Universities have a direct role in supporting local economies and communities – we mustn't forget to tell people, says Alex Miles
A month ago at CASE Europe, I asked Times Higher World University Rankings' editor Phil Baty whether there was any prospect of university rankings reflecting the civic contribution of higher education institutions.
Currently, league tables – global league tables in particular – are one of the main factors skewing the development of universities reward and investment strategies. Institutions are being pushed too far towards what Ernest Boyer's famous taxonomy of scholarly endeavours refers to as 'the scholarship of discovery' and the 'the scholarship of integration', and away from 'the scholarship of application' and 'the scholarship of teaching'. These last two are arguably the forms that enable universities and the academy to have the most immediate, tangible impact on local communities.
Baty's answer was that, unless U-Multirank can do something credible in this area, then global league tables are unlikely to be able reflect regional engagement in their rankings due, quite understandably, to the difficulty in matching data and measurement across borders. Knowledge transfer is an increasingly important measure in global rankings, but as a signifier for the diffusion of economic benefit into a region, it is a tangential proxy at best. If we are looking for the external drivers that motivate universities to evaluate, quantify and promote the contribution they make to regional economic growth, these invariably arise from the national or local level.
Searching for the big pound sign
Over the last few years there has been a notable trend across the higher education sector in evaluating and communicating the contribution universities make at the sub-national level. There has been work by Universities UK and the IPPR into the indirect economic benefits of university spending, by the New Economics Foundation into the Social Return On Investment (SROI) of universities. Also by ESRC-funded research at Strathclyde University into the methodology used in assessing the regional 'innovation eco-system' created by HEIs.
The vagaries of university regional impact methodologies are worth a blog of their own. But in a nutshell, if you're looking for an annual impact figure, you can only really look at certain things, apply a widely-respected multiplier effect and then everything else is illustrative. You can't really quantify the economic impact of a year's worth of research, ideas and innovation with any credibility unless you conduct primary research to a highly granular level across different fields and specific projects – almost impossible and entirely impractical.
In terms of the sociocultural benefits of universities, things get trickier still. While the value of student volunteering, arts and cultural activity and even the apparent health benefits of living near a university all exist, these have too flimsy a connection to economics to convince the general public. Even relatively well-established measures such as SROI are still viewed as a bit dodgy by many commentators.
Universities should move towards elucidating their socio-cultural impact in a more illustrative manner. The University of Warwick has launched a series of infographics based on an independent report into the "regional economic, social and cultural impact" of the institution. We join a growing number of institutions seeking to quantify their contribution at this level. But my experience is that visualising data is often far more powerful than yet another set of numbers.
Why economic self-assessment is catching
Is there a problem with the sector's seeming fixation with the big pound sign? I don't think so, as long as it's not our only focus. It helps translate the phenomenal value and contribution made by universities, which can sometimes be perceived as a complex, multi-faceted, sometimes impenetrable collection of people, ideas, buildings and ideals by the people with whom we share a community. Marketing the many brilliant things that universities do is crucial.
For those of you with a lot of time on your hands (or perhaps planning an impact study of your own), here are just some of the reports published in the last few years: Warwick, Oxford Brookes, Loughborough, De Montfort, Reading, Birmingham, Sheffield, Oxford, West London, Plymouth, Kent (PDF), Essex (PDF), Hull (PDF), Herriot Watt (PDF), Portsmouth, London universities, St Andrew's (PDF), Canterbury, Leeds, and Exeter.
What are the reasons behind this resurgence of self-assessment? Of course the credit-crunch and subsequent austerity measures have led to an increased national focus on the utility delivered by public funding. However, you could argue that of similar influence has been the rise of impact (both as an integrated part of almost all research funding and for the Research Excellence Framework), the growing acceptance of public engagement as an important part of both institutional and scholarly endeavour, and even the recent legislative changes that will require all charities to demonstrate their public benefit.
The regional power vacuum
Why have many (though not all) universities chosen the 'region' as a key focus, or even primary focus, in these exercises of economic validation? At the policy-level, the rise of local enterprise partnerships continues in the wake of the Heseltine review. It has been matched by many universities working more closely with regional authorities to take a central role in the socio-economic wellbeing of their regions.
Universities are 'anchor institutions' within local economies (particularly outside of London). They are relative islands of stability, government funding and innovation amid wider economic difficulties. They're also agents of economic recovery - providing the scale and local connectedness with businesses and public services to drive economic growth and shape the physical environment. The incoming £49bn 'single-pot' Local Growth Fund will provide another opportunity for universities to demonstrate their unique value to local and regional policymakers.
Communicating value to our communities
Such wonkery is all very well, but does 'the region' actually mean anything to people outside the policy bubble? I'm not convinced that exclusively evaluating universities' economic contribution at a regional level speaks to the audience that universities ignore at their peril: namely, their local community.
To return to the example of the University of Warwick, our campus straddles Coventry and Warwickshire. So, when we communicate our economic impact do we talk about the West Midlands (the old RDA border based on the 1974 Local Government Act), or Coventry and Warwickshire (used by the LEP) or something else again?
Most of our students and staff live in Coventry, Kenilworth, Warwick or Leamington Spa. Consequently, the impact (be this good or bad) is likely to felt most keenly in these areas. People in these communities believe the university will have a significant impact on any number of important issues; from the student experience, planning permission, the good will of locally-elected representatives and even our ability to successfully develop widening participation and outreach initiatives in the local area.
We decided to communicate our economic contribution to all of these audiences, making sure that our numbers, our examples, our stories were produced for and given to each of these local areas and audiences. So the next time I'm having dinner in my local pub with someone that asks me just what the university has ever done for Leamington Spa, I'll be able to answer (hopefully, without looking at our infographic): "£84m a year, 1852 jobs, £64.5m in student spending (£13,075 per student), and £2.3m in purchasing from 93 Leamington Spa businesses".
Alex Miles is senior public affairs and policy adviser at the University of Warwick – follow him on Twitter @AlextoMiles
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