FAB Report

Each Head of School outlined the major strands of research and teaching in their School, and gave the Advisory Board a sense of their strategy going forward. This was followed by a general discussion that touched upon the following areas: the nature of the challenges faced by the Faculty in a rapidly changing HE sector, especially the impact of the new fee structures and the exodus of UK students to foreign providers; the virtuous emphasis we have on practice and employability (one of our advisory members used the term 'pracademics' to describe the way in which some academics engage with organisations and businesses); the importance of alumni support (not just financial) in the future. Over dinner, a number of more practical ways forward were discussed, such as placement provision with the organisations represented by our advisory members, the opportunities for some of our disciplines to work productively together and with the areas of interest represented by Advisory members. Some of these included potential synergies between the interests of Politics and English, PEN's support for oppressed writers, the developing market for non-fictional creative writing; that is, memoir, travel writing, popular essays and even autobiography/biography.