Brexit and the Future of UK Higher Education: Hopes and Concerns
(opens in a new window)Dr Vassiliki Papatsiba, Cardiff University
Vassiliki Papatsiba is a Reader in Social Sciences – Education at Cardiff University. Her research sits within Political Sociology applied to international higher education and focuses on three interrelated areas: a) Internationalisation in higher education, academic mobility and migration; b) International research collaboration, global (in)equity, and public policies; c) Universities and knowledge exchange with their international and local communities and networks. She served on the Steering Group of the Global Challenges in Higher Education and Research (GHEAR) of the World Universities Network (WUN) (2018-2022) and led the OECD’s Country Review on Knowledge Exchange in Lithuanian Universities and Research Institutes (2021). She was on the Research Management Committee of the ESRC/RE Centre for Global Higher Education (2018-2020) and directed the Centre for the Study of Higher Education (2017 to 2020) at the University of Sheffield. Vassiliki held a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Intra-European Fellowship (EIF) at the University of Oxford (2005-2008) and was a Co-Investigator in the Economic and Social Research Council funded research ‘Brexit, migration and higher education’ (Brexit Priority Project award ES/R000166/1).
Webinar Details
Brexit presents a major disruption to UK universities with far-reaching consequences for student demographics, research infrastructure and capacity, and finally international partnerships and relationships in higher education and research. Brexit and its Leave campaign argued that that EU-focused collaborations were holding back and impeding UK higher education and research from reaching its truly global potential and ambitions. In our ESRC-funded study (2017-2019), 127 institutional leaders (e.g. senior university executives, administrators, and academics - with some student and governing council representatives) from twelve universities in the four UK home nations confronted this claim by raising concerns about Brexit affecting the UK’s reputation, discouraging potential future collaborations, and potentially leading to undesired isolation and insularity.
Even though the pandemic may have delayed and blurred some of the undesirable effects of Brexit, the facts are undeniable: EU student enrolments have halved post-Brexit, EU staff recruitment is steadily dwindling, research funding successes have declined while pressing uncertainties about inclusion in Horizon Europe persist. As anticipated, these are all key areas of activity that have been exposed to the severing of ties with Europe and have suffered as a result of it. However, notwithstanding the expressed concerns our participants tempered these with hope about the future. This was underpinned by their belief in the resilience and security of the sector, UK universities as organisations espousing excellence and quality and finally higher British education as a global brand.
This webinar took place on Tuesday 28th February at 1pm.
A recording of the webinar is below and also available at this link - (opens in a new window)https://bit.ly/CSHE_9
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