There will be many who are excited by the proposed £78 million spend on Carlisle’s Citadels area, making it into a flagship campus for the University of Cumbria, writes Cumbria Cat.
Likewise, there will be many wondering if the £54 million coming from the taxpayer, with the university responsible for the remaining £28 million, is value for money when it sits in 129th place in the Sunday Times 2023 Good University Guide – three places above bottom.
On the plus side, this will retain one of the most striking features of the city, especially for those arriving by train, and will make up for the horrid gates that close Botchergate on Friday and Saturday nights in case someone staggers into the road and gets run over! Is it any wonder locals want to see the area sensitively regenerated?
Certainly, anyone who has been taught in any of the appalling teaching rooms in the Skiddaw Building at Fusehill Street will welcome investment beyond the annual wall painting.
On the negative side, the current standing of the university does beg the question should significant sums of money be invested in shiny buildings when an investment in staff is more likely to reverse the worrying downward trend of student satisfaction.
The Brampton Road campus is light and airy, befitting an art education institute and many a ripping yarn has been played out on the Stanwix Theatre stage as the performing arts students showed off their hard-earned skills.
But what will its future be when the £28 million, most of which will be borrowing at ever increasing interest rates, has been sunk into the Citadels?
In 2010, the university looked to flog the Ambleside campus, only to later realise that, again, this was not going to happen. Fortunately, when forced to revisit the use of the campus they suddenly came to realise that this could and should be a gem.
What was frightening is that when they mothballed the site in 2010, the university management appeared not to see the potential of a campus in the heart of the Lake District where outdoor studies could sit alongside an established culture of theatre, writing and poetry.
This illustrates a feature of the university over the years, the apparent inability to recognise the gems, probably because the real gems are the academic staff, and we all know how truculent and annoying many of them can be as some of my undergraduate feedback testifies!
It has been great to see money spent on new STEM labs at Fusehill Street and investment in a new lecture theatre building at the Lancaster campus and there is continuing expansion alongside further education colleges, notably at Barrow-in-Furness which at least fulfils the original plans for the university to be in those locations around Cumbria to service a potential student population not known to want to travel.
But is the Citadels project more about shiny glass and steel when what is needed is the right facilities to enable academic staff to deliver meaningful and relevant higher education programmes all the time meeting the needs of the city, county, and region?
In 2010/11, the University of Cumbria had 431 academic staff, but this fell to 362 in 2015/16 and then to 338 in 2020/21, the most recent annual report available on the university website. This fall has, undoubtedly, led to the fall in academic standards and the subsequent fall in the university’s standing.
The Cat’s degree was earned elsewhere, but I have many, many friends who studied with the University of Cumbria. Those who enjoyed the experience rave about this or that lecturer, those members of teaching staff who went that extra mile or three. Many speak disparagingly about programmes being abandoned or module choices restricted to save money, usually through reducing staff costs.
And yet, looking at the plans for the Citadels campus, there will be a 200-seat lecture theatre. Pray, which courses will have 200 students to fill it or are we seeing, already, the marketisation of the building for conferences and the like?
There will also be a Centre for Digital Transformation which is a jumble of words that is pretty meaningless as every organisation has a transformative digital vision. Surely, a digital transformation in the third decade of the new millennium, should be supporting students in their local area with the collaboration with Furness College being a very worthwhile example.
The Cat applauds the efforts made to turn a financially failing university into one that has crossed into profitability – although should higher education be about profit? Balancing the books is, admittedly, challenging especially when trying to marry the whims of Government in terms of teacher training or health staff education alongside the increased expectations of students paying £9,000-plus a year just for the course.
But if it is to reverse the trend of falling satisfaction and to rebuild their reputation, it needs to invest not in a shiny edifice but in that golden thread that runs through highly regarded universities – its academic staff.
Visionaries who can inspire future generations are the heartbeat of any successful university, as are committed staff at any school or FE college. Spending at least some of the £28 million planned for the Citadels project on recruiting, developing, and retaining committed academic staff and giving them the cutting-edge resources would be a start.
What are your views about the University of Cumbria? Do you agree with Cumbria Cat or think his claws are out for the wrong reasons? We’d love to hear your views – email [email protected]
About Cumbria Cat
Born in Cumberland and, from 2023, will be back living in Cumberland, having spent most of the past 50 years in some place called Cumbria, this cat has used up all nine lives as well as a few others.
Always happy to curl up on a friendly lap, the preference is for a local lap and not a lap that wants to descend on the county to change it into something it isn’t. After all, you might think Cumbria/Cumberland/Westmorland is a land forged by nature – the glaciers, the rivers, breaking down the volcanic rocks or the sedimentary layers – but, in reality, the Cumbria we know today was forged by generations of local people, farmers, miners, quarriers, and foresters.
This cat is a local moggy, not a Burmese, Ocicat or Persian, and although I have been around the block a few times, whenever I jump, I end up on my feet back in my home county. I am passionate about the area, its people, past, present and future, and those who come to admire what we hold dear, be it lakes and mountains, wild sea shores, vibrant communities or the history as rich and diverse as anywhere in the world.
