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Tomorrow's Cambridge
一所大学办得好坏，首先得看有什么样的校长和什么样的办学方针。剑桥大学校长包立科爵士是一位有远见卓识的人物，在他的领导下，剑桥大学的教学和科研成绩连续多年在英国大学排行榜上遥遥领先。文中他所描绘的剑桥大学21世纪的发展蓝图着实令人振奋。 Visit Cambridge（注1） late in the 21st century and you will find it both the same and very different. The colleges（注2） will remain a huge strength（注3）, bringing together students and researchers from all disciplines and all parts of the world, and guaranteeing a human scale of values（注4） within a big university. Other core values will endure as well: excellence in teaching and research; a critical temperament that emphasises rigour and independence of mind; a stress on the interplay between disciplines, on small-group teaching and the centrality of social interaction in education; and a hope that shared experience of Cambridge（注５） will make alumni feel part of the University's extended family for life. Above everything else will still rise the questioning, tough-minded hunger（注6）for learning, for pushing the boundaries of knowledge ever outwards（注7）, that has characterised this university from the first. Physically（注8）, though, much needs to change if we are to have faculty buildings equal to these challenges（注9）. Not in the heart of the city: the colleges,the Backs（注10）, the river and the commons and meadows that cluster around it.The profound sense of place（注11） that everyone values will at all costs be protected. But visit in fifty years and you'll find what are now windswept hedgeless（注12） fields on the edge of Cambridge transformed into two new campuses: for the physical sciences and technology to the west, and for the biomedical sciences to the south. West Cambridge now has such momentum of its own that its innovative mix of university departments and charitable and commercial research centres could easily materialise even faster than we now imagine. Substantial resources are required but the outlook looks good. In contrast, our expansion plans to the south ?nbsp;a joint venture between the University, the Medical Research Council（注13） and Addenbrooke's（注14） NHS Trust（注15） ?nbsp;are still at an early stage. The aim is a complementary biomedical campus around Addenbrooke's Hospital with a university-business mix that will ensure Cambridge can compete scientifically at a world level. Looking forward decades, I see a whole corridor for biomedical research that will ultimately extend from Addenbrooke's through Babraham to Hinxton, where other science parks in which the University is involved are already under development.To balance（注16） this natural boom in the sciences and technology, our key planning priority for the next ten years is the arts and humanities. On the Sidgwicksite（注17） we don't, of course, have the space we enjoy in west or south Cambridge so we need to be more creative. A new Theology faculty is under construction at the moment, and we have preliminary plans for new buildings for English, Criminology and East Asian Studies. For English in particular（注18）, a world-class faculty obliged still to operate（注19） from a warren of rooms in a Victorian house, we're about to embark on a major fundraising initiative. Other options will open up naturally in due course as new science developments（注20） free up hemmed-in city centre sites. Mathematics moves next year from Silver Street to a magnificent, purpose-built home on Clarkson Road, and we hope that Computer Science will be able to transfer to West Cambridge soon, with Materials Science, Earth Sciences, and elements of Engineering to follow in years to come.That should offer at least some of the growing room we need for the next century. In the new millennium Cambridge is quite determined to remain among the top half dozen universities in the world. You don't have the wealth of Harvard say the doubters. Well, I respond, endowment is not a university and we're certainly not about to throw in the towel（注21） just because Harvard's endowment dwarfs that ofevery other university in the world. My own concern is not so much lack of resources as（注22） the limited presence of business in the Cambridge area. We're very proud of our 1,200 high-tech start-ups（注23）; for the most part it's the University that has brought them here. But the business base is tiny compared with that around Boston or Stanford. That's our problem: not competitor universities but the sheer（注24） scale of what surrounds them. You（注25） need a complete community: not just start-ups, but large and medium-sized companies too. All of them would benefit from the University's intellectualexpertise. It's a two-way street, of course.Academics don't just do what business tells them: they're paid to do fundamental research that may not have immediate commercial applications, so success requires collaboration not coercion. Pooling business and intellectual expertise in this way benefits everyone. We do very much want to see big companies like Microsoft and BP here. Small companies can run away with（注26） ideas that big companies are too clumsy to exploit -----that's their strength. But basic technological advantages come from big players. The fact that our computer network is so advanced will also soon give us the opportunity to share our teaching expertise with local companies and even other universities; a dedicated centre for distance learning is already under discussion. We will increasingly use internet-based computer courses, to enhance our own teaching and also to reach students outside the University. That doesn't mean computer terminals will displace people; students are always going to need advice and high-quality tuition on the spot. But it does mean we can refine our teaching courses over time（注27） and make them available in the manner of textbooks. Within the university itself, access（注28） is going to remain our key priority. We're striving to demystify Cambridge and increase the proportion of state school students we take. We want to ensure that ethnic minority, overseas and disabled applicants are encouraged and supported. We want to secure women's full participation in the University and increase their representation in top academic posts.We want to encourage alumni to take more interest in Cambridge so we can draw ontheir expertise and experience. And we want to keep winning the Boat Race（注29）. |
