AUA Blog

AUA's Eleventh Annual Guest Lecture 2008

AUA's Eleventh Annual Guest Lecture 2008 presented by Sir Peter Scott took place at the Rembrandt Hotel in London on Tuesday 21 October 2008.  You can listen to the lecture by clicking the link at the end of this post.

'Beyond the Market: higher education in 2020'

Sir Peter Scott, Vice-Chancellor, Kingston University (with introduction and closing remarks from Maureen Skinner, AUA Chair)

Click the link below to download: (5.6 MB / mp3)

Download Annual Lecture 2008

Caroline Brown receives AUA Fellowship

Congratulations to Caroline Brown of Oxford Brookes University who was appointed Fellowship of the Association during the AUA annual conference held recently at the University of York.



More information on AUA Fellowships.




Image: Caroline receiving the award from Bruce Nelson (AUA Chair).

AUA's Tenth Annual Guest Lecture 2007 - Listen again!

For those who were unable to attend AUA's Tenth Annual Guest Lecture presented by Professor David Eastwood, Chief Executive, HEfCE, and for those who would like to hear it again, why not fetch a glass of wine, a couple of canapes and listen by clicking the link at the end of this post.

AUA's Tenth Annual Guest Lecture, 24 October 2007, London

'Quietly flows the Don?  Higher Education, turbulence and timeless verities'

Professor David Eastwood, Chief Executive, Higher Education Funding Council for England (with an introduction and closing remarks by Bruce Nelson, AUA Chair

Click the link below to download: (45.5 MB / mp3)

Download annual lecture 2007

Joint committees meeting, June 20-21, Leeds Met

The Executive, Membership & Communications, Conferences, and Professional Development committees came together at the impressive Headingly Carnegie Stadium to discuss the Association's governance proposals and strategic objectives. Many thanks to all at Leeds Met for organising this event and for sharing these photos with us:

Bologna

We had an excellent AUA one-day conference last week on "the Bologna Process: the London summit and the third cycle of HE".

For me the most interesting learning point was the way in which a number of the presentations emphasised the benefits to students of institutions engaging with the Bologna Process, and the strategic dangers to institutions of not doing so. I think for many colleagues the seminar helped dispel the notion that Bologna was a bureaucratic exercise in harmonisation.  There was a very strong message that there are real benefits to students' future employability through the emphasis on greater mobility between participant countries.  For institutions it provides an opportunity if tackled strategically (e.g. access to wider pools of staff and student talent), but a threat if not.

There was a feeling that many institutions are still ignoring Bologna, or doing the minimum possible to comply (e.g. issuing students with the European Diploma Supplement).  This was probably arising from a combination of the voluntary nature of the Process, the fact that the rhetoric of it being driven bottom-up by institutions rather than top-down by governments is not the reality, and the difficulties which many institutions have in engaging with the alphabet soup of acronyms, bodies, communiques and conferences, and the shifting focus of secretariat responsibility that goes with European inter-governmental processes. 

Also relevant within the UK is the relative ease of compliance compared to the position in many other countries.  This is perhaps also contributing to a sense of complacency in UK institutions, which is reinforced by the apparently relative lower level of engagement of the NUS with it compared to sister organisations in continental Europe meaning that we don't face the same student pressures.  But we need to be alert to the fact that consideration is now being given by institutions in other parts of the world (e.g. Australia and the USA) on how to respond to Bologna, including changing curricular structures to be Bologna-compliant. 

One colleague commented that Bologna was a major paradigm shift in higher education, and that the benefits would flow to those institutions which appreciated this most quickly.

Bruce Nelson
Chair

Nottingham Conference

I was very pleased at the number of members who came up to me in Nottingham to say what an excellent conference it was. We exceeded our planned numbers, and had delegates from 185 different institutions, including 69 overseas delegates. The venue was excellent, and the local organisation by Rachel Greatrix and her team first class. We had an interesting and varied programme, including some provocative and controversial elements. Not everyone agreed with Frank Furedi's views on the impact of bureaucracy on higher education, and the contribution of administrators to this, but he provided a thought-provoking start to the Conference. Of course there were a few niggles - there always will be with a Conference of the size of ours - but the general feedback was that this was one of the more memorable AUA conferences.  But please let us know if there are any improvements you want in future years.

One of the bittersweet aspects of Conference for me was that we formally said goodbye to four long-serving Executive Committee members, Sue Holmes, Alison Johns, Sue Robinson, and John Ryan. Sue Holmes joined Executive Committee in 1999, and was my predecessor as Chair between 2004 and 2006. Alison had been on Executive Committee since 1995, has chaired Professional Development Committee and the International Committee, and was Chair 2000-2002. Sue Robinson had been an active member of Membership and Communications committee since 1997, and became its Chair and joined Executive Committee in 2003. John had been a member of Executive Committee for 13 years from 1994, has been Chair of both Professional Development Committee and Conferences Committee, and was Chair of the Association between 2002 and 2004. We will greatly miss their contributions to Executive Committee, but I've no doubt that each will continue to help the Association.

Bruce Nelson
Chair