Opening Keynote commentary
Sir Ron Cooke (JISC Chairman) & David Eastwood (CEO of HEFCE)
The 2007 JISC conference began with a welcome from JISC Executive Secretary Dr Malcolm Read who thanked the more than 600 delegates for attending the conference, held for the fifth year running at the ICC in Birmingham.
JISC Chairman Professor Sir Ron Cooke outlined JISC’s achievements over the last year, including the launch of the UK Access Management Federation, the launch of JISC Collections as a mutual trading company and the launch of SuperJANET5, the upgrade to the JANET network which quadruples its capacity. JISC tries to anticipate trends so that FE and HE continue to have the ‘competitive edge’ in terms of innovation and the ability to plan constantly (Sir Ron Cooke, JISC)
He said that JISC tried to anticipate trends so that FE and HE continue to have the ‘competitive edge’ in terms of innovation and the ability to plan constantly. JISC’s work in supporting the development of digital repositories, he said, was an example of this work.
International collaboration is important in a number of areas, he said, welcoming delegations from the Netherlands and Denmark to the conference.
Sir Ron talked of the JISC Value for Money report, published recently, which showed, for example, that for every £1 JISC spent on services, the community received £9 of demonstrable value. Comparisons with commercial equivalents for JISC’s services showed that JISC and its services brought significant economies of scale
Introducing the new JISC strategy, Sir Ron said that it included a new strand, that of business and community engagement, an area which is becoming more and more important to the HE sector. Open access and interoperability were principles which also pervaded the newly updated strategy.
Sir Ron Cooke welcomed keynote speaker Professor David Eastwood, CEO of HEFCE, who began by saying that ‘we are in an era of mass higher education.’ Expansion of the sector had, he said, transformed the sector, and JISC had been important to that expansion. The Dearing Report has led to a post-1998 increase in funding to a return of the sector to a 1992 level.
Outlining some of HEFCE’s key priorities, Professor Eastwood spoke about the target of 50% participation in HE of under 30’s which he said would be achieved early in the next decade. The Leitch report recommends a dramatic new investment in skills across the workforce, including higher level skills. More than 40% of the workforce should have level 2 qualifications or above, it recommends, he said, compared to the current 29%.
He echoed Sir Ron Cooke in emphasising the importance of business and community engagement to make the most of the knowledge and intellectual property that is generated by the HE sector. IP transfer is the key, rather than exploitation, he suggested.
HEFCE remains committed to excellence in teaching in learning and in maintaining a world-class research base. Drivers for change include an increasingly diverse student body, a more demanding student body, new research approaches, the internet and the growth of IT enabled tools and cost and funding pressures.
Professor Eastwood talked of new student approaches to learning which had changed ways of accessing and using information. What do these mean for higher education institutions? he asked. Previously universities had established a degree of order to information and knowledge, but there are question marks against such structures with seemingly universal access to information through ICT and the internet. Calling for a ‘partnership between teaching staff and information professionals’, Professor Eastwood suggested that such a partnership could help meet this challenge and maximise the investment being made in ICT. Investment in information resources should be at the top of priority lists for universities, he said.
In addition, student expectations for immediate and desktop access to a range of materials were increasing all the time. This had major implications for university priorities both at the institutional and the national level.
A new metric-based framework for the Research Assessment Exercise was now in place beyond 2008 and plans for the 2008 exercise were in place. Professor Eastwood said he was ‘confident’ the system would work without difficulties. Beyond 2008 there will be a major emphasis on the quality of information. One of the key challenges will be ‘the data challenge’ (David Eastwood, HEFCE)
Beyond 2008 there would be a major emphasis on the quality of information. This meant a commitment to robust and transparent systems. One of the key challenges will therefore be ‘the data challenge’, he said.
Reaffirming HEFCE’s commitment to JISC, he said that it provided an excellent model for delivering economies of scale to the sector. Are there other such services that could be delivered on ‘a JISC-type model’? he asked.
Professor Eastwood ended by saying that the HE sector faced a series of profound challenges, but that such challenges presented a series of question about the nature of higher education which will shape the university and indeed the nature of learning in the twenty-first century.