Civic University - is now the right time?

Civic universities? Well, they sound like a lot of fun. What are they? Where do I sign up?

Hang on; what are they? Do we have un-civic universities??

Woah.... In short, and after some hard-hitting desk research (three cuppa exercise), the civic university can be summarised as an institution working towards the 'community good'; focusing and acting as a regional 'anchor institution'. There's a wider beautifully honed Powerpoint on one of my intranet pages. Or you can look on line for some wonderfully opaque diagrams. Like this:

Err, ok

Don't we do "civic" already? What's driving the agenda?
Right. The idea of a civic university is excellent, though one - I'd suggest - that many institutions have been applying for years.

Higher Education is, however, under the cosh. Headlines about VC salaries suggest self-serving fat cat academics - or fat-catDemics - diverting money from poor students and thus inflating fees, reducing WP missions and generally bringing on financial meltdown. Yes, most VCs are paid salaries the rest of us can only dream of, but carving and distributing a quarter of a million quid and distributing it even to a small student population of, say 10,000 barely raises an extra 60p a week, per student, over a 42 week academic year.

The whole media stance and political point scoring is a bit stinky whichever way you look at it. It's hardly on the same scale as the sort of ludicrous mess our friends the bankers got us into a few years ago.

Good. Myth debunked. Sort of. What about this Heaton-Harris fellow?
Tory MP Chris Heaton-Harris' request for details about the way universities teach Europe and Brexit which commentators outside the sector have compared to the McCarthy purges of the 1950s.

The McCartney witch trials

All of which is leading to a good deal of 'harrumphing' and sneering at the higher education sector and precisely the sort of moaning stunned pro-EU "snowflakes" are accused of. Makes my blood boil.

But hang on, there's the Green League rankings.....
This should receive more attention than either of the areas already under discussion - not least because we did very well (6th place; YEH!) - but it won't. The Green League ranking will also doubtless be buried under other news stories coming out - directly or indirectly - from the sector's push into the 'market'.

So, civic universities is a rearguard action?
Well yes and no. No, obviously. But maybe a bit 'yes' . While many of the principles of the civic university are written into most post-94 institutions' DNA, the recent accentuation may be an attempt to mirror the bluff and bravura surrounding more negative stories.

On the other hand, there may be something in trumpeting universities' civic agendas (agendi?) to justify or explain inroads and universities' increasing interest and gains from Further Education.

But still, there's a load of good stuff in the civic university agenda, much of which is reflected in our very own Strategic Plan. It's difficult to tell if the drive towards civic responsibility is 2017's version of the clamour for the central place of the student consumer which was raging a few years ago - it seems like the two are going to run together, applying even more pressure on universities.


Right, I'm off for a winter break. See you all soon. Comments below always welcome.