Who: Gary Mabbutt
Why: His knee.

Should also say, the reason I make these points at Open Days is (partly) to be CMA compliant. I can't promise or offer what is undeliverable as degrees are perceived as products or otherwise face fines/legal issues. Despite my revulsion at such framing the numbers stack up favorably when called upon

Returns on investment. Instead the sector is pushed to make further articulations of value through other means, such as wellbeing, when secondary and tertiary 'justifications' shouldn't be needed.

And invest appropriately in arts and culture. A great example of this was the recent threat of cuts to the Creative Scotland budget (annually around £6m). The social conservatism that has poisoned the well of public discourse eschews the factual reality that arts and culture disproportionately...

But the reality is that the conservative 'low value' dogma translates into precarious work, low wages and general dismissal by the broader British public. Due to the carnival mirror image Britain depicts itself as it fails to recognise the possibility of what could be possible if we did value
...

Says a lot to me about the social imaginary and how these debates are framed. I'm inclined to reject economic rationalisation of degrees as much as possible as it is an incorrect yardstick but when pushed on it you can quite quickly dispel notions of these degrees being 'low value'...

Well at least our CTP isn't based on advancing more assessments in increasingly varied forms, in-line with a principles and priorities policy that is basically the opposite of these aims...

🤷‍♂️You'd think, but during the period I'm describing the local paper was wound down, went out of print, closed it's offices and the digital replacement is closer to client journalism. Another slow erosion of accountability within the civic sphere and why I presume there hasn't been much public outcry.

I fear for my hometown, for my family and friends who have enjoyed a minor uptick off a longer downturn. We're known as a city of reinvention, of restoration but it is hard forsee how the city pivots off of a corporation that it has become so meshed with?

Future is mortgaged against the presumption that the knowledge economy is not only a stable sector but one of perpetual growth and I question (based on the constant expansionism of the Uni management) whether there was a plan to be sustainable that didn't require further doubling down on a bad bet..

(Imo) if the Uni folds then the city will backslide significantly and will be held captive to the whims of capital financing and speculative property developers. The council have done a certain amount to try and diversify the city's offer beyond the Uni (e.g. City of Culture status) but the its...

And they have year on year invested in that asset. In fairness to them the city centre is unrecognisable from my adolescence but large parts of that regeneration are ongoing and contingent on Coventry being a desirable destination for students and the implicit increase in property value...

If you think of Cov as England's Motor City, I grew up in the desolation of a deindustrialising city left to wither on the vine. The post '92 settlement moved the Polytechnic into a 'New' University and the '98 tuition fee intro created opportunity for those who saw the city as a distressed asset...

Every time I've returned another student housing tower block has been added to the skyline. I said every time to family that is not a good thing and the Uni's rapacious growth was unsustainable and unfortunately here we are. The reason the Uni weren't challenged or reigned in is best understood...

This move comes off the back of a couple of decades of 'capital investment'(sound familiar?). During which Cov Uni became the city's de facto landlord and (I think largest employer). The majority of the city centre is underwriter by the Universities ownership or Student expenditure...

That attrition is relatively harmless compared to the fire/rehire system they put in place by creating a subsidiary company and moving all professional staff onto contracts attached to the subsidiary to try and avoid having to pay the pension benefits they rightly owe their workers...

Ah my hometown and alma mater. Great example of the post '98 gamble going bust. My Mum was a shelf-stacker at the library and one of the Uni's biggest cheerleaders but even she ended up retiring early last year in disillusionment. They haven't replaced her or any of her peers...