Understanding universities from the perspective of place

Richard Brabner’s Civic 2.0 challenged universities to think differently about their role in place.

More recently, Michael Salmon argued that higher education looks rather different when viewed through the priorities of local areas than it does from Whitehall.

We agree. But there is another consequence of devolution that deserves greater attention.

As responsibility for growth shifts to places, the questions policymakers ask of universities are changing. And the evidence we use to assess universities needs to evolve with them.

Higher education certainly has no shortage of measures of success. Research excellence, knowledge exchange, teaching quality, widening participation, and graduate outcomes all help us understand different aspects of university performance.

But those measures were largely developed to answer national policy questions.

Devolution introduces a different set of questions – ones rooted in the needs and ambitions of places.

Two policy worlds

In England nationally, we remain accountable through metrics such as the Office for Students’ B3 indicators. Designed to answer important questions about access, student success, and progression – that’s entirely right.

But locally, universities are increasingly expected to act as strategic partners in economic development, workforce planning, innovation, and public service reform. Those leading places need evidence that helps them understand those contributions. And existing regulatory measures were never really designed to do that.

This is not simply a challenge for the government, it’s a challenge for universities too.

If we are serious about our civic role, we also need to ask whether the way we describe our own contribution has kept pace with the policy environment. Too often, we continue to evidence our impact through institution-centred measures when our civic value is increasingly realised through the success of places.

Time to ask a different question

As combined authorities take greater responsibility for growth, skills, and public service reform, the questions they ask are transforming.

Regional leaders are not solely concerned with whether graduates succeed. They are asking whether their region has the talent it needs to succeed. Can employers recruit graduates with the skills they need? Can hospitals recruit nurses? Can schools recruit teachers? Can advanced manufacturing businesses access engineers? Can growing sectors retain the talent they need?

These are questions about place rather than providers.

If devolution is to succeed, regional leaders need to think not only about skills provision, but about talent circulation. They need to understand whether places are attracting students; developing graduate capability; retaining skilled people; supporting lifelong learning; and connecting employers with the workforce they need over the long-term.

Universities are central to every stage of that journey. The challenge is not that universities need more evidence. It’s that places need evidence capable of answering place-based questions.

The lens of place

So what happens if we ask a different question of the evidence?

Graduate Outcomes was never designed to explain places. On its own, it cannot tell us about talent circulation, employer demand, or long-term workforce resilience. But viewed through the lens of place, the same evidence can tell us something quite different.

We recently asked Jisc to analyse Birmingham City University’s Graduate Outcomes data from that perspective – the results were striking.

The analysis found that BCU educates almost a quarter of Birmingham’s graduate workforce. Across the wider West Midlands Combined Authority, around one in five professionals are BCU graduates.

In key public services, the contribution is even more significant with around 43 per cent of newly qualified nurses working in the region trained at BCU, alongside around 30 per cent of new midwives, and more than one in five primary teachers.

Read conventionally, these are institutional performance statistics. Read through the lens of place, they become evidence about Birmingham’s workforce, public services, and economic resilience.

They show the extent to which an anchor university underpins the talent pipeline on which a city’s public services, employers, and future prosperity depend. In other words, the same evidence answers a completely different policy question.

Birmingham is by no means unique.

Every city has universities underpinning professional workforces and regional growth. What differs is not the contribution universities make, but the questions we ask of the evidence.

As Local Skills Improvement Plans mature and English devolution gathers pace, combined authorities will need a much richer understanding of regional talent than current performance measures were designed to provide.

Towards regional capacity

Richard Brabner argued that the next phase of the civic university agenda is about embedding universities more deeply in the long-term success of places. Michael Salmon challenged us to think about universities from the perspective of place rather than Whitehall.

Perhaps the next step is to view our evidence in the same way.

The civic university agenda does not necessarily depend on a completely new evidence base. But it does need to help us move beyond measuring institutional performance towards articulating how we power regional capability and, ultimately, prosperity.

Because anchor institutions have always shaped the fortunes of their places.

And if Civic 2.0 asks universities to become more deeply embedded in the success of places, the next challenge is ensuring places have the evidence to understand that success.