11.01.2005
Professor Sir David Watson, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Brighton, will deliver the University Centre Hastings (UCH) Inaugural Lecture, entitled A new university world? The landscape of higher education in the twenty-first century, on 17 January 2005.
The lecture - the first in a series of open lectures to be delivered during the spring and summer terms - will be given at UCH in Havelock Road, Hastings, starting at 6.30pm.
UCH, opened in September 2003, is a novel and innovative initiative in partnership with the South East England Development Agency (SEEDA) and is managed by the University of Brighton. It aims to increase progression through further to higher education, offering improved opportunities for young people in their home town but also contributing to employer communities by providing courses targeted at those in work or seeking to make a career change.
In his lecture Sir David will draw on economic, political and social evidence to explain why universities around the world are currently more in the public eye than at any previous time in their history and will identify the generic pressures falling upon ‘national’ university systems as a result. He will move on to examine similar pressures from within the university community, looking at the ‘intrinsic’ developments that can mitigate or exacerbate them.
Drawing both strands together, he will propose a set of ‘enabling conditions’, which seem to be necessary for universities to flourish and for their host societies to retain confidence in the enterprise of higher education.
Sir David will conclude his lecture by posing a series of hard questions about the expectations, prospects and potential development of university systems in a local, regional, national and global environment.
This lecture has been published as an Education Research Centre Occasional Paper. Copies can be obtained (at £3.00 per copy) from the Education Research Centre, Mayfield House, Falmer: 01273 644533 or email education.research@brighton.ac.uk
Further information
University of Brighton Marketing and Communications - 01273 643226 www.uch.ac.uk
Professor Sir David Watson is an historian, and has been Vice-Chancellor of the University of Brighton (formerly Brighton Polytechnic) since 1990. He is also Professor of the History of Ideas. His academic interests are in the history of American ideas and in higher education policy. His most recent books are Lifelong learning and the university (1998), Managing Strategy (2000), New Directions in Professional Higher Education (2000), and Higher Education and the Lifecourse (2003).
David Watson has contributed widely to developments in UK higher education, including as a member (from 1977 to 1993) of Boards and Committees of the Council for National Academic Awards. In 1998 he was appointed to the CNAA Council and the Polytechnics and Colleges Funding Council, and in 1992 to the Higher Education Funding Council (England).
He was a member of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation's National Commission on Education (whose report Learning to Succeed was published in 1993), of the National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education chaired by Sir Ron Dearing (whose report Higher Education in the Learning Society was published in 1997), and of the Roberts Review of Research Assessment in 2002-03. He was the elected chair of the Universities Association for Continuing Education between 1994 and 1998, and currently chairs the Longer Term Strategy Group of Universities UK. He is a member of the Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education and a Companion of the Institute of Management. He was knighted in 1998 for services to higher education.
The 2005 UCH Open Lecture Series includes:
21 February The Legal Landscape, Janet Paraskeva, Chief Executive Officer,
The Law Society
18 April The Historical Landscape, Professor Fred Gray, Professor of Continuing
Education and Dean of Sussex Institute, University of Sussex
16 May The Contemporary Political Landscape, Dr Anthony Seldon, Headmaster
Brighton College
20 June The Landscape, Professor Rory Mortimore, Professor of Engineering Geology
and Head of Geology, University of Brighton
Contact: Marketing and Communications, University of Brighton, 01273 643022
