The twentieth anniversary of HEPI merits reflection on the positioning of the UK in the context of changes internationally in higher education. What is particularly striking to me is that throughout the twentieth century and earlier, the UK played a critical role in helping to shape the global and European higher education landscape. In contrast, at a time when the values of higher education and transnational collaboration are vulnerable to the crosscurrents of a geopolitically contested world, the UK’s position has become more ambiguous.
Ireland provides a valuable vantage point from which to review these changes. As the UK considers its options in the post-Brexit world, Ireland by contrast is proudly celebrating 50 years of EU membership. Membership, and a determined policy to expand secondary and then higher education, have been fundamental to Ireland’s dramatic social and economic transformation. From a country heavily dependent on protectionist economic policies and agriculture, it is now a high-skilled internationally-open trading society and one of the best-performing economies in the EU.
The values of internationalisation, collaboration and scientific exchange have been intrinsic to UK universities. Arguably, the rapid development of the University of Oxford from 1167 was both a denial of these values – spurred by Henry II banning English students attending the University of Paris – and an affirmation, when in 1190 Oxford welcomed its first international student. Beginning in the seventeenth century, England and Scotland became leading scientific centres. Discoveries by Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, Jethro Tull, George Stephenson, Charles Darwin, Alexander Graham Bell, Alan Turing, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, Kathleen Lonsdale and more recently Stephen Hawking, Tim Berners-Lee and Anne McLaren – to name just a few – have had an enormous impact on modern science and society around the world. In 2020, the Oxford team led by Sarah Gilbert developed an early vaccine against COVID-19 in collaboration with AstraZeneca.
