Rector of Charles University Professor Václav Hampl accepted the invitation of the students of the Gymnázium Cheb secondary school and met them on April 20 in the conference foyer of the Jalta Hotel to answer their questions about his private life, his duties as a Rector and the state of tertiary education both home and abroad.

Gymnázium Cheb has been organizing meetings with notable personalities for many years, this session being already the 128^th. “The idea behind these meetings with people who have achieved something important for the society is to motivate our students”, explains the school’s manager and history teacher Miroslav Stulák, who has been running these events since 1986. “The students who come to Prague for these meetings are those who show interest and have good grades.”

The meeting took a form of a discussion. Rector Hampl was under fire of questions for almost an hour and it was obvious that the students had done their homework and knew what Rector’s research field was, that he had been voted a member of the board of the European University Association or how many children he had.

And what were the students most interested in? For example, what made him choose which university to go to, what activities he must take part in as a Rector of the university, and what his feelings were when he became a member of the EUA board and whether he made friends with other members of the board. Another group of questions quite naturally focused on higher education as such. Young people wanted to know how to recognize a good university and asked the Rector about his opinion about state graduation examinations and the introduction of tuition fees. “I was pleasantly surprised by the students’ wealth of knowledge and their readiness for discussion. For me, it was an afternoon well spent”, said Rector Hampl at the end of the meeting.

(Lucie Kettnerová)