Category: HE General

How our relocation helped us during lockdown

By Nick Allen, Executive Officer at the University of Northampton.

In June 2017, current and former staff of the University of Northampton “feared the university was putting too much of a focus on online lessons and hot-desking”.  Fast forward three years and we are mid-pandemic.  I cannot deny that we haven’t had challenges during the pandemic – 450 resident students who remained with us during lockdown across three sites being one – but the decisions taken to relocate the University from two aging campuses to purpose-built brand-new accommodation in August 2018 has helped us significantly respond to and navigate through the problems we have faced.

Read the full post … “How our relocation helped us during lockdown”

Walking the line: life at the interface of universities and policy

Dr Diana Beech writes in a personal capacity about what it’s like to work in the ‘grey area’ between universities and government.

Over the course of the past decade, you could say I’ve shifted sides a few times.

Having started out as a fresh-faced PhD, then a serial post-doc, I quickly made my way into the world of policy: first by lobbying for improved conditions for researchers at the European level, and then by building up a portfolio of experience in all aspects of the domestic higher education and research agenda – from collecting evidence for a small research consultancy on open access monographs, through to focusing on labour market and skills policy for a major UK trade body.

My career path hasn’t always been simple and in fact, at times, the route I’ve taken has been far from logical. But the skills I acquired on the way ended up taking me to a place where few others get to go – and that’s right into the heart of national policymaking when I worked as Policy Adviser to the last three Ministers of State for Universities and Science.

Read the full post … “Walking the line: life at the interface of universities and policy”

What next for HE (after the pandemic)?

This post by Jane Forster of Bournemouth University reuses material prepared for internal use and represents her own views and not those of BU.

It focusses on HE policy specifically, and therefore doesn’t address the extremely important matters that are facing all organisations at the moment, such as the equality and diversity agenda including race, gender, disability and disadvantage, the environment and sustainability, and health and wellbeing, with mental health as well as the many issues arising from the pandemic being high on everyone’s priority list.

Having put aside those (monumental) questions, here is the blog, which seeks to set out a brief summary of government and OfS positions on a long list of HE policy matters and to look forward to the Autumn, with some trepidation.

Read the full post … “What next for HE (after the pandemic)?”

Sister Group for the Lighthouse Policy Group

Picture of Spinnaker TowerAs our members gather next week for our latest Lighthouse Policy Group meeting at the University of Portsmouth, I have been reflecting on how valuable the group has been. So valuable in fact that I am investigating the possibility of a sister group with colleagues who lead on student experience in institutions across the sector.

Read the full post … “Sister Group for the Lighthouse Policy Group”