A world of knowledge

Nov 15 2008 by Peter Elson, Liverpool Daily Post

A world of knowledge

The University of Liverpool caused a sensation by opening a campus in China, but that’s just the start of global expansion the new vice chancellor tells Peter Elson

WHEN I meet Prof Sir Howard Newby, newly installed Vice-Chancellor of the University of Liverpool, he’s very apologetic about arriving 10 minutes late.

In his capacity as chairman of the Heritage Railway Committee, he had been presenting a token chunk of the 1836 Edge Hill railway station to National Museums Liverpool.

There is an evolutionary metaphor here: Edge Hill station is the world’s oldest operational railway station and it helped to start the spread of railways around the global.

Similarly, Sir Howard plans to extend Liverpool University around the world, transporting knowledge, just as George Stephenson’s tracks carried people.

“We’re in a knowledge economy. We produce the knowledge and the students who become the next generation of skilled graduates,” says Sir Howard, 61.

“Two years ago we opened a campus outside Shanghai and we’re partners with the City of Liverpool in the Shanghai Expo in 2010.

“There are plans to open a graduate school in India and we’d like to do more over the next few years to create a network of campuses around the world teaching Liverpool degrees in English.

“Talk today is scattered with words like multi-national and multi-ethnic and we have to give an opportunity for students to have an international experience, not just a bolt-on degree.”

Today’s students are very demanding and they know what’s out there on the international scheme, he believes.

But Sir Howard is emphatic that nobody thinks Liverpool will be abandoned, in the way that the Roman Empire’s power drifted to its satellites.

“We’re globally connected in the way of a modern economy. Really, we’re defining our 19th century roots in a 21st century idiom,” he says.

“Liverpool was a port connected to the British Empire serving the local economy here. Now we have a global economy that sustains us.”

He is clearly proud that the university has produced eight Nobel prize winners and thrust forward in the 19th century through the old-established academia, coining the term “redbrick university”.