Our final guest lecturer was taken by David Warner the vice chancellor at Swansea Metropolitan. He gave a lecture on the framework and background of higher education in Britain. He discussed ideas of what higher education is and the perceptions we have of higher eduction. There are two main ideas on what higher education is:
The level of work and qualification that you do
Who pays you
We also looked at the idea of university being for developing transferrable skills, not just for subject knowledge.
We were also shown a brief history of the development of universities:
- Middle ages- First university
- 1918, 22 uni's
- 1980, 47 uni's
- 1992, over 100 uni's
- 2004, New legislation
We also looked the the diversity of universities in the Uk:
- Chartered university
- Statutory universities
- Higher education institutions
- Higher ed in further ed
- Growth of the private sector
- The situation in Wales
We also discussed the other possible purposes of higher education:
- Teaching and learning
- To contribute to an economically successful and culturally diverse nation
- To advance knowledge and understanding through scholarship and research
- To contribute to regional prosperity both through technology transfer and direct contribution
- Social justice
We then looked at the current trends in higher education:
- Elite to mass system
- Female student increase
- Postgraduate fluctuations
- Part-time decrease
- Growth of international students
- Balance of funding
I found David to be a good last lecturer and I enjoyed lecture, again he did not use the assistance of slideshows and he spoke very well. I enjoyed hearing about the development of higher education as I knew nothing of the history of it.
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