University of and for all

KU Leuven strives for a university community where diversity and inclusion are not only respected but also cherished as an enrichment of academic life. An inclusive university offers opportunities to all, regardless of socio-economic background, gender, religion, ethnicity, age or sexual orientation. This is essential not only for the personal growth of students and staff, but also for KU Leuven’s credibility as an active player in an increasingly diverse society.

Today, KU Leuven already makes many efforts with regard to diversity and inclusion, for example by supporting students in buddy programmes, organising orientation days and the various activities of the intercultural centre Pangaea.  Especially our sizeable international community (with 23% international students in total, including 53% international PhD students and scientists and 57% postdocs) can benefit from this. For excellent master students with a migration background, KU Leuven recently launched the Focus+ initiative. This programme supports this target group to remove structural barriers in their search for a potential PhD position.

We have also come a long way with regard to the professors’ corps: our academic corps has become much more international, and when it comes to recruitment, women are on average just slightly more likely to be selected. Moreover, promotion opportunities for women and men are completely equal. Yet we cannot ignore the unequal representation in policy-making bodies. Although the gender balance is improving in lower academic ranks (with 63% of PhD students and scientists and 58% of postdocs being women), the proportion of women in ZAP positions remains stuck at 38%, with only 22% female full professors. Not surprisingly, this translates into a striking underrepresentation of women in university policy-making bodies. Today, only 3 in 15 deans are women. Moreover, barely 1 in 14 department chairs within both the Biomedical Sciences Group and the Science & Technology Group is a woman. Unless our policy bodies and search committees are more balanced, decisions will not adequately reflect the diversity of the university community.

Although the 12 campuses have great strategic value for KU Leuven, too often a distance is still perceived from the university’s central decision-making bodies. Besides Leuven itself, there are campuses in Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent, Kortrijk, Bruges, Geel, Diepenbeek and Sint-Katelijne-Waver. Each of these campuses has its own individuality: the range of courses on offer varies widely, with, for example, a focus on industrial engineering sciences at the Sint-Katelijne-Waver campus (Campus De Nayer), law, business studies (FEB), languages (Faculty of Arts) and architecture and arts (LUCA School of Arts) at the Brussels campus, commercial sciences and languages at the Antwerp campus and specialisations in life sciences and industrial sciences at the Geel campus. Campus Kulak in Kortrijk offers a wide range of courses: from chemistry to history and medicine. Campuses also have specific regional positioning. Some have a large network of companies and healthcare institutions like Campus Brugge or collaborations with other universities (UHasselt) like Campus Diepenbeek. We have campuses located in historical centres of major cities, campus Ghent in the vicinity of UGent and campus Brussels in our national capital (which can offer additional opportunities). In addition, campuses also vary widely in size and autonomy, with some campuses relying more on support from, for example, partner colleges, while others such as Kulak operate completely autonomously. Finally, the student population also varies greatly from campus to campus, with Brussels’ campus of some 4,000 students comprising about half of international students, which poses major challenges now that the Flemish government has decided it wants to cap funding for non-EEA students at 2% of the total number of students. In turn, other campuses face the challenges around declining student numbers.

1. We aim for gender balance in all policy bodies, starting with the rectoral team. Better representation of underrepresented groups in policy bodies is a neck-and-neck issue.
2. We deploy gender and diversity strands even more widely: not only in the faculties but also in the departments (and search committees) that help recruit new colleagues.
3. We are setting up a mentoring programme of, by and for women and minorities to encourage them toadvance to higher academic ranks and/or take up policy roles. Indeed, we see that the few women who qualify for positions on certain policy bodies are overcrowded, or do not come forward. The proposal to divide the assessment committee into a recruitment advisory committee and a careers advisory committee may help in this regard.
4. We aim to have the diversity policy coordinated more strongly from the new KU Leuven Engage service, albeit in close consultation with the faculty diversity teams. The primary focus should be on student and staff recruitment, as well as on study yield (students) and throughput (staff). We further establish concrete initiatives and actions that promote inclusion and diversity. We take an example from initiatives of some faculty diversity teams by offering free sanitary pads, for example. We want to make all our facilities accessible to people with physical disabilities and ask technical services to prioritise this. We will comply with the legal obligation to provide spaces for breastfeeding. Beyond these specific initiatives, diversity, inclusion and solidarity should be embedded as full and transversal values in every domain of our university.
5. The representation of ABAP-OP1/2, ZAP-OP3 and ATP on our policy bodies is particularly valuable. We need to inform and consult these sections more proactively, especially during impactful reforms and when the university takes positions that may be divisive internally. After all, together with student representation, they are partly responsible for policy-making in the Academic Council
6. KU Leuven’s various campuses should be even more closely involved in the university as a whole, so that together we form a stronger and more connected academic network. Campuses offer opportunities for better connection and outreach of our university all over Flanders. Physical integration of different faculties and programmes in the same building can make collaboration easier. In Brussels, at least, the move of the four programmes to the new Pacheco site will promote integration and create more opportunities for outreach, including to European institutions and together with our neighbours at UC Louvain. We also need to take steps forward in the cooperation between the central services of KU Leuven and those of the campuses in terms of ICTS. In addition, it is important to have open discussions about reforms of the training offer on the various campuses. This should be done in cooperation with the colleges of the Association. It is important to move from ‘together at one location’ to joint management, starting from a common vision. Building and managing infrastructure should become a common project on those campuses where we have Association partners.
7. Policies and practices around attracting and integrating international students need to be further prioritised, with a stronger emphasis on their embedding and integration into our academic community. The number of international students at our university has doubled in the past eight years. While this evolution is positive, it also brings many challenges. Despite many efforts, international students often feel isolated, which has an impact on their mental well-being. We want to make this integration a priority in Stuvo’s policy, in good consultation with other departments and faculty teams involved. International students should really feel at home at KU Leuven and become a real member of our community. Among other things, this means that the extensive student representations we have in, for example, faculty councils and POCs must also become more representative.
8. Together with other universities within the VLIR, we need to enter the debate with the Flemish government to avoid losing international talent. The Flemish coalition agreement states that funding for non-EEA students will be reduced to 2% of the total number of students. Within KU Leuven, however, this group makes up more than 8% of the student population. As we still charge relatively low tuition fees compared to abroad and based on our good international ranking taken into account, we should consider increasing the tuition fees for non-EEA students. In parallel, we should offer sufficient scholarships for excellent but financially less well-off students. At the teacher level, internationalisation is also strongly inhibited by the strict language policy. Results of a study commissioned by the Vlaamse Universiteiten en Hogescholen Raad (VLUHR) and the Vlaamse Adviesraad voor Innoveren en Ondernemen (VARIO) show a net positive effect of internationalisation, with direct benefits exceeding two to three times the costs. The results further indicate a positive contribution of international students to the economy with a net contribution of €400-600 per inhabitant in Flanders.