Part-time students make up about a third of the entire undergraduate population.  Despite this important fact the majority of media attention surrounding tuition fees has focused on 18-to-20-year-olds thinking of going to university to study full-time.   This shouldn’t be the case though as part-time study – in particular for mature learners who make up nearly 95% of this group – is an incredibly important route for people to enter, or re-enter higher education.

This week is Adult Learners’ Week (12-18 May), which promotes the importance of learning for people of any age, demonstrating that it is never too late to return to education.  From a higher education perspective, it also raises important questions about the role of part-time study in supporting the future economic growth of the UK.

This year’s Adult Learners’ Week comes at a time when some of the biggest changes to student finance in England have been introduced for part-time students, a number of which are very positive.  For the first time, part-time students will no longer have to pay tuition fees upfront, putting them on a par with full-time students in this respect.  And instead of having to take out a commercial loan, part-time students will now be able to access student loans that are only repayable when they are earning above £21,000-a-year, paying back 9% back of everything they earn above that figure each year.  Other aspects from the full-time student finance arrangements will of course be applied too, including having your debt cleared by the government if you still owe anything after 30 years and not having to pay anything back if your salary goes below the repayment threshold on any occasion.

All of these changes are illustrated perfectly in a new guide booklet by the Independent Taskforce on Student Finance Information, which has been designed for people thinking of studying part-time in England.  The booklet has been launched to coincide with Adult Learners’ Week and accompanies a video guide featuring the Head of the Taskforce Martin Lewis outlining the changes to part-time student finance.  And to help prospective part-time students work out how much they will actually pay back, MoneySavingExpert has today launched a part-time student finance calculator to complement its full-time study version.  Universities UK has also produced a summary of the breakdown of the support available for part-time students across the four constituent parts of the UK.

The advice and support does not stop with pre-entry of course: many universities have specialist support services to assist those studying part-time, once they arrive on campus.

Regardless of the changes to student finance, studying part-time offers a number of benefits for those thinking of entering, or re-entering higher education.  The most obvious benefit is that it offers a solution for those people who want to work and study at the same time.  This can be really important for anyone that would like to further their career at their current workplace, make a career change or even just learn something new in life.

More and more people are choosing this route and the number of part-time students has actually outpaced that of full-time students over the past 15 years or so (since 1994/95 we have seen a 104% increase in part-time undergraduate study, compared with 41% increase over the same period for full-time).  As a result, we now have 580,000 people studying part-time in UK higher education, making up a significant part of the overall student population.

In an increasingly global and competitive market, the UK population must continually update its skillset and expertise.  Professor Christine King, formerly Vice-Chancellor of Staffordshire University claimed in her 2008 report that the vast majority of this continual development will take place among those already in employment.  Part-time study at university is clearly one of the routes to bridge that gap, but if we are serious about wanting to retain our standing in the world economy through the improvement of skills in the current workforce, then we must continue to support the opportunities to study part-time.

 Social enterprise within universities has grown quite organically. Different universities are taking very different approaches to how they incorporate it into their offer. For example the University of Northampton is integrating social enterprise across teaching, research, business and local community collaborations, even procurement. Others, such as the University of Sheffield, offer specific modules on social enterprise to all students or offer support through extra-curricular activities including the Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) programme.

 So, from a university’s perspective, what are the benefits to working with social enterprise? For one, it is a growing sector, and in an age where universities must have employment skills at the forefront of their student offer, social enterprise can help enormously. Social Enterprise UK’s The State of Social Enterprise Survey 2011 indicates that the sector has great potential for growth when compared to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs): in 2010-11 58% of social enterprises grew compared to 28% of SMEs and 57% of social enterprises were predicting growth, in comparison to 41% of SMEs. This growth clearly points to opportunities for students to work with social enterprises to build their enterprise skills, as well as to develop potential graduate career routes.

 There are also benefits for social enterprises who work with universities, including ready access to talented and committed students (and potential future employees), as well as the expertise and insight of university staff, to name just two.

 So there is much potential for working together. In that spirit, Universities UK is hosting a round table next week to look further at how universities and social enterprises can work together and what is already happening within institutions. We will draw together vice-chancellors, graduates, social enterprise businesses and support organisations to discuss their experiences of social enterprise and universities working together, what can be done differently and what the future could hold.

We will be tweeting live from the round table on Monday 21 May 2012 10.00 to 14:00 Join the conversation at #UnisAndSocEnt and let us know what you think: what is the role for universities and social enterprise?

Last year’s White Paper Students at the Heart of the System promised us a Higher Education Bill in this parliamentary session.  It has not materialised.

That’s no great surprise, given last week’s local election results. Liberal Democrats were reluctant to go anywhere near legislation which might reopen old wounds over fees, even before the collapse in the Lib Dem vote. The question now is, what are the chances the appetite for the Bill will return any time this side of a general election?

While I wouldn’t absolutely rule out the possibility that a Higher Education Bill will appear in draft at some point in the next couple of years, it is looking increasingly unlikely.

This matters because at the moment we have a situation in which there is a growing number of private higher education providers with access to public funds via student loans, but which remain largely unregulated.

For example, these private providers will not be subject to the £9,000 fee cap, financial scrutiny by the Higher Education Funding Council (HEFCE) or oversight by the Office for the Independent Adjudicator.

From September, students at such institutions will be able to access loans of up to £6,000 if their course is one of those which has been ‘designated’ (to use the jargon) for student support.

We have no objection to this. But, because of the delayed introduction of the Higher Education Bill, the government will not be able to control the student numbers on such courses.

Those numbers are, at present, relatively small – about 6,000 full-time students in 2009. But applications are growing rapidly, partly because of constraints on student numbers in the publicly-funded part of the sector. We don’t know a great deal about enrolments in private providers because they don’t provide data to the Higher Education Statiscs Authority (HESA), but we do know that the government spent about £33 million on loans to students at these institutions in 2010-11.

With the maximum loan students at these institutions can access almost doubling to £6,000 in September, we know that expenditure will increase to somewhere in the region of £100 million – and this is without factoring in any significant expansion.

In the absence of the Higher Education Bill – or some alternative legislative mechanism -  there will be no means of either controlling costs or protecting student interests. And,  if there is a cost over-run, it will almost certainly result in money being clawed back from HEFCE budgets – from research or widening participation funds, for example.

Draft Communications  Bill

A quick mention of the Draft Communications Bill. You won’t see this in the headlines, but we hope that, amongst other things, this Bill will implement the recommendations of the Hargreaves Review, introducing new copyright exceptions for research activity such as text and data mining. This is important because our copyright regime currently prevents academics from making use of technology to search and compare published research. New exceptions would also allow digital archiving and make it easier to provide open access to research publications. Universities UK was pleased that the government supported Hargreaves’ recommendations on this, and hope they won’t be nobbled by the publishing lobby before these measures reach the statute book.

One of those issues is the integral role that universities have played in the preparation for London 2012, and this year’s campaign has left us with a rich picture of what our universities have done to support ‘the greatest show on earth’.

As we enter the final stages of Universities Week 2012, it has been great to see the incredible number of university activities unfold.  More than 100 events have taken place around the week, the vast majority of which have been organised by universities up and down the country.

We have also launched two reports that flesh out the ways in which individual universities have engaged with London 2012, the Olympic and Paralympic Games of the past, and the sports industry as a whole. 

Olympic and Paralympic Games: the impact of universities

Supporting a UK success story

The reports cover a wide range of issues including: the research underpinning the success of Team GB’s performance; the efforts by universities to increase sport participation in local schools and the local community; the range of Cultural Olympiad activities already underway; and the long-lasting links forged between university towns and countries from across the globe, whose Olympic and Paralympic teams will have access to the world-class training facilities and accommodation that those universities have to offer.

We have also seen a hugely impressive list of supporters back our universities this year, as has been demonstrated by a series of ‘Talking Heads’ videos.

 There are many other high-profile figures backing the campaign too, including Olympic champions Rebecca Adlington and Christine Ohuruogu.  And it just goes to show the high regard with which people across the country hold our universities – and not always those who have attended university themselves, but have had access to our universities’ world-class facilities and academics.

The stories behind the Talking Heads videos and the two reports will continue beyond Universities Week 2012.  And as we approach the London 2012 Games we hope to be able use these fantastically rich and diverse examples to demonstrate just how much universities have been contributing to the Games, and also the long-term impact of hosting the Games in the UK.

Universities Week 2012 is far from over though.  This Bank Holiday weekend will see British Universities & Colleges (BUCS) host the BUCS VISA Outdoor Athletics Championships at the Olympic stadium itself.  And on the Saturday night (5 May) more than 40,000 people will witness the ‘2012 Hours to Go’ (until London 2012) event, which will see the stadium officially opened by a member of the audience.  Excitingly, one student will also get the chance to commentate on an event as part of the Universities Week ‘Become the commentator’ competition, which we ran in partnership with the National Union of Students (NUS).

Ensuring that the integrity of research is beyond reproach is central to maintaining this quality. There have been claims that research misconduct in the sector is rife, and while there is no room for complacency, we must be careful not to talk the sector down.  Quality and standards in research are given top priority in our institutions and since much of the UK’s research takes place in universities, they have a key role to play.

Where problems occur and allegations of misconduct are made, then we need to be sure that we have robust systems in place to deal with these. However, a focus on misconduct alone obscures all of the positive work that must be done to ensure that these high standards are maintained. Researchers should work in an environment that supports and rewards good practice; funders, employers and researchers need to work together to safeguard against behaviours that can cause damage before they occur. As Liz Wager argues in a thoughtful piece, we need a culture and research environment that nurtures rigour and integrity, as well as having effective systems to investigate allegations of misconduct.

We believe that many of these things already exist. But as a sector, we must commit to continuously strengthen approaches that ensure rigour and integrity in our research, as well as accounting for our efforts. At Universities UK, we have been working alongside major funders and users of research to develop an approach that reflects these points. Together with Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), Research Councils UK (RCUK), the Wellcome Trust and government we have produced a concordat that:

• identifies five key commitments that all those engaged in research should agree to
• provides a framework to underpin research integrity in all disciplines
• makes a clear statement about the responsibilities of researchers, employers and funders of research
• commits to implementation and the monitoring of efforts to strengthen the integrity of research 
   

The concordat aims to cover all areas of research, not just those that always make the headlines. We hope that by getting an agreement in place, we will all be in a stronger position to raise research integrity’s profile further.

The concordat will provide a broad set of principles that promotes transparency and better ways of working, but, at the same time, does not preclude other ways of promoting research integrity or, indeed, measures dealing with research misconduct that may be developed in the future.

We’d like everybody who has an interest in top-quality research to take a look at the concordat and let us know what you think. Comments are open until 11 May 2012 – you can find a copy here on our website.  Feel free to leave us your thoughts, either below the line or send them to: riconcordat@universitiesuk.ac.uk

The media has recently been giving a lot of attention to the idea that an increasing number of British students are opting to venture overseas to pursue an alternative higher education in the Netherlands. Various reasons are cited for this, but the main thread running through the coverage is the increase in fees in England and the increasing number of courses being taught in English in other European countries. One would be forgiven for getting the impression that there was a mass exodus of disgruntled students heading across the North Sea.

However, by digging deeper into the data, we can draw some alternative conclusions. Although we don’t have the figures for the current academic year (2011-12), the number of students from the UK choosing to study in the Netherlands has recently increased by 200, from 1,150 in 2008–09 to 1,350 in 2010–11.

However, these figures are comparatively small when they are compared to the number of Dutch students choosing to study in the UK. Over the same period the number of students from the Netherlands at UK universities increased from 3,200 in 2008–09 to 3,340 in 2010/11; an increase of 4% in two years and over double the number of UK students studying in the Netherlands.

The headlines and anecdotal feedback from student open-days are sending signals that attitudes to studying abroad for a full degree may be changing, but these figures indicate that there is a long way to go before the UK becomes a net exporter of education to the Netherlands.

Higher education student exchanges between the UK and Netherlands, 2008–09 to 2010–11

In fact, we want to encourage more UK students to study abroad – it’s an excellent thing to do, both for personal development and for the country as a whole. It’s not something the British have a great track record for.

Indeed, in terms of student outward mobility, (i.e. the amount of people going abroad to study) the UK has plenty of room for improvement compared to our neighbours in Europe.

In 2009, around 32,000 UK higher education students studied overseas. This compares to more than 67,000 from France and 19,000 from Ireland. Putting these figures into perspective, there 32,000 UK students who opted for a higher education abroad, while in the same year 1.16 million UK students decided to enrol on undergraduate courses at home.

A good illustration of this can be seen in an international comparison of the ‘outbound mobility ratio’. This looks at the number of students from a given country studying abroad, divided by the total level of higher education enrolment in that country. As depicted below, the UK’s ratio gives an outturn of just 1. Compared to our European neighbours and further afield, this is a relatively low result:

Outbound mobility ratio, 2009
Data is provided by UNESCO and is rounded to the nearest 1%.

A similar picture emerges when analysing the level of UK participation in the ERASMUS scheme, the European Union’s flagship education and training exchange programme. In 2009–10, just over 8,000 students from the UK took part in Erasmus for study purposes, below the equivalent figure for both Poland and Spain.

Although improving in recent years, the UK is also well behind countries such as France and Germany, where more than 24,000 students participated in the ERASMUS scheme. Employers are increasingly keen on graduates with a competency in foreign languages, so improving the uptake would prove beneficial to both the individuals concerned and the wider UK economy.

The excellent reputation of universities in the UK is recognised internationally. Our share of the international student market remains second only to the United States. In 2009, just under 10% of all international students came to study in the UK and  more than 15% of all students enrolled at UK higher education institutions came from outside the UK.

As illustrated below, several countries within the OECD, including the United States, continue to attract significant numbers of international students. But these students represent a small percentage of the total number of students enrolled there. At the other end of the spectrum, the Australian higher education system has a very high proportion of students from overseas, at more than 21%.

The UK continues to attract an impressive number of individuals from across the globe who contribute to the truly international atmosphere on UK university campuses, which between them boast more than 2.5 million students.

International student market, 2009

The “Going Dutch” stories read something like this: vast numbers of British students are packing their bags to enrol at Dutch universities; they are heading there because fees are much lower than in the UK; and Dutch institutions offer a range of courses, many of them taught in English. We then have a few selective quotes from happy British students noting how very Continental things feel in Maastricht, how the flat landscape is very conducive to cycling and other such observations.

What these stories tend to leave out is perspective, particularly perspective in terms of the numbers of students involved. The articles talk of British students “flocking” to the Netherlands and of applications doubling. But we are talking about a few hundred British students enrolling on degree courses in the Netherlands each year. In 2010-11, approximately 1,350 students from the UK in total were studying in the Netherlands. This contrasts with the 1.7 million British undergraduates enrolled at UK universities in the same year.

Conversely, there are considerable numbers of students from the Netherlands enrolled on courses at UK universities. The numbers have been going up consistently in recent years; last year, there were approximately 3,340 Dutch students in the UK – more than double the number of UK students enrolled at Dutch institutions. Oddly, these don’t get a mention.

The strength and diversity of the UK’s higher education system might also explain why the vast majority of British students choose to stay here to study. UK universities have a worldwide reputation for excellence in research and teaching, offering a rich and diverse range of courses. Students are also able to interact with people from around the world owing to the international atmosphere on British campuses. Our universities attract more overseas students per capita than any other major higher education system.

The articles also skirt around the important question of who pays for higher education. While we are reminded at every turn that degrees in the Netherlands (and some other European countries) are “free” or cost a fraction of the £9,000 a year maximum that can be charged in England from September, we are not really given the full picture. Tuition fees in the Netherlands, for example – cited at around £1,500 per year – cover only part of the full cost of the degrees. The cost of teaching will also be covered by a heavy subsidy from the Dutch taxpayer. The new fee structure in England from 2012-13 – which involves reducing the public teaching grant and replacing it with subsidised higher fees paid back after graduation – does not require students to pay up front, and for those who do not earn enough, the fees will never need to be repaid: for them at least, it will be “free”. The system has certainly divided opinion, but let’s at least ensure it is described accurately.

While some British students will inevitably be tempted by the prospect of not having to make contributions towards the cost of their degrees after graduating, caution is needed when describing degrees in other countries as “free” or “cheaper”. What is not being communicated properly here are the full costs involved in funding undergraduate courses and how this requires long-term, sustainable provision.

Interestingly, the issue of who covers the bill for higher education has been thrust into the limelight recently in the Netherlands. It has been reported that the Dutch education secretary, Halbe Zijlstra, is considering the possibility of requesting financial reimbursement from Germany for the many German students who study in the Netherlands.

Another feature of the stories is that they assume that UK students going abroad is a sign of failure. Surely it is a positive thing if we have more UK students studying overseas? An international perspective is good for graduates and good for the UK. However, the current proportion of British students who choose to undertake full degrees overseas is much lower than in other countries with similar-sized populations, such as France or Germany.

We should also continue to encourage more UK students to spend time abroad as part of their degrees. The European Union’s Erasmus scheme, for example, has helped from a European perspective, but more British students could be participating. Employers tell us that they are increasingly on the lookout for graduates with experience of other countries and knowledge of another language.

Many of the “Going Dutch” stories have, of course, been generated by some very impressive marketing and press release-writing by universities in the Netherlands. These have been duly lapped up by many British newspapers. But some of these stories have – for want of a better expression – been double Dutch. It is important that they give prospective students and their parents the full picture.

This article first appeared in Times Higher Education on Thursday 12 April 2012.

George Osborne announced £100m matched funding for joint university-business capital projects. A ratio of 2:1 private to public funding means that the fund could support up to £300 million investment in infrastructure for research, across the UK.

It’s not a lot, but it is an important recognition that there has been a problem with the withdrawal of capital investment for research. It’s also a welcome signal that Government understands how important universities are for economic growth.

I also think – although the devil will be in the detail – that it is probably clever use of limited government funds. A relatively small investment at the outset from Government could lever in larger amounts from business, and produce long-term results in sustained partnerships with universities.

This kind of approach was tried – successfully – with the matched-funding scheme for voluntary giving.

But there will doubtless be concerns about this jam-pot approach to funding.

Indeed, I find that conversations about future government higher education policy tend to require diagrams resembling Christmas trees (with the trunk and branches representing core funding for teaching and research, and proper stuff like additional student numbers) decorated with policy baubles, which are nice and shiny, buy a couple of headlines, and are probably lovely for the people involved.

But I think today’s announcement could deliver a lasting sector-wide benefit and I’d be interested to see what others make of it.

Universities in the UK are outstandingly strong on many measures, including: teaching and research, business-industry links and driving social mobility. However, they are operating in an increasingly competitive environment, both nationally and globally. To survive and flourish in the new world order, we have to ensure that our line of vision is set forwards and outwards, not backwards – but that does not always happen.

Analysis of higher education in the UK often adopts a historical perspective – comparing investment, student participation or research outputs by reference to our previous performance. This may be logical, and even necessary, but it is certainly not sufficient. Basing judgements about appropriate levels of achievement on past figures is similar to driving down a motorway by looking in the rear view mirror.

A misdirection of focus
Not only do universities need to look forwards, but more than ever, they also need to look outwards to what business and industry, and our global neighbours, collaborators and competitors are doing.

Undergraduate participation is one example of this. Higher Education Funding Council for England data shows year-on-year increases in participation, including that amongst lower participation groups. Young participation in higher education has increased from 30% in the mid-1990s to 36% at the end of the 2000s, making young people today over 20% more likely to enter into it than in the mid-1990s. In the light of these statistics, some people, including some politicians, maintain that we are producing too many graduates.

The problem is that they are looking in the wrong place, and, in particular, are ignoring the evidence of our competitor countries that shows we are by no means leading the way on higher education participation for an advanced economy. In terms of the proportion of 25-64 year olds with a higher education qualification, we lag behind Canada, Israel, Japan, the US, New Zealand and Russia. Comparing a younger cohort – 25 to 34 year olds – we are also behind Korea and Norway.

Political and economic power is shifting east. China and India have vast ambitions to lead the world in intellectual terms, as well as by manufacturing the products of western innovation quicker and cheaper than we could ourselves. China is projected to produce more graduates than the US and Europe combined by 2020.

This is not just a question of looking at what our global competitors are doing; it also means looking at what employers want. In the UK, major employers are demanding larger numbers of graduates with higher level skills. According to the UK Commission for Employment and Skills, two million additional jobs are expected to be created in higher skilled occupations by 2020, increasing their share of total employment from 42% to 46% over the 10 year period.

As things now stand, the UK performs relatively poorly in terms of productivity compared with some other developed economies. The 2006 Leitch Review found that output per hour worked is almost 30% higher in France and more than 10% higher in Germany and the US than in the UK. Leitch pointed to evidence that suggests the low overall level of skills in the UK is a contributory factor in our productivity performance.

Not only do universities need to look forwards, but more than ever, they also need to look outwards to what business and industry, and our global neighbours, collaborators and competitors are doing.

Looked at from this perspective, it is clearly not enough to compare our performance in higher education with our historic position.

Other areas of rear mirror policymaking
This misdirection of focus is also apparent in research. The preservation of the science ring-fence in 2011 was a tremendous outcome in difficult circumstances. However, in terms of finance, we are standing still and have cut investment capital projects. Yet many of our competitors are doing the exact opposite. Between 2002 and 2007, China, India and Brazil more than doubled their expenditure on R&D, and China and Brazil aim to increase their levels of investment in R&D to 2.5% of GDP by 2020 and 2022, respectively. The US target for R&D investment is 3% of GERD. However, the UK level of investment currently stands at 1.8% of GDP.

Immigration policy is perhaps the best example of rear mirror policymaking. For understandable reasons, the government is keen to cap immigration and reduce the number of people coming into the country. For university-sponsored students, that translates into an uneasy tolerance of current student numbers, representing a compromise between maintaining a cap on international students and universities’ desire to expand the market.

However, determining policy by reference to historic trends ignores the global market for international students. This is a deeply competitive area, and other countries are looking to expand international student numbers. Although overall the UK is the second most popular destination for international students after the US, we have seen our market share reduce from 10.8% in 2000, to 9.9% in 2009. This is not so much attributable to anything that the UK is or is not doing, but to what its competitors are doing: Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Korea have all been actively seeking to increase their share.

We should be ambitious for our universities as a source of export income. As Universities UK’s recent report Driving Economic Growth demonstrates, education exports are already worth £7.9bn to the economy. By 2025, projections indicate they could be worth £16.9bn. The government’s unashamed adoption of industrial activism, supporting areas of the economy where we have the potential to lead the world, must extend to education.

Looking at the road ahead
Universities are complex and multifaceted organisations that fulfil many social, cultural and economic aims. It is unsurprising that there are different ways of measuring their success. However, an overly historic approach is dangerously insular. We need to look outwards, assess our performance in part in response to the shifting demands of industry, but also in part to what is happening in the dynamic and ambitious world beyond our shores.

Universities have a critical role to play in pulling our economy out of the recession, in driving social mobility, and providing the skills and ideas that our economy needs. However to realise their potential, we have to set our sights firmly on the future, on what is happening outside academia and on what is happening in Europe and internationally.

So instead of looking backwards in its rear mirror, the UK needs to focus on the road ahead and be more ambitious. Real goals must be set around increasing the proportion of GDP invested in education, research and development – and not despite of the economic challenges we face, but because of them.

A version of this article first appeared on PublicService.co.uk

That’s not to say that we shouldn’t celebrate the economic contribution universities make. Our recent report Driving Economic Growth did just this and the picture is impressive.

But let’s not forget the other ways universities make significant contributions to our society. Universities have a long and proud record of partnering with the charity sector. Volunteering, mentoring, knowledge transfer, and outreach activities are just a few of the areas where universities and charities work together successfully.

The commitment from universities and student unions to charitable activities is undeniable. Every year 67,000 students volunteer, taking part in conservation work, helping the elderly, supporting people with disabilities and working with children.

But there is a cloud hanging over universities’ charitable work. In these straitened economic times, the need to put a monetary value on activities is seen as paramount. The issue with charitable work is that it can be difficult to calculate its worth in pounds and pence. This can lead people to assume that its value is marginal, when it is far from it. Now more than ever, those of us working in higher education and the Third sector need to guard against the possibility that these activities get overlooked, or worse, scaled down because of the lack of evidence on their contribution.

So far, higher education has struggled to put a monetary value on universities’ contribution to society more generally. But the situation is improving. Universities UK released a report last summer that was the first of its kind and attempted to calculate precisely this. The figures are again impressive. Degrees of Value showed that universities bring huge ‘social’ returns for individuals who attend, estimating that this amounts to the value of £212 million from the 1.9 million current undergraduate students and a total of £1.31 billion for all 11.8 million graduates in the UK.

Another positive development is the government’s announcement that allows charities and universities to share services without charging each other VAT. This is a fantastic move in the right direction, meaning that charities and universities will be able to work more effectively to share costs and resources, and most importantly, increase their social value.

But the focus now needs to be on doing more to record and celebrate the collaborative work of the university and charity sector. We should also get better at sharing  the lessons from success stories.

Universities UK and National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) and National Union of Students (NUS) will be holding a conference to move the debate on. We will focus on how higher education and charities can better work together and we hope that it will provide a platform for discussing how this work can be taken forward.

In the meantime, to start off the converstation here is some advice from one university’s volunteering department about how they and local charities build constructive relationships.

If you have any tips, do’s and don’ts that you want to share, do let us know by posting below!

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Partnerships – some advice

So what exactly are the secrets to a long and successful partnership?

According to Alex Britton of Kingston University’s volunteering department, many charities are aware of the benefits that students bring to their organisation: they are enthusiastic, with fresh ideas and specific skills. Making initial contact is rarely a problem. The next step relies on expectation management: ensuring that organisations have an accurate picture of what a modern student can reasonably offer in terms of time and experience, and that this fits with the students’ needs, skills and aspirations.

Sometimes this can mean working with a charity to adjust a role so that a student can successfully fill it. For example, Kingston’s local Samaritans branch is willing to allow students to do more shifts during term time and fewer during assessment periods. And it encourages students to transfer to their home branch when they go home for the long summer vacation.

* * *

‘Working together: How higher education and charities can deliver social impact’  will take place at Universities UK, Woburn House, Tavistock Sq, London W1CH 9HQ, 27 March 2012, 9.30am – 4.30pm.

Follow  #UniConf to stay up-to-date with the conference.