The Extra Mile

The light is fading on the last day of the year and a new year with hopes and promises is only hours away. As often, this yearly transition makes me reflect. Given the significant challenges and changes in the world this time, I’ve been thinking about how privileged I am. In particular, it is a privilege, I believe, to have the fortune to work in a sector with a powerful and clear purpose, a sector that changes the future of thousands of young people, brings forth new knowledge, and is key to developing society.

We must always ask universities and colleges these two key questions: What are you good at? And what are you good for? What we are good at are education and research. Those are our tools. But they are not our purpose. Our purpose is the answer to the question of what we are good for. And you know the answer, don’t you? Our purpose is to make a better future. While individual institutions should be more specific about how they want to contribute to creating a better future, the main point is still the same.

The most essential ingredient in creating a better future is knowledge. Higher education institutions develop knowledge and convey knowledge and with that, contribute to building a society where decisions can be based on knowledge and reasoning. Decisions at all levels, from establishing, operating, and developing our institutions and companies, to governance at all levels, from municipalities to the national government, from school boards or housing associations via the largest companies and institutions to the Parliament itself, decisions must be made on knowledge and reasoning.

It may sometimes look different. The world is full of short-term, self-serving, and stupid decisions. But how would the world have looked like without institutions that develop and disseminate knowledge? No universities, colleges, vocational schools, and research institutes?

If we now agree that our institutions are essential, our next reflection is often expressed as a question to ourselves: Could we do better? Could we do more to make a better future? Are there areas we should get involved in? Or engage more strongly in?

Sometimes it feels futile. As if we are too small and insignificant. As if nothing we do will make a difference. In the weeks leading into Christmas, we learned that the Taliban had banned private and public universities from allowing access for women, that Iranian authorities shot, beat, or hung protesting students, and that Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure in Ukraine left millions without power and water and damaged or destroyed around 3,000 educational institutions.

Universities and colleges have condemned the Taliban’s decisions, the Iranian authorities’ crimes against their population, and Russia’s war and aggression against a sovereign nation. But universities and colleges have done more. In all three of these areas (and several others!), universities across the world have shown initiative, shaped national debates, and turned words into actions. And in the same way as your voice and small contributions are important for the institution you work at, the voices and initiatives, small or large, of the many institutions influence the larger development. Many small streams make a big river, many individual voices change governments, and many small measures change the world. The world is a complex system, and the flapping of a butterfly’s wings may cause a storm far away.

Therefore, now that we are at the beginning of a new year: thank you for all your efforts to make some changes, to make a dent, and to contribute to the choir. May the new year listen to you.