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Higher Education and Regional Transformation: Social and Cultural Perspectives

Explore the social and cultural impacts of higher education on regional transformation. This conference delves into policies, knowledge production, engagement opportunities, and the concept of embeddedness. Discover different visions of social transformation and the intended and unintended consequences of institutional programs.

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Higher Education and Regional Transformation: Social and Cultural Perspectives

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  1. Higher Education and Regional Transformation: Social and Cultural PerspectivesAllan Cochrane and Ruth WilliamsImpact Conference, Belfast, 28 January 2009

  2. Broad and national contexts • OECD, EU, UK policies • Beyond human capital theories? • The emergence of mode 2 knowledge production • Expansion of higher education system & restrictions on public expenditure • ‘Social inclusion’ and ‘community cohesion’ • Rhetoric of engagement v ‘engagement as core value’ • Emergence of university/region/community engagement opportunities

  3. The HEART project • Regional, local, group/community levels of analysis • Focus on socially disadvantaged groups • Conceptual framework: notions of embeddedness, types of engagement, and impact • Methodology • The cases

  4. Conceptual framework • Structural embeddedness: - through students, staff, the curriculum - a ‘mirror of the city’ • Community engagement: - one way i.e. we engage with them - two way i.e. we learn from each other • Types of impact - intended/unintended, direct/indirect, positive/negative

  5. DIFFERENT and OVERLAPPING VISIONS of SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION

  6. Transforming the region • Re-branding the region (making it world class) • Bringing the world in • Re-skilling the region for local industry and the new economy • Sustaining the local economy • Digital economy, creative and cultural industries

  7. Transforming the local population • Widening participation • Local, socially disadvantaged students • Raising aspirations • Working with schools etc. • Transforming the local culture • Students, staff and shopping

  8. Community/stakeholder views • Local residents support, but limited interaction, even where most community oriented • Engagement often limited to particular programmes, schemes, partnerships (i.e. formal) • Voluntary organisations suggest that runs while extra funds available and then stops • Skills tensions – employer demands

  9. Intended and unintended • Institutional programmes • gap between responses to funding councils (institutional commitment) and practice at other levels, where other institutional and professional priorities dominate • Difficulty of capturing non-institutional • negative (e.g. studentification) and positive (e.g. involvement in civil society)

  10. Making sense of the uncertainties • Institutional differences – type of university: level of dependency on local resources, orientation of research, international students and staff, location • Local contexts – different opportunities • Internal hierarchies and the problem of managing • Organisational survival

  11. ‘In’ but not ‘of’ the region? • Prospects of embeddedness - variation by institutional type? • HE landscape: competition or power sharing? • Staff and students in the city/sub-region • Conceptions of engagement: agencies v. institutions

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