How to pursue academic excellence

雩风三日

How to pursue academic excellence
如何追求学术上的卓越

To anticipate what follows (which is a necessarily over-brief account of two days of discussion), the issue of Japan's universities was not an explicit part of the agenda, but became so at the end of two days of discussion, as Japanese participants could no longer bear the frustration of hearing of rapid change among their neighbours. The difficulties in Japan, which are well-known (see, for example, Nature 359, 573-582; 1992) are that the bureaucratic control of the Ministry of  Education and Culture is oppressive, and that the legal autonomy of professors gives them the illusion of academic freedom at the expense of the coherence of the university as a whole.
日本的大学的问题没有一个明确的议程的一部分,但如此的两天的讨论之后,随着日本参与者可以不再承担挫折的听到他们的邻居之间的快速变化。日本的困难是众所周知的(例如，见《自然》359,573 -582;1992年)，教育和文化部的官僚控制是压迫性的，教授的法律自主权给了他们学术自由的幻觉，而这是以大学整体的连贯性为代价的。