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It’s a rare privilege to have been awarded an honorary doctorate and I am very much obliged to Miami University for having bestowed this honour upon me especially as it is the first time. So you see me even more under tension than usually.
We have gathered here today to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Miami University’s presence in Luxembourg. The Miami campus in Luxembourg has always been emblematic of the friendship between our two peoples. It has enabled US students to experience the cultural diversity of Luxembourg and of the larger Europe beyond and it has attracted young Luxembourgers to the Ohio campus. Reciprocity has been the hallmark of this relationship. However, the latter goes beyond the purely academic and scientific domain. The Miami campus in Luxembourg has always been firmly embedded in the local community, not least through the fact that an important number of students have lived with host families either in Luxembourg city or now in Differdange. So it is useful to member that there seems to be a certain tradition in Luxembourg of having universities going south!
This arrangement with local inhabitants has fostered strong personal links between the students and their host families and the terms “father” and “mother” have gained a new dimension.
Miami University established its presence in Luxembourg at a moment when the idea of Luxembourg having its own university was unthinkable. Of course, one of the first universities in Europe was founded by a Luxembourger, emperor Charles IV, but he chose Prague at its location. Luxembourg itself had to wait for the year 2003 and for Erna Hennicot.
Traditionally students of Luxembourg origin were educated and trained at foreign universities, mostly Belgian, French and German ones. There were historical reasons for this. The French king Louis XIVth considered Luxembourg to be the “hinterland” for the University of Leuven and anyway a community composed of peasants and based on agriculture did not really need a university for its development. The fact that Luxembourg was considered a reservoir for what are now Belgian universities lasted well into the 19th century, by which time, of course, new universities had been established, but by which time, too, Luxembourg had gained its independence.
The university of the 19th century is closely linked up with the notion of nation-building; it is the place where the future civil servants are trained and its relevance for the nation can be seen by the fact the German Reichskanzler Bismarck, himself, appointed the professors of the Prussian universities. However, Luxembourg did not embark on a similar endeavour, partly because the creation of a university was deemed too costly at a moment when the nation state almost had to be created “ab nihilo”.
Yet, despite this decision Luxembourg did not totally relinquish control over the education of its civil servants and members of the liberal professions. A system called “collation des grades” was put into place, which meant that the studies were pursued at foreign universities, but that examinations were sat in Luxembourg before a jury composed of representatives from the professions. This system was to last well into the twentieth century, before it was modified in 1968, 40 years ago, the very year when Miami University established itself in Luxembourg and when students rebelled all over Europe.
From now on examinations could be taken at the foreign universities and a system of recognition of diplomas was put into place. This change was very much in the spirit of the times, when the young generation protested against the traditions set up by their elders, but it also signified something else. By now, the fact of being trained and educated abroad had become part of the identity of those same “elites”. Luxembourg had so to speak become proud of not having its own university. This feeling was strengthened by the way the strongly influential industrial sector influenced the discourse. Steelmaking relied (as it still does) on well trained, creative and innovative engineers and having engineers trained in different academic backgrounds work in the same factory was considered an economic advantage adding to the competitiveness of that same company.
Moreover, the labour market required above all untrained people or people with intermediary skills. The economy, at that time didn’t ask for a lot of “elites”.
So why has this situation changed? What accounts for this change of paradigm? A number of factors need to be considered.
First, we should recall what the economic success of the Luxembourg of most of the twentieth century was founded upon.
On the one hand, Luxembourg was ready to forego some of its sovereignty rights when other European countries still designed their policies in exclusively national contexts. Luxembourg sold its broadcasting rights to a commercial provider in return for services being operated from Luxembourg. Land with iron ore was leased to foreign companies in return for iron to be cast in foundries and mills in Luxembourg. In the 1980ies the same principle was applied to satellite transmission with the resulting creation of SES Astra.
Another way forward was through tax incentives given to companies so that they would set up business in Luxembourg. This policy was targeted at American corporations, but also in later years at other companies and at the banking sector. It largely contributed to the diversification of the Luxembourg economy in the second half of the twentieth century, an economy that had been heavily dependent on steelmaking alone.
So in the mid-1980ies Luxembourg became very rapidly a service oriented economy. Steel industry lost its predominance. At a European level, the European Internal Marked, laid down by the “Acte unique” of 1985, which was to come into force in 1990, opened the borders of Luxembourg’s economy dramatically and boosted it forward. Since 1985 our population has increased from merely 365.000 people to almost half a million. Our jobs have doubled from 150.000 to almost 340.000. Only the number of Luxembourgers has stayed almost the same, having risen from 268.000 to 278.00.
By the change of the millennium a number of paradigms had thus changed drastically. Tax policies across Europe started to converge more and more and the sovereignty rights of the EU member states had become fewer. Moreover the shift from an era of industrialization, to an era of a service based economy was giving way to a new shift towards a knowledge based economy. All of a sudden, Luxembourg risked being left out in the global race of knowledge production.
At a societal level too, the 1990ies led to important transformations. In spite of immigration waves throughout the twentieth century, Luxembourg had remained a relatively homogeneous society, which had managed to integrate the immigrants into its social fabric. The 1990ies saw a reinforcement of immigration and also saw the rise of a phenomenon which we now label “les frontaliers”, i.e. a reliance of the Luxembourg labour market on the man or woman power of the wider region (“la Grande-Région”). Immigration increased in scale and in momentum but it also reached all walks of life. With a population of which roughly 40% is of non Luxembourgish origin and with a daily cross - border movement of 150.000 people, questions of social cohesion started to arise.
It is the combination of those two challenges that served as a rationale for the creation of the university, which incidentally was also an act based on the sovereignty rights of the country. Luxembourg had to become a player in the world of knowledge production and it had to give itself the think tank to analyse and further its own development. Moreover, the creation of the university is also a way of attracting more young people into higher education. Luxembourg continues to perform at unsatisfactory levels in this respect and this issue is all the more urgent since more than half of the new positions now created go to holders of higher education degrees.
However, the creation of the University of Luxembourg is also imbued with an international dimension. It is fully “en phase” with the Bologna agreements and it relies on student mobility since a semester of mobility is compulsory during the first cycle. This requires specific agreements with partner universities. At the same time the University should be attractive for foreign students. Students from Luxembourg should continue to be educated abroad, while students from abroad should be educated and trained in Luxembourg.
Miami University is part of the international set up of the higher education space that is Luxembourg. From being the only provider it now finds itself in the company of “our own university”. We advocate a special relationship between the two institutions in spite of their different profiles and missions. Miami University continues to be a source of enrichment for the country and also for our higher education.
“University” is related to “universal”. Having Miami University here in Luxembourg is a good expression of this. I’m sure this presence not only was, but is and will be a good experience of the special US-Luxembourg friendship.
I thank you for your attention.
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