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Higher Education and Regional Transformation: Social and

Cultural Perspectives

Allan Cochrane and Ruth Williams

Impact Conference, Belfast, 28 January 2009

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Broad and national contexts

• OECD, EU, UK policies• Beyond human capital theories?• The emergence of mode 2 knowledge production• Expansion of higher education system & restrictions on

public expenditure• ‘Social inclusion’ and ‘community cohesion’

• Rhetoric of engagement v ‘engagement as core value’• Emergence of university/region/community engagement

opportunities

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The HEART project

• Regional, local, group/community levels of analysis

• Focus on socially disadvantaged groups• Conceptual framework: notions of

embeddedness, types of engagement, and impact

• Methodology• The cases

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Conceptual framework

• Structural embeddedness:- through students, staff, the curriculum- a ‘mirror of the city’

• Community engagement:- one way i.e. we engage with them- two way i.e. we learn from each other

• Types of impact- intended/unintended, direct/indirect, positive/negative

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DIFFERENT and OVERLAPPING VISIONS of SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION

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Transforming the region

• Re-branding the region (making it world class)– Bringing the world in

• Re-skilling the region for local industry and the new economy– Sustaining the local economy– Digital economy, creative and cultural

industries

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Transforming the local population

• Widening participation

– Local, socially disadvantaged students

• Raising aspirations

– Working with schools etc.

• Transforming the local culture

– Students, staff and shopping

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Community/stakeholder views

• Local residents support, but limited interaction, even where most community oriented

• Engagement often limited to particular programmes, schemes, partnerships (i.e. formal)

• Voluntary organisations suggest that runs while extra funds available and then stops

• Skills tensions – employer demands

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Intended and unintended

• Institutional programmes – gap between responses to funding councils

(institutional commitment) and practice at other levels, where other institutional and professional priorities dominate

• Difficulty of capturing non-institutional– negative (e.g. studentification) and positive

(e.g. involvement in civil society)

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Making sense of the uncertainties

• Institutional differences – type of university: level of dependency on local resources, orientation of research, international students and staff, location

• Local contexts – different opportunities

• Internal hierarchies and the problem of managing

• Organisational survival

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‘In’ but not ‘of’ the region?

• Prospects of embeddedness

- variation by institutional type?

• HE landscape: competition or power sharing?

• Staff and students in the city/sub-region

• Conceptions of engagement: agencies v. institutions