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In its 2019 manifesto, the Government pledged to strengthen universities’ and colleges’ civic role. Now, over a year on, it is right to ask how universities can prove their civic credentials and boost their ‘value-added’ to society in the process.
The advent of the Civic University Network and the ambition that universities around the country should create Civic University Agreements have clearly helped us to recognise the important role that universities play in civic engagement and the development of the communities in which they are based. Yet, little did we know that this role would be tested and challenged as much as it has been over the last year.
Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, the role of the university as part of the local community has become more starkly and immediately obvious and has often come under scrutiny, not least during the ‘return to campus’ in the autumn, which raised tensions over students importing and spreading the virus.
