Ladies and gentlemen,
In recent months, there has been a discussion on the purposefulness of the idea of a federation of the Poznan universities. The Law on Higher Education of July 20th, 2018 offers such possibility. The discussion on potential profits for partners takes place mainly in the appointed inter-university committee, which includes representatives of eight state universities of Poznan. It is assumed that all higher education institutions will retain their identity with statutory bodies and their organizational structure and have an identical mandate.
An achievable benefit of a federation might be joint education of doctoral students (a new model of doctoral school), the possibility of joint use of the research infrastructure of our universities and the perception of our academic community as a unity, which may result in enhanced results in world rankings and more effective acquisition of international research projects. There is also an opportunity to unify efforts aimed at the commercialization of research results.
However, as we can imagine, all these aspects are not helping to find a satisfactory solution, i.e. one that aims to respect partners and provide them with the expected profits resulting from the federation. Therefore, we want the proposed solutions, including the structure of the federation, to be simple, not creating additional administration and not absorbing unnecessary energy on organizational matters. The commission has already made a SWOT analysis and is currently discussing feasible solutions to the provisions of federal documents. All these analyzes are ONLY PROPOSALS, which will consequently have to be approved by the College of Rectors of State Universities in the city of Poznan and then discussed within the academic community. However, key decisions can be made after the evaluation of our units and disciplines. This essentially influences the prospect evaluation of disciplines practised at various universities, while the federation has to evaluate these disciplines together.
The significant element in building the recognition of the federation is its name. It should be a new opening, an easily recognizable "sign of quality". It is a very challenging assignment, as one should consider linking the current affiliation (at least in Polish and English), acronym, logo etc. At this point, we are anticipating your proposals to be sent to the rector's office. The Universities Federation in Poznan, proposed initially by our group, might be a solution to consider.
I am aware that the provisions of the Law on Higher Education are not known to each of you in detail, therefore the currently published letter is only presenting a few aspects of the idea of federation.
Best regards
Prof. Teofil Jesionowski
