The latest episode of the podcast in which notable sector figures create a novel HE institution. This time with bonus historical content.

This episode of My Imaginary University is rather longer than usual and follows a slightly different course to previous editions. My guest this time is Professor Sir David Eastwood, most recently, until his retirement, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Birmingham but someone with over 25 years of senior leadership in the sector.

David explores some of the history of higher education, starting with medieval universities and their surprising employability focus before moving on to the development of the University of Birmingham and subsequent civic institutions.

We explore the pioneering interdisciplinary approach of Keele from 1950 and the distinctive success enjoyed by the University of Warwick following its very different approach to dealing with the 1981 university cuts. Noting the importance of scale for university success David observes that creating a substantial challenger university is always going to be difficult. Nevertheless, he is prepared to try and moves on to outline his imaginary university which he is confident he can make succeed within the current UK HE environment (assuming a massively generous endowment). Whilst he loves the undergraduate offer this would be an exclusively graduate university with a strong research base. 

It’s a great long view of universities through the ages and a novel idea for an extremely well funded imaginary graduate institution from someone with the experience to deliver.