should have a doctorate and participate actively in research.
"The coalition government now wants to focus on quality, and the first steps were taken [last year] when we instructed the Swedish National Agency for Higher Education to examine all university courses over the next three years and to grade all courses according to a set of quality criteria," he said.
That instruction, which ensured evaluations would be based solely on student results, led to the resignation of Sweden's University Chancellor Anders Flodström, as reported by University World News. Thomas Blom, acting rector of Karlstad University, which is close to the border with Norway, and Åsa Bergenheim, the incoming rector, said in a joint statement to University World News that while closer cooperation and fusion might be appropriate for some universities it was vital for such a process to take place in a climate of mutual respect.
"The evaluations from the Swedish National Agency for Higher education demonstrate that larger institutions are not always better than smaller ones," they said.
They added that mergers could enable institutions to share each other's experiences, competence and ideas. "If we manage to do this right, a merger could strengthen teaching and research milieus, relations to the regional society could be broadened and administrative costs could be reduced. And for students a university with several campuses could be of interest, giving more study choices," they said.
"The point, however, is not to become big - but that we shall be good."
Kerstin Norén, rector of Högskolan Vest (University College West) in Trollhättan, told local newspaper TTELA that the minister's article was retelling old myths, such as that university colleges were the weak link in the higher education landscape, when the real problem might be that resourcing was weak.
"Most important to reach high scientific quality are international contacts. The size of the research institution is of less importance," Norén said.
Kåre Bremer, rector of Stockholm University, reminded readers of his blog that Björklund had often said that seven to 10 Swedish university colleges might have to be closed down unless they merged with a stronger research institution.
"Now several discussions are taking place on potential mergers, most of them still more or less informal. Stockholm University is not involved yet in any such discussions," he said.
Lena Adamson, former secretary-general of the Swedish National Agency for Higher Education and now an expert on quality assurance, teaching and learning and entrepreneurship at the European Institute of Technology, told University World News that concentration and good use of resources was important in any business. But while she agreed with Björklund on the importance of having a "sharp" national quality assurance system, this objective was not being realised.
"Clear quality profiles instead of extensive peer review reports will steer students' choices more effectively than anything else. This will act as an economic driving force for higher education institutions to find their own solutions in improving quality and making good use of their resources," Adamson said.
"When it comes to small institutions collaborating with larger ones, we must not forget that the correlation between size of institution and intense creation of innovations - in the sense of putting good research to use - is not always given. Concentration and good use of resources, yes. But size may not always be the sole dimension to take into consideration here."