VC's Voice

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Last week I had the pleasure of listening to a senior official concerned with higher education funding speaking about the 'regional agenda'. He started off with remarks about lifelong learning and the changing nature of higher education: more students living at home, more mature students, more part-time students. After his talk, an equally senior figure from a university (a large ex-polytechnic) said that at his institution the proportion of students who lived at home was not increasing. The next day, the Times Higher reported that mature student applications to full-time higher education continue, sadly, to decline.

The speaker had been seduced by the rhetoric of 'lifelong learning' into incorrect beliefs about easily checked facts. Unfortunately, this is not an isolated phenomenon: the government want to concentrate much of the expansion of higher education on 'sub-degree' provision. It evidently believes that this is where the demand is, though the facts show otherwise.

Much of the same confusion of rhetoric and reality may surround the 'regional agenda' itself. The government has set up Regional Development Authorities, 'regional co-operation' in higher education is a good thing, so the Regions may be given a significant role in the distribution of higher education funds. We are in the South East Region, which runs from Dover to Buckingham. Our regional relationships are very important to us. We work closely with Brighton University and other partners in the Academic Corridor; we are developing a 'progression accord' with local schools and colleges to strengthen our student recruitment in East and West Sussex and in Brighton and Hove; we have partnership relationships with higher education colleges in Sussex, Croydon, Kent and London; we collaborate in biological sciences with Surrey University. In each of these cases the 'region' is different; and in none of them is it the South East Region.

The region is important to us, and the Region may become important to us. But exactly what is important has to be decided by looking at our own strengths and interests and at what is actually happening, not what some politician or policy-maker, seduced by the slickness of his (or her) own rhetoric, thinks should happen.

Similarly, taking a sceptical view of the rhetoric of 'lifelong learning' is not to dismiss the importance of the idea. Quite the contrary. This University has always had a deep commitment to lifelong learning. In the changing environment of higher education, we have to find new ways of fulfilling that commitment, ways that draw on our strengths and respond to student need. Senate at the end of last term agreed that we should pursue new initiatives in part-time degree provision. This involves much more than spreading an existing full-time degree over twice the time - part-time students have particular needs and interests. There are exciting possibilities, both at undergraduate and postgraduate level, and I look forward to interesting developments.

The retirement of Barry Gooch is reported in this issue of the Bulletin. Barry has had a distinguished career in university administration and he has made an enormous contribution to the University of Sussex in the short time he has been here. It is very sad that his career has been unexpectedly cut short when he still had so much to offer us. I would like to pay a personal tribute to his warmth, loyalty and wisdom from which I have benefited in my first few months as Vice-Chancellor.

I am sure that all members of the University will wish to join me in offering our warmest good wishes for the future to Barry and Julia Gooch.