Welcome New Neighbour

Welcome the New College of the Humanities. Both to the community of higher education and to the village of Bloomsbury. It would be pretty hypocritical to do anything else but offer a warm welcome, after all, UCL was a similar entrepreneurial start-up in it's time. A welcome too to a distinctive entrant. The high end liberal arts college experience has been missing from the UK scene and is worth exploring. Despite the headlines this is not now what 'Oxbridge' offers and it will be interesting to see whether it succeeds.

I suspect it will have tough competition. UCL is developing both an 'Arts & Sciences' offering, with strong similarities to a liberal arts degree, and will, in accordance with it's renewed strategic vision be providing new entry points to it's degree programmes allowing students a greater degree of flexibility and choice. We will probably not be the only institution moving in this direction.

Competitive pressures aside I am concerned that the New College may be under funded, despite the fees. The capital investment necessary to create a world class educational experience is substantial. The Times writes that it has a foundation fund of £10 million. This seems to me to be very small, a fraction of the annual budget of a UCL faculty. I can only hope that the business model has been rigorously scrutinised. It would be sad if it failed simply for want of proper financial planning.

The real challenge will however be to offer the sort of staff, and the sort of staff contact, that a liberal arts education of the kind envisaged requires. The founding faculty are a distinguished crew. All have made their names in research intensive institutions. I expect they will give some excellent courses. Will the brightest and best choose to develop their careers within institutions such as the New College? Perhaps in the humanities, probably not in the sciences. Will the result be a few starred lectures from visiting luminaries and support from less stellar and inspiring teachers - I suspect so.

The establishment of the New College does however ask some important questions of institutions such as UCL. We pride ourselves on research-led teaching but we are, I would contend, somewhat less clear on what that actually means. Sometimes students experience research principally as staff who are absent or unengaged. Ideally research-led teaching should deliver stimulating, relevant and informed curricula delivered by staff who are enthusiastic and at the cutting edge of their subject. It should also ensure that the spirit of critical enquiry is at the centre of the educational process. At our best we achieve this. New College certainly signals that we will need to do so consistently and universally. It also sends the clear message that a focus on the student experience means much more than better coffee bars and improved sporting facilities and that it will have a profound effect on the way we work.

Of course, much of the public discussion has focussed on the £18,000 annual fee. Frankly, it will be difficult to deliver a high quality university education at that, relatively low, price but that is incidental. It certainly raises equity issues. At the moment however, I judge that it would be best to ignore this. Students who meet the 3A target set by New College have plenty of world-class alternatives. Effort would be well spent instead on ensuring that the public University sector offers the required diversity of educational experience, including high-end liberal arts courses. If, ultimately New College offers educational opportunities that are superior to public Universities and are inaccessible to all but the monied, we will need to revisit this issue. In that event the New College of the Humanities will have done the higher education sector a major service in showing us what is possible and what the market wants. Welcome.