Regional growth
Autor: Roberto | Publicado: 2017-06-30T10:41:00-03:00




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Regional
growth and universities – a link that's more than academic&nbsp;



With investing in the regions a priority for successive governments,
what role could universities based in the Midlands play in revitalising the
economic fortunes of their communities?









International students are worth millions of pounds to regional
economies.&nbsp;

Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo&nbsp;





Struggles for control within Westminster, and between Britain and the
European Union, have been so dramatic recently that plans for a different kind
of power shift have gone relatively unnoticed.&nbsp;

The former chancellor George Osborne announced in 2014
greater devolution of power to the regions, with new metropolitan
mayors and targeted investment. First came his vision of a “northern
powerhouse” with billions of pounds of investment in science, transport and
infrastructure. Then, two years ago this month, he announced his intention to make the Midlands “an engine for
growth”.



Osborne may have fallen victim to Brexit and Conservative party politics
but the Midlands Engine Strategy
survives. In March, the new chancellor, Philip Hammond announced £392m of
government investment in skills, connectivity and growth in the
region.



Whether universities could do more to power this engine was the subject
of a roundtable discussion, hosted by the Guardian and supported by HSBC at
Birmingham University. The discussion involved senior leaders from higher
education, government and business.



Sir David Eastwood, the University of Birmingham’s vice-chancellor, said
universities’ economic impact on the region was already considerable. His
university contributes £3.5bn a year to the local economy, with every eight
international students worth £1m. “Leave aside the intellectual benefit, leave
aside the importance of international students to the kind of global
educational community we are, just look at the multiplier,” he said.





Universities provide jobs



Prof Robert Allison, vice-chancellor of Loughborough University, said
his institution was the single largest provider of jobs in the East Midlands,
while Prof Geoff Layer, vice-chancellor at the University of Wolverhampton,
said his university worked hard to make its students – 80% of whom came from
within a 25 mile radius – entrepreneurs, ready to set up their own businesses
and generate economic growth.



Daniel Howlett, head of large corporate banking at HSBC, said one reason
his organisation had chosen to open its new national headquarters in Birmingham
was the concentration of universities in the area, providing a diverse set of
graduates and apprentices. HSBC recognised education as “a true
differentiator”, he said, able to have genuine impact on driving the regional
economy.



But the participants agreed the potential of universities to power the
Midlands Engine was not just financial.



Andrew Carter, chief executive of the thinktank Centre for Cities, said
if economic impact was enough then simply doubling the size of institutions
would do the trick. “Having a conversation that just describes a set of assets
doesn’t address the question of what prevents them from doing more,” he said.



For Prof Alec Cameron, vice-chancellor of Aston University,
collaboration between universities, civic leaders and business was vital. Maria
Machancoses, director of the Midlands Engine and Midlands Connect, which brings
together local authorities, local enterprise partnerships and other key
partners, highlighted the importance of partnerships and collaborations between
different sectors and players.



Participants also agreed that universities played a key role in raising
aspiration.



Layer said the aspirations of young people and their families was “not
the highest” in the Midlands’ Black Country – an area with a high proportion of
adults with no qualifications. “We need to address how we raise the aspirations
of a whole raft of younger people and their families, but also how we address
skills issues that successive governments have failed to acknowledge.”



This was important because the world was likely to change radically,
said John Hawksworth, chief economist at PwC. He predicted that many current jobs
would not exist in 20 years’ time, while demand would increase in areas such as
health and social care because of the ageing population. This would demand
retraining and a renewed focus on employability, blending work experience and
education.



Universities also needed to consider the wider cultural contribution
they could make, said Anita Bhalla, chair of the Creative City Partnership, set
up to support job creation and growth in the creative industries. International
students in particular influenced quality of life in a region, she argued.



Ian Curryer, chief executive of Nottingham city council, felt
universities were important for a region’s schools, influencing pupils through
campus visits.





Sponsoring schools



One of the policies pushed by the last government was the idea of
universities sponsoring schools. But Eastwood said his university had been able
to draw on its longstanding resources to establish the University of Birmingham
School, a free school, run by a trust set up by the university. When (former)
No 10 advisers had asked what proportion of universities he felt could follow
Birmingham’s example, he estimated only between 20% and 25%. “We have to
understand the different roles and capabilities of universities,” he said.



Allison said that if his university was required to open a nearby
school, another school somewhere else in Loughborough would close: “In that
case, we are the pariah.” On the other hand, he said his university could work
with teachers to improve maths teaching more widely across the region,
encouraging pupils to enjoy maths, and perhaps in future consider careers such
as engineering.



If there was uncertainty about exactly what future government policy
would be on the relationship between schools and universities after the election,
it was as nothing to that caused by Brexit.



“The impact is going to be somewhere between bad and disastrous,” said
Maddalaine Ansell, chief executive of the University Alliance.



But she said the government clearly saw Brexit as an opportunity for a more
radical industrial strategy and she was encouraged by its approach towards
research and development.



She understood that universities that collaborated with businesses and
civic authorities on plans likely to have a positive economic impact in the short
and medium term were likely to receive most research and development funding,
with those integrating research and development with developing students’
skills probably most favoured.



But David Docherty, chief executive of the National Centre for Universities
and Business, warned that getting too distracted by Brexit would be a mistake.



“I just don’t want us to get caught by two years of debate around Brexit
and forget that actually the world moves on outside of our small island,” he
said.



For instance, he predicted that 99 % of due diligence work – often an
entry level job for undergraduate lawyers – would be done by artificial
intelligence in a few years time, as would about a third of audit jobs.



Universities tended to put skills into the local economy. If jobs
demanding those skills disappeared universities would have to work out,
alongside business and government, what the next thing was likely to be. Some
cities would thrive but others would decline because they guessed wrong.



Howlett suggested that US universities had proved more adept at
anticipating and making the most of these kinds of changes.



For Eastwood, this was because “failure is an option in the US in a way
that failure is a more difficult cultural option here”. Universities needed to
get used to the idea that some of the skills they thought they were creating
would turn out to be redundant and to get students used to “excitement,
entrepreneurship, stumbling, beginning again”. Universities were “messy
institutions” and that messiness was important, he argued.



Mess was useful in some areas agreed Mark Jefferies, chief of university
research liaison at Rolls-Royce, but “if you are flying in one of our engines
you don’t want it built in a messy environment”. Rather it was important to
create an environment that generated a trusted exchange of ideas.



UK universities had always been among the elite in terms of producing
talent but plenty of others were now in competition with them, he warned. “We
have a big shift coming and if we don’t keep build an environment where people
can thrive we stand some risk.”



But Cameron argued that in driving the Midlands Engine there needed to
be reasonable expectation about what academics could do and what was up to
others. Above all, government needed to remove impediments to collaboration. It
wasn’t enough to power the engine. Someone also needed to oil the machine.



At the table



Richard Adams (Chair) Education editor,
the Guardian

Prof Robert Allison Vice-chancellor,
Loughborough University

Maddalaine Ansell Chief executive,
University Alliance

Anita Bhalla OBE Chair, director,
Creative City Partnership, Greater Birmingham and Solihull LEP

Prof Alec Cameron Vice-chancellor,
Aston University

Andrew Carter Chief executive,
Centre for Cities

Ian Curryer Chief executive,
Nottingham city council

David Docherty Chief executive,
National Centre for Universities and Business

Prof Sir David Eastwood Vice-chancellor,
University of Birmingham

John Hawksworth Chief economist,
PwC

Daniel Howlett Head of large corporate
banking, UK &amp; regional head of client coverage for Europe, HSBC

Mark Jefferies Chief of
university research liaison, Rolls Royce

Prof Geoff Layer Vice-Chancellor
University of Wolverhampton

Maria Machancoses Director, Midlands
Engine, Midlands Connect