Birkbeck is a world-class research and teaching institution, a vibrant centre of academic excellence and London's only specialist provider of evening higher education.
Their About Us page goes on to say
We encourage applications from students without traditional qualifications and we have a wide range of programmes to suit every entry level. Our academic reputation also attracts many traditional full-time postgraduate students.
I thought about Birkbeck today because I received a circular email announcing a seminar there. The exact title was new but the words stirred an echo of current preoccupations from somewhere just below the conscious surface: "Lifelong Learning in a time of austerity". Sounds like a topic that will inevitably turn up in future blogs.
It's only some months since I had a look at Birkbeck's website, when events were forcing me to think about DACE and its relationship to the rest of the University. I loved those words when I read them. As I'd suspected, this seemed to be an entire institution founded on the DACE principles. Here is the reconciliation of "research-led" and "inclusive"; the philosophy of university adult education within which I made sense. The alternative is unspeakable, immoral: you declare that people from particular postcode areas are suited only to certain sorts of education. No Philosophy or Astronomy for them.
London's population is equal to that of Scotland and can support an entire institution operating on this philosophy. We were the Birkbeck wing of Glasgow University; outward-looking, accessible teaching conceived and delivered by active researchers, leading for those who want it into the mainstream. Every such University should have a Birkbeck wing.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this view ignores sociological or political realities, subscribes to an incomplete notion of what's valuable, misunderstands the nature of a university, overrates what we achieved towards these ends.... I'd love to see the arguments. The DACE project is still alive, not yet unhealthy but not strengthened by the events of the last year. And we were not granted the respect implicit in debate.
