ULB chair wants to merge Brussels' universities

The chair of the French-speaking Free University of Brussels (ULB) has told De Tijd that he would like to see his university merge with the Dutch-speaking Free University (VUB). Pierre Gurdjian said it would be invaluable to the capital to have one united university.

The ULB and VUB were a single university until 1969, when they split into separate entities along language lines. A year earlier, the University of Leuven (KU Leuven) had become an independent Dutch-speaking institution and the French-speaking Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL) was created. The splits were part of conflicts around the use of language in the institutions.

Gurdjian said it would be a logical strategy to reunite the universities. “We would have more impact on the international stage as one university in the European capital,” he said.

The political structure of Belgium, with education falling under the competence of the communities, impedes this merger, he said. “If the VUB and ULB work on this together, I hope that we can mobilise the necessary support in the political world,” Gurdjian said.

VUB rector Caroline Pauwels said she wanted to examine further collaboration options with ULB but that it was too early to talk about a merger. The co-operation between the universities is already quite intensive, with shared engineering studies and an upcoming shared master’s degree in urban studies.