EUROPE: Shake-up at WMU after management review

A new president and new management team are to be installed at the World Maritime University in Malmo, Sweden, from 1 January next year following the recommendations of a wide-ranging and as yet unpublished external strategic review. Neither the WMU nor the International Maritime Organisation, which established the university in 1983, would comment on the reasons for the changes. But the Swedish press has reported complaints about the management style of the president, Dr Karl Laubstein. These were dismissed by the university while Laubstein, who has been a reformist president for more than a dozen years, said that "whenever you make a lot of changes there are always some people who don't agree with you."

His departure from his post next month also follows an announcement from the Swedish International Development Co-operation Agency (SIDA) that it was halving its contribution to WMU this year to the equivalent of US$1.5 million. This was at least partly because the university and the IMO (a UN agency) had refused to publish the review, which is assumed to contain some criticism of the management of the university.

A SIDA spokesman said concerns about the WMU's management were "absolutely" a reason behind the halving in funding: "Over a period of some time, criticism has been brought against the WMU and its management," the spokesman said.

"Sweden is one of the largest financial backers of the WMU. The criticism has come to the attention of SIDA [and] SIDA has stressed the importance of an independent review of the criticism and against that background, in 2007, an external independent review was made."
He said the review had not been made public and although SIDA had been asked to take part in the assessment, it had not been able to consider it as a whole.

"But SIDA has been given an oral report of the conclusions which are that prompt and proper action is needed to deal with the issues at the school."

The spokesman said the decision not to release the report as a whole made it impossible for SIDA to fully support the work of the WMU. "Against that background we've decided to reduce the size of the contribution [but we hope] to be able to go back to the earlier levels of support in 2009."

Laubstein told University World News the review report had made recommendations that would "really have far-reaching implications" for the university and would take years to bring about. "Since I'm past my retirement age, I think this is a good time to have new management," he said, adding that he had changed the university "radically" since 1996 when the institution was not recognised in academic circles.

"Now we've changed the whole academic programme, we've joined the European Universities Association and we have joint programmes with the Sorbonne and universities in Canada."

According to the IMO, the review was conducted by a team of three independent international experts supported by a "resource person" from Sweden. The report called for reform of the board of governors and executive council "and consequential need for a revision of the university's charter".

The WMU is the world's leading maritime university providing for postgraduate education and research. The IMO said that over the last two decades, the university had become a globally recognised centre of excellence in the maritime world. It offers an extensive postgraduate programme and range of consultancy services to industry and government.

Laubstein suggested that Sweden's open democratic system had helped critics of his style: "The criticisms were all anonymous - that's what you can do here in Sweden. The great majority of the staff support me, and have written so, including the student council," he said, noting that the WMU board of governors had voted to give him the title of `President Emeritus'.

A vacancy note for his replacement will be issued shortly.

[email=alan.osborn@uw-news.com style=bluelink]alan.osborn@uw-news.com/email]