I would like to welcome readers to my regular education blog for HuffPo. I am aiming to offer some radical and quite rebellious postings from my "outlaw" kind of lens. You might never rise to the top of the academic profession reading this blog but you'll also never end up on the "happy" pills either. You know the shiny apple with a rotten core type of person that frequents too many a educational establishment. In writing this blog I have in the back of my mind a thought or should that be a quote from the Wild One.. Peggy Maley: "What're you rebelling against Johnny?" Marlon Brando: "Whaddya got?"
The past three years has been a period of major upheaval in Britain. This spiked last week with the riots in London and several major provincial cities. We have been through one of the worst recessions this country has ever seen with dramatic consequences for businesses large and small across the nation. A coalition government has been formed and embarked upon a programme of public spending cuts designed to rebalance Britain's books and reduce the deficit. Recently the coalition government while acknowledging the need for more public accountability of universities have also stressed the vital role they need to begin to play in regenerating local economies and communities. They have begun to introduce a series of initiatives through HEFCE to stimulate and promote university engagement and economic impact intervention at the community level (www.hefce.ac.uk/research/ref/impact; www.rcuk.ac.uk/kei/maximising).
Historically universities have strategically focused their news media relations and communication resources at the national level for the associated prestige and esteem this achieves. Does really an appearance by a leading professor or academic expert on the Beeb or Sky have much influence at all on ground level community policy debates such as the rioting in London or Manchester. At a university level widening participation and community engagement are "Cinderella activities" with low gravitas in respect to an individual's presence, collegiate standing, peer reputation or career (promotion) prospects. A significant civil service and media criticism of universities is that although much of their work is publicly funded the scientific and technological outputs generated are frequently irrelevant and of limited value economically or socially to people living in the surrounding community. University media and communication policy (PR) resources and engagement strategies' have been criticized for not being orientated towards local news media or communities. It is apparent and highlighted in the recent public disorder and rioting in London, Salford and Manchester, Birmingham and Bristol that nearby universities need to have more involvement with their local communities. Huffington, community radio, local television, regional newspapers and news web services are often neglected by university public and press relations. How can national coverage of academics promulgating country-wide macro solutions ameloriate local and micro-level tensions/problems. Where relations do exist between universities and local news media these tend to be characterized by loose ties, informal social relations and fragmented knowledge networks. The result is that academic expertise, intellectual knowledge and technological contributions often fail to diffuse out to benefit their neighbouring communities.
It is my view in light of events last week that universities need to recaliberate their internal performance measures of staff and allocate resources to reward and encourage initiatvies that lead to tangible social and economic development/improvement of the local communities that they should be serving.