Unpacking the role of universities as civic anchor institutions

Professor Roger Lewis, YU Associate

The phrase ‘anchor institution’ is currently in vogue but what does it mean in reality? What defines an ‘anchor’? What kinds of organisation are in a good place to take on the role? How might their different contributions complement each other as part of a wider system?  More specifically for YU, what role should universities play? These questions were posed at a roundtable convened last week to discuss a new report published by Newcastle University researchers on universities and place-based leadership.

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Universities and Local Industrial Strategies ‘Part two: harnessing the expertise of universities’

In this guest blog, Kevin Richardson, from the Local Academy, makes the case why universities should take an active role in developing and implementing local industrial strategies.

Part one of this blog set out a number of reasons why universities could be forgiven for taking a sceptical approach to supporting the development of Local Industrial Strategies (LISs). However, the blog also argued that adopting a longer-term perspective may prove to be the best option.

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Universities and Local Industrial Strategies ‘Part one: glass half-empty?’

In this guest blog, Kevin Richardson, from the Local Academy, makes the case why universities should take an active role in developing and implementing local industrial strategies.

Universities can be forgiven for taking a glass half-empty stance when supporting the development of Local Industrial Strategies (LISs). However, embracing a wider and longer-term perspective may prove the better option.

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‘Universities, Place and the Industrial Strategy’

Dr Peter O’Brien, Executive Director

Recently, YU held a roundtable in Leeds with Universities UK (UUK), which brought together universities, local enterprise partnerships (LEPs), combined authorities, government and national research funding agencies. The purpose was to share information about the development of local industrial strategies in Yorkshire, to illustrate the specific role of the twelve universities in Yorkshire in industrial policy and strategy, and to identify areas of shared interest. UUK had organised eight similar-type events with universities across England, but the session in Leeds was the only one held jointly with a ‘place-based’ collaborative university organisation. 

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The Ten Commandments for Local Industrial Strategies…

Monika Antal, Executive Manager

In the past few months the Works Centre for Local Economic Growth (WWG) has worked with a group of local and combined authorities, LEPs and central government to understand the challenges all parties face in designing a Local Industrial Strategy (LIS) that is evidence-based and builds upon the existing Strategic Economic Plans that areas have in place. From this, they have pulled together a set of ideas about how both local and central government might address some of those challenges. These 10 ideas are presented in the ‘Developing effective local industrial strategies’ guide, which was launched in London on 25 June, and I was there to hear what the experts had to say about it. Here are some of the key messages I picked up. 

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International students: economic and social impact

The commission to the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) specifies a series of themes on which the government would like advice under the broad framework of the economic and social impacts of international students in the UK. As well as considering the overall impact, evidence and advice is being sought on the following: the impact of tuition fees and other spending by international students on the national, regional and local economy and on the education sector.

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