(I've just read through what I've written below and it seems perhaps a little over-reflective. Still, a blog is supposed to be spontaneous and it perhaps it reflects my mood this evening!)

It started in the VC's room yesterday evening. We had just done an interview for Forge Press about the Browne Review.  Keith got out his copy of a book by Cardinal Newman and set me the task of finding a single word to encompass everything that education and learning results in for the participant: a mixture of knowledge, understanding, personal growth, self-awareness and a number of other attributes.  After some thought the nearest I could come up with was a word that we more often associate with age rather than youth, but which seemed to me the best I could offer: 'wisdom'.  Keith was pleased with this because he went on to read from Newman's text which ruminated on the appropriateness of that specific word (although ultimately discarding it, saying that there is no English word to translate the word the ancient Greeks used).  

Then this morning we had one of our regular meetings when all the Heads of Department in the university (with other faculty officers) meet with the executive board to chew over current issues.  The issue today was inevitably the implications of the Browne Review.  During the discussions Tony Ryan offered a personal view that nearly had me applauding (although that would be without precedent at such meetings).  Tony's argument was that although the Browne Report takes a totally functionalist view of higher education and discards the idea of public support for a whole swathe of what we do (see my blog for Sunday 17 October), we should hold fast to our ideal of 'whole person education' to develop the wider attributes of our students so that they can develop as responsible citizens of the world, and not just as specialist fodder to the current needs of the labour market.  That word 'wisdom' came into my mind again.

This evening I had been invited to attend evensong at Sheffield Cathedral which was to revolve around the installation of the University's new Anglican chaplain.  The Bishop of Sheffield preached the sermon, starting with a discussion of the university's Vergilian motto 'to know the causes of things' and moving on to embrace a quotation from the Book of Job, Ch 28, v 12: "But where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding?"  And I cast my mind back to the service that was held five years ago, in the Cathedral, to celebrate the university's centenary.  That same quotation was used as the cornerstone to the whole service, colouring the reflections on what a university is and should be - a place for the development of knowledge, but also a place for personal development and growth.

That seems to me to be what we should be holding on to during the coming months of discussion around the future of the university in a time of system change and anxiety.  And the development of 'wisdom' in our students and graduates seems to me to be a reasonable target.

Would others agree?  Or can they think of a better all-encompassing word?

(A footnote for linguists: I have thought through possible answers to the VC's, and Newman's, question for other languages.  I can't think of an all-encompassing word in French or Italian.  But I wonder if those who have a better knowledge of German than me would like to comment on my suggestion that in that language Bildung is a reasonable attempt to bring the whole idea together - although it is not a word that I ever remember seeing in connection with university education in Germany.)