What is Ed?

14/2/12

Guest speaker - Olive Hopker Head of Planning and Development at Swansea Metropolitan University

Olive Hopker came in an spoke to us about Collaboration V Competition. Some the things she spoke about include:

× Ministerial Statements
× Employment and Governance Structure in Wales
× Collaboration and Competition issues
× Regional Planning and role of the HEFCW (Higher Education Funding Council for Wales)

She gave us some examples of current collaborations such as:

× External examiners
× Research projects
× Library access
× ICT
× Academic development

After this, Olive then went on to discuss some of the benefits from these current collaborations, some of these contained:

× Shared expertise and knowledge
× Cost saving
× Enhance reputation
× Value of ‘external eye’
× Greater effectiveness

Following this was the explanation of HEFCW being the body responsible for the allocation of public funding for Higher Education across Wales. I found this very interesting because this is something that I didn’t know, and also something that I’d never really thought about until Olive said it.

All in all I found this lecture really interesting because it made me begin to question thing about HE that I never would have known before.