In general across Australia regional campuses are in retreat. From having been viewed at one stage as a dynamic component of universities' participation and expansion agenda they can sometimes be framed as out-of-touch with a vision of world class universities in the neo-liberal competitive world of university league tables. Faced with the challenges of a shift towards on-line learning and the centrality of competitive world class research agendas, regional campuses - from once being viewed as success stories - are now sometimes viewed as a drag upon performance and an economic drain upon resources. They are often staffed by more junior and casualised faculty members.
I work at a regional campus of a university currently reflecting upon how central 'place' and place-based pedagogies are to its future vision. How do others view this question from their national settings?
Hi!
Good question and analysis. This applies to Sweden as well. Many branch campuses have been shut down or have very restricted resources while the main campuses of universities concentrate on gaining global visibility. In this context, presence in regions around the universities main campuses is down-prioritised, and so are the smaller independent university colleges.
I think personally that this a mistake. In a knowledge society a presence of higher education and research is a necessity for all communities, big or small, and high and even levels of educational participation are as or more important than rankings.
I agree. The presence of higher education in small communities should be treated as a kind of 'mission'. In Poland, we are now on the eve of introducing the new Higher Education Act. There are different opinion about the way it will treat small communities. We will see it within the next few months.
Universities main task is to create and disseminate knowledge to societies in order to solve prolmes and live better and longer. Thus communities may establish universities that are tasked to solve the particular kind of problems communities have. But at the same time the bigger picture of knowledge creation is the higher purpose not only used now but to spearhead society in the right and feasible future.
Thanks Anders and Piotr for providing perspectives from Sweden and Poland. I agree with you Piotr that universities have to decide the extent to which they see themselves as committed to a civic mission as part of their wider vision and commitment to community involvement. My own institution is the only university in an island state of just over half a million people, quite widely dispersed across a land mass approximately the same size as Ireland. There is thus perhaps a distinctive, whole-of-state social and economic role for a university to play in such a context. I suspect that there are comparators between Sweden and Australia, Anders. At my regional campus, in the surrounding area there are generally lower levels of educational attainment in the area than national norms and higher levels of socio-economic disadvantage. This makes the role of bridging 'University Preparation Programmes' more important and a higher proportion of our undergraduate students are first generation into higher education. On the other hand - and very positively - there is great civic and regional pride in hosting a modern university campus - and the annual graduation ceremony, where there is a march through the streets of the town, becomes a valued community celebration. I hope that we will get to hear perspectives from other national contexts.
Hi Brett!
2010-2012 there was a European Commission Interreg IVC project running, UNICREDS, (University Collaboration in Regional Development Spaces). I was one ot the people initiating and networking for the project, and participating in it for my region. The site (unicreds.eu) has disappeared now, but the project can be studied in a report below and in some papers (one is attached). This project was a collaboration between 15 partners in 6 countries and 8 regions about the function of Triple Helix etc in rural areas or otherwise "less favoured" regions that had not been blessed with state funded universities. The project was about strategies to provide higher education and research presence anyway. One area that I was specialised in is multi-university campuses, community-organised campus platforms for more than one university (with main campus elsewhere) to work from. This is becoming a solution in many parts of the world, although there are problems with this concept as well. See my case study in the paper below about Quadruple Helix...etc.
In most of the countries involved, Sweden, Finland, UK (Cornwall and Scotland), Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Hungary, there was a clear tendency towards concentration of resources and education access to main campuses that increasingly wanted to work in their home town only. Deviating somewhat from this pattern was at the time only Finland with its 6 "university consortia" (the state funds university collaborations locally between a designed mix of national universities for improving conditions in regions with weak university infrastructure) and the UK (which in both Scotland and Cornwall recognised university colleges/learning centre networks as universities during or just after the project time (not as a direct project result though). University if Highlands and Islands, UHI, in Northern Scotland and the Falmouth University in Cornwall. But I do not know exact present status in these countries, I hope some native expert can contribute to this discussion.
Technical Report Final report Interreg IV C project UNICREDS 2010-2012, disse...
Article Quadruple Helix, Innovation and the Knowledge-Based Developm...
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