Dr. Gill Scott (University of Brighton) speaking at the Convention for Higher Education
University of Brighton
Friday 24 & Saturday 25 May 2013
Organised by the Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics and Ethics (CAPPE), University of Brighton, and co-sponsored by the Campaign for Public Universities, the Council for the Defence of British Universities, and the UCU at the University of Brighton, this two-day conference on Higher Education investigated the current changes that British Higher Education (in England and Wales) is undergoing.
The Convention was designed to enable colleagues from the full range of university disciplines to address how to preserve a properly described 'higher education' from the effects of current proposals, and from the redefinition of universities and of higher learning. As a complement to the Council for the Defence of British Universities and the Campaign for Public Universities, it considered a draft of a Charter for Higher Education that the organisers hope will be debated and refined in most or all institutions of higher learning throughout the UK, and which could then form the core of values around which colleagues could cohere, whether as members of Councils and Academic Boards, Faculty or School Boards, as members of their Course Committees, or as union members.
The Convention was occasioned by the 25th anniversary of the Humanities Programme at the University of Brighton. Born in in adversity in 1988 -- in the midst of an earlier assault on the Humanities -- it has survived and thrived by resisting both governmental pressure and temporary fashions in education and pedagogy. It is an interdisciplinary, non-modular range of degree courses based on small-group teaching, and research-focused student development.
Keynote speakers:
Priya Gopal, John Holmwood, Martin McQuillan, Gill Scott, Will Hutton,
Martin Hall, Luke Martell,
Peter Scott, Tom Hickey, Caroline Lucas (MP), Thomas Docherty, Des Freedman, Terry Brotherstone, Harriet Bradley, Mark Erickson.
