campusreview . com . au policy & reform the proportion of staff and students from outside of the UK . And we ’ re a university that also is really committed to equally delivering excellence in education and excellence in research . And we think in combination that does help us stand out from the crowd and helps us live up to being the home to the curious , the brave , and the bold .
How can you ensure that you move research and student learning forward in tandem while maintaining equal weight of emphasis to them across all of the different groups at your university ? I think it ’ s really , really hard . There are many universities that , in essence , focus on research excellence and not on education . And there are a number of universities that predominantly focus on education , but not on research . At Essex , we don ’ t want to choose between excellence in education and excellence in research .
Our teaching benefits by being delivered by really great researchers . We want our students to be researchers themselves , in our case through every one of our undergraduates completing a capstone research project . But our researchers benefit by being challenged by our students , by having their ideas contested and in debates about knowledge .
We think our students should be taught by our leading academic researchers . And that ’ s how we approach our staffing strategy . We want to appoint as many staff as possible with an education and a research component to their contracts and to make sure that everybody has an opportunity to teach our undergraduate and postgraduate students .
We think that that ’ s a matter of conviction , and the best sort of education that we can offer , but also a matter of calculation . We think if we ’ re encouraging students to come to Essex , they absolutely deserve to be taught by our leading researchers in the university .
How is Essex University trying to be distinctive and stand out from other universities in the UK ? I think the UK system is very homogenous , certainly more homogenous than the Australian system . And it ’ s been homogenous since the ending of the Polytechnic system in 1992 , and it ’ s becoming increasingly homogenous with a very similar view as to what excellence looks like for most UK universities .
In the UK we don ’ t really have distinctiveness by geography . All universities want strong links with their regions and their cities , and they all want an international profile . And all the universities , to some degree or other , want to engage in research . So I think those drivers do create a homogeneity in the UK .
We have a single funding model for all English universities , a common admission system , and a preference for many of our UK students to go to university away from where their home is .
And I think in combination with a common model of what excellence looks like , there are and will remain very strong homogenous forces in play in English higher education . In that context , you can see how challenging it is for any university to stand out from the crowd .
At Essex , we think we do that by being equally committed to education and research by offering a predominantly campus-based residential experience in which we are championing living and learning , in which the extracurricular activities are just as important as what goes on in the classroom or the laboratory .
We want to compete on the basis of our values . We have a very distinctive value set that we believe is different from others in combination . And we want to champion that and to recruit staff and students who share those values to spend their time and their talents with us .
We ’ ve been very reliant on international student fee income to underpin our research , and the loss of that is still leaving us searching for ways of finding a sustainable basis of investment . Is research funding in UK universities facing a similar level of uncertainty ? In my view , no . In the UK , the governor said research funding is going to increase to 2.4 per cent of GDP with a commitment to 20 billion pounds being spent on research by 2024 and 22 billion by 2026 . And the government has also pledged 800 million over the course of this parliament to create an advanced research and innovation agency , ARIA .
I think our challenge in the UK is not one where there ’ s a reduction in research funding . Our challenge is that the research funding is more directly linked now to government priorities than it is to blue skies funding .
It ’ s becoming increasingly difficult to secure research funding to support
We ’ re a university full of staff and students who are rebels with a cause .
infrastructure , as well as blue skies research , that doesn ’ t map onto some of the strategic priorities of the UK government . I think in our context , and particularly in England , we really have a particular challenge around UK undergraduate fees . And that ’ s where we ’ re expecting big announcements soon that have the potential to really challenge the sustainability of the English higher education system .
You ’ re in your new academic year and you ’ ve got students fully back in that living and learning experience . Can you describe what you see on your campus today and to what extent international students have returned ? After 18 months , it ’ s just an absolute and complete joy to see students back on our three campuses . Not just experiencing face to face teaching , but all the extracurricular activities that we offer . It ’ s highlighted to me that our campuses were a place , but not a home . And what makes them a home is actually having our staff and students on the three campuses and bringing them to life in the way that they need and deserve .
Our international student recruitment ’ s actually been very positive , and we are pleased about that after 18 months of extraordinary disruption . We ’ ve encouraged our international students to come to our campuses in person , if possible , but online if absolutely necessary . And we still know in a number of countries around the world there are travel restrictions that make coming to the UK rather difficult .
I think recruitment from China still remains a challenge . But in other parts of the world , student recruitment has been absolutely excellent , particularly from India and the Indian subcontinents . So I ’ m very pleased to see that we are getting back to the levels of international student recruitment that we had prior to the pandemic striking in March 2020 .
The particular UK context is also worth highlighting in relation to European Union students . From October 2021 , EU students have not been able to have the UK fee of 9,250 pounds or access to the loan
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