I'm not sure when the White Rose University Consortium, linking the Universities of Leeds, Sheffield and York, was founded, but it was probably about 15 years ago. The Pro-Vice-Chancellors for Learning and Teaching of the three universities meet up regularly - as do those for research: and there are meetings of the Vice-Chancellors, along with the Chief Executive of the Consortium. Today we had one of our regular meetings.
The purposes of the Consortium are becoming increasingly differentiated between those relating to the research landscape and those relating to learning and teaching. And that reflects much wider chanegs across the sector. As Alan Langlands, the Chief Executive of HEFCE, observed at a recent meeting, research is becoming increasingly about collaboration, whilst teaching is becoming increasingly about competition.
To secure significant research money, or particularly research studentships for the training of postgraduates, it is becoming increasingly important to bid as groups of universities. A particular strength of the White Rose group is that it has a track record of success in this area - nowhere more so than in competitions for doctoral training centres for research students. The joint Economic and Social Research Council centre is the most powerful in the UK, and there has been recent success in winning a joint centre from the BBSRC for studentships in the Biologies. The Arts and Humanities will, we hope, be the next in the list.
At one time there were things to be bid for in learning and teaching too, and joint initiatives were successful in creating the White Rose Centre for Enterprise and the Centre for Excellent in the Learning and Teaching of Enterprise that followed it. The White Rose universities, with other partners, also won the competition for the National Science Learning Centre, and for an Excellence Hub for Gifted and Talented young people.
But in the learning and teaching area these pots of money are things of the past. So what might the Consortium universities do jointly in teaching? We discussed this issue earlier today. A number of opportunities exist.
For example; there are certain high threshold but low volume activities where together we could create the scale of demand needed to meet demands. In Sheffield we already have the example of the Virtual Dutch collaboration with two other universities whereby students studying Dutch have access to resources created not just by our own small number of staff but also by the other universities in the group. I know there is a demand from medical students for simple courses in community languages, which at the moment is not being fulfilled - perhaps our three universities could create virtaul courses in Urdu for Medicine and so on jointly.
Another example would be in the sharing of Open Educational Resources (OER) between us. We are all research-intensive universities with similar approaches to education: I am sure that there are excellent teaching materials created in each of our universities that we could share. My own students very commonly draw down materials from the sites of other universities - not always of reputable quality: we could signpost them towards resources from colleageus and institutions that we now have similar standards to our own.
I would be interested in other suggestions of areas where, despite the fact that we are competing for the best students, we could nevertheless use our joint brand to enhance what we can offer.
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