Marketing, market forces key for KAIST’s new head

In the third week of his presidency at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Robert Laughlin looked, with his shock of white hair and large spectacles, every inch the “nutty professor.” But even though he is still getting used to his new surroundings ― his bookshelves remain empty and he still has no business card holder ― the head of this 1998 Nobel physics laureate is anywhere but in the clouds. Sounding at times more like an economist than a scientist, he told the JoongAng Daily in an exclusive interview on Thursday about his plans to mold the nation’s top science school into an internationally renowned educational institute. “What I have to do is not technical but economic,” he said. The following are excerpts from the interview with Professor Laughlin ― the first foreigner to head KAIST. Q. I heard that you compose your own music, play the piano and are learned in the fine arts. What is the relationship between the arts and science? A. It’s well known that mathematical ability is related to music ability, so it’s really not surprising in a technical university to have a lot of music ability. I am modeling what I want for the students around me. In modern society, the arts are almost more important than technical ability. The reason is that we do things with machines but we communicate with the arts. In a post-industrial society, no person can be successful just as a technologist. I think the idea of purely technical education is obsolete. When you were appointed as president here, some people referred to you as “The Guus Hiddink of Science.” How do you plan to live up to these high expectations? It is very unfair to compare me with Hiddink because no one is as smart as Hiddink! The big idea is that there’s nothing wrong with science here. The faculty of this university is terrific and technically, there’s nothing inferior at all. What is missing are some small things having to do with business. The basic idea is that the value is there, but we have to modify the management a little to get that value out. One example is that this university is heavily subsidized. Subsidies have some bad side- effects of making us not responsible. I have to take actions to bring market forces to bear on the faculty and students more than they are now. Korea’s universities are not generally highly regarded in world rankings. Why is this, and how will you improve KAIST to be of international level? It’s all marketing: The short answer is that I’m going to change the marketing. The longer answer is that I hope to encourage more risk-taking. I have to be careful about this. I want to make very clear that this is not any weakness of Korean universities. It has to do, ultimately, with how we make money and I think the long-term strategy to really compete is to take more risks. At Stanford, we compete in a marketplace with other private universities such as Princeton and Harvard, and most of that competition is marketing and image. Sometimes the ranking of universities is like the rankings of soaps: It really doesn’t mean very much. Could you elaborate a little more on what you mean by marketing? The easiest way for me to answer is with examples. Let’s compare this university to MIT. MIT is private and charges students very big money to go there. Right there is a market test. When you don’t charge tuition, you don’t have a market test of the value of your education to the customers. MIT sells some things very aggressively that are different from education, and parents all know this. One of them is having your child meet someone else who may be very important. The guys I know that go to business schools take some courses from the professors but it’s silly, because they know more than the professors. They really go there to go meet each other. I should say here that MIT is not actually the right model for KAIST at the moment. I think the right model is the University of California, or some other big university in the States. The University of California is moving slowly towards privatization to get more of the measure of its value for the students. Marketing is going for consumers. Like any other product, you have to go out and find the buyers. You have to have the buyers competing to buy the thing you’re selling otherwise you don’t know what its value is. A lot of Korean students go to the United States to study, which puts Korean universities at a disadvantage. What are your opinions on this phenomenon? This is correct, and I’m glad you brought that up because it supports my assertion that there’s nothing wrong. For students here, U.S. universities have a tremendous advantage because of language. The markets that count, when it comes to selling industrial products made in this country, are in the States. Even our scientific work we have to market in the States. This is not special to Korea ― everyone has to do this because that is where the market is. So language is the most important thing and that’s why U.S. universities have the advantage. The marketing advantage here is price. Going to the States is very expensive, so what I have to do is bring more foreign language, so that the language value goes up ― but the cost stays low. Science and engineering fields are being avoided around the world. How can we overcome this problem? Let the market work. What is causing this is subsidies. It’s like a hangover after drinking too much. In the end, [science] will come back. For example, right now, young people with technical interests want to go into medicine. Well, fine. Go into medicine and pretty soon you have too many doctors and the price of doctors goes down. If you don’t control the number of doctors, which is the right thing to do, then the market will just adjust itself and then that avenue will go away because it’s no longer profitable. Worldwide problems are not intellectual. They’re all economic ― just supply and demand. So in general, the prospects for science and technology are not really determined by government at all but by industrial needs. What do you have to do to win a Nobel prize? I get asked this question a lot. Before I am gone, I think that physics and chemistry Nobel prizes will all come from this part of the world. It’s just what happens when you keep investing. If manufacturing moves here, than the expertise moves here and eventually the prizes will follow. There’s a huge lag time however; it’s 20 or 30 years between when the investment is made and when you benefit out of it. So I think that’s under way now. Unfortunately, because of this long time, you don’t know how to invest. So I think investment strategy cannot be used for winning a Nobel prize. The timescale is too long. Instead, investment needs to be for innovation. We have to make a culture that is very free. It’s like economics. It’s out of the craziness of buying and selling you get economic wealth. Out of the craziness of exchanges of ideas, you get sparks out that are the beginnings of both new businesses and new discoveries. I feel very strongly that the value of the investment in technical universities is only in the people. It’s in giving a young person the courage to be very independent and to try something new that is his her own idea, and to have the force of will to make it happen. This is the key ingredient to prizes. What was your main motive in coming to Korea and not some other country? Well, the short answer is that [other countries] didn’t ask me! (Laughs.) Of course, I thought very carefully before saying yes. What I’m interested in is affecting my own country. Everyone loves his own country most, and I’m no exception. I have some very concrete ideas of how to make science policy in the States better, but the U.S. is very difficult to change because it’s so big. I figured I could be more effective showing them how instead of doing politics to try to convince them. This country is a good size and has a strong economy, but not so big so that we can’t have conversations and cause some things to happen. I also think that democracy is the key element in making innovation, and in that sense, Korea is at an advantage compared to China or Japan. Development of science and technology is a double-edged sword and is not always considered helpful to humans; for instance, human cloning is a very sensitive issue. How can we “heal” the negative side effects of science? I like this question very much because it cuts to the heart of why emphasizing science and technology for its own sake makes no sense. Technology is a tool, not a magic formula, and like all other tools, must be used thoughtfully and responsibly. As to the big things, such as cloning and nuclear waste policy, the answer is simply to make good laws. The idea that science and technology transcend the law and can’t be controlled is very romantic but, fortunately, untrue. Science and technology work for us, not the other way around. The Korean government is always talking about how we must cultivate more Bill Gates. Do you think geniuses are made or born? Bill Gates is a monopolist, not a genius. I think true geniuses are born. I also think genius is vastly less important in this world than common sense, integrity and ambition. Making the world a better place than you found it is not the task of a gifted few, but of all of us. by Min Byong-kwan, Wohn Dong-hee