The big news this week was the announcement of the merger between the University of Greenwich and the University of Kent. It is being called the creation of the “first” super university. I wrote about this on the day of the announcement. Degrees from the new super university will still be awarded in the name of Kent or Greenwich. I think that this is a wise move and needs to be supported, mergers don’t and shouldn’t always means the loss of institutional identities.
Also this week I published a couple of vision pieces on The University Group™ and The Specialist University Centre. With the recent announcement of the “first” university super merger between Greenwich and Kent, I was reminded of a piece of work I wrote last February, which never got further than my hard drive (well cloud storage). Also last week was the UUK Annual Conference, the then science secretary Peter Kyle was speaking on the second day, and calling for increasing specialisation and collaboration in higher education, which reminded me of another vision piece. So, I put them both on the blog.
One of the reports I have been working on this year was on subject collaboration within higher education. We did reference a previous British Academy report, so it was with interest that I read their recent report, which obviously focuses on the arts and social sciences. I wrote up some thoughts on the report and the implications for the UK higher education sector.
On the 1st September we published a version of one of the reports I have been working on, this week I have been working with others finalising the second report which will be sent to UUK members.
The NRENS 4 Education group I am part of had a meeting with the European Commission. The last time we met, it was in-person in Brussels, this time it was a Teams meeting, so no Belgian chocolates for me this time.
We had a discussion and reflected on UUK’s annual conference, which took place last week. Positive attitudes to collaboration, however still understanding the challenges in making it happen. The Kent and Greenwich merger may demonstrate one way forward.
Writing up a business case for visit to Netherlands and attendance at Learning Impact Europe 2025 Conference.
I have been invited to be a speaker at HE Transformation 2025, taking place 19 – 20 November at the NEC, Birmingham.
I did make it to our office in Bristol and London this week.