Olive Hopker Guest Lecture

On the 14th of February the Guest that took the lecture was Olive Hopker the ‘Head of Planning and Development at Swansea Metropolitan University.’

The lecture was about ‘Collaboration –v– Competition’ we discussed the difference between Collaboration and Competition in Higher Education.

The first thing that we talked about was the employment structure in Wales and the statistics. I learnt that Micro enterprise represents almost 95% of all businesses in Wales, therefore only approximately 5% of businesses are large as people these days are creating small businesses. The next thing that was discussed was Universities and how they collaborate with each other. This allows courses to be improved, sharing libraries and Internet sites such as turn it in. On the other hand Universities are in competition for a number of things such as Student recruitment, Staff recruitment and Research funding although they collaborate for research they compete for funding. All universities want the best staff possible.


There are many Collaboration benefits. Sharing experience and knowledge, cost saving, value of a ‘external eye.’ This meaning someone from the outside looking in, someone who is not involved sometimes has a clearer view on things. Swansea Metropolitan University and Trinity College are due to collaborate.

Swansea University says that the collaboration will

“Improve advice, guidance and information provision, extend support for Personal Development Planning processes offered through the curricula, focus more attention on employer liaison and marketing and expand online services and resources.” (2012)

The main benefit for the Competition is to promote efforts to do better and Provide choice, this allows choice of alternative products/services such as more choice of courses.


We later talked about the advantages and disadvantages of a Large Higher Education Institute and Small Higher Education Institute. We come to the conclusion the Small HIE are easier to manage as they have small classes allowing more flexibility although there are small resource bases such as libraries and there are limited choices. The disadvantages in a small HEI would then be the advantages at a large HEI the most obvious of the large HEI would be the large resource base. There are a lot more things; there is a wide subject base and a range of courses, meaning more opportunities for staff career moves. The limitations of being in a large HEI would be there are no flexibility with course’s if your on a course then you would have to stick to it as most of the other courses would have large classes. There would be complex structures and rigid procedures.

As I am in a small HEI at Swansea Metropolitan I have to agree with there are more advantages at being in smaller HEI as I am able to contact my lectures and tutors easily and prefer to be in smaller classes where we all get to know each other very well.


References

Swansea University (2012) Careers Service accessed 2nd April from
http://www.swansea.ac.uk/careers/recruiters/employerneedsandtrends/careersservice/