Read: A business focus wins awards for North East University
At a time when the higher education sector is in the spotlight as the cost of living, overseas students and maintenance grants all feature in the headlines, it’s worth remembering that the fundamental role of universities is to spread opportunity to the people and places where it makes the most difference. They provide a place-based solution to country-wide levelling up, breaking the cycle of endemic poor social mobility.
Universities act as anchor institutions, providing further education but also playing a much wider role in their communities. They engage in outreach with local schools and colleges so that young people who have no experience of university can learn from people like them about what they can do there and what options it can open up for them. They support students as they study, academically and pastorally, particularly those who may face additional challenges like the care-experienced or those who are estranged from their families. They provide connections with employers in a two-way exchange of talent, finding out what skills they need for the vacancies they are looking to fill and ensuring that is fed back to students who are then better equipped to get high-skilled, better paid jobs. They are also home to world-class research facilities.
Northumbria University is one example of a modern university which has embedded quality research at the centre of everything it does,
alongside a clear social mobility mission, and alignment to business and the demands of the regional and local economy. Forty per cent of its students under the age of 21 are from traditionally low participation backgrounds but it places as many graduates into highly skilled employment across the north east as all Russell Group institutions combined. Its ambitious vision was recognised at the Levelling Up Universities Awards 2022 earlier this year when the University scooped an award for its work on extending enterprise in its community, not only encouraging inward investment but also entrepreneurship in the region. Its outgoing Vice Chancellor, Professor Andrew Wathey, received particular recognition with a Spotlight Award for his inspirational leadership in the higher education sector.
The University, now under the leadership of a new Vice Chancellor and Chief Executive, Professor Andy Long, has since been named University of the Year 2022 in the prestigious Times Higher Education (THE) Awards, marking its transformation into the UK’s first research-intensive modern university and recording the biggest rise in research power of any UK university for the second time. Most recently, its research has been included in a new report by the British Academy, exploring how to tackle the rise of digital poverty, but it also addresses the full range of cutting-edge scientific, technological, health and wellbeing, economic and cultural issues that are relevant to the needs of the communities it serves.
The Levelling Up Universities Coalition is part of the wider Purpose Coalition, a group of purpose-led organisations who are showing leadership on all aspects of the levelling up agenda. It’s no coincidence that the previous winner of University of the Year in 2021 was Cardiff Metropolitan University, also a member of the Coalition. These universities provide education and learning but are also wider engines of opportunity, enterprise and social mobility. They change lives and there has never been a more important time to highlight the importance of the role they play in creating a fairer, more equal society.
