Manchester-UMIST Merger - For better or worse?

The official line is that the merger of the two institutions will build upon their specialist areas, combine resources and enhance the new joint universities league position along with its reputation and employment prospects.

I think the aim is to provide the best university in terms of quality and reputation outside of Oxbridge and London - All official stuff available at: http://www.man.ac.uk/study/ugrad/unity.htm#reputation or on links from main Manchester website.

What does everyone else think?

I think it's a fantastic development: there's no real reaon why all the power should be concentrated in Oxbridge/London/the G5 unis.

It's interesting how conservative the university world is: whenever someone comes up with an administrative/institutional innovation everybody lines up to slate it. Look at all the people who ganged up to derail the proposed UCL/Imperial merger the other year...most of them didn't give a damn about either of those colleges in the first place, yet as soon as they suggest doing something new the knives come out...

From UMIST's perspective i think it's beneficial however i believe it will be detrimental to Manchester. I think that the targeting of time and resources into the merger and the league table difference between the two universities will initially cause a fall in Manchesters current league table position out of the top 15.

Any thoughts on the subject?

The official line is that the merger of the two institutions will build upon their specialist areas, combine resources and enhance the new joint universities league position along with its reputation and employment prospects.

I think the aim is to provide the best university in terms of quality and reputation outside of Oxbridge and London - All official stuff available at: http://www.man.ac.uk/study/ugrad/unity.htm#reputation or on links from main Manchester website.

What does everyone else think?

From UMIST's perspective i think it's beneficial however i believe it will be detrimental to Manchester. I think that the targeting of time and resources into the merger and the league table difference between the two universities will initially cause a fall in Manchesters current league table position out of the top 15.

Any thoughts on the subject?

its a pain in the backside for me. because the physics departments are joining together from september they've canceled the course i applied for (mathematical physics), which was going to be my insurance choice after cambridge. instead im doing maths and physics, but i would have prefered the original course, and i didnt find out about the change untill AFTER i had applied
Donna
-x-

A friend of mine was in a similar situation. He applied for Physics at UMIST, after being told at the open day that you could apply to either-it didnt matter, and then got a letter about a month after applying saying "actually, we don't exist anymore". Luckily for him, Manchester took him on and offered him a place. .

The official line is that the merger of the two institutions will build upon their specialist areas, combine resources and enhance the new joint universities league position along with its reputation and employment prospects.

I think the aim is to provide the best university in terms of quality and reputation outside of Oxbridge and London - All official stuff available at: http://www.man.ac.uk/study/ugrad/unity.htm#reputation or on links from main Manchester website.

What does everyone else think?

From UMIST's perspective i think it's beneficial however i believe it will be detrimental to Manchester. I think that the targeting of time and resources into the merger and the league table difference between the two universities will initially cause a fall in Manchesters current league table position out of the top 15.

Any thoughts on the subject?

Short-term...possibility of a fall in the rankings

Long-term...possibility of becoming one of the best uni's in the country

So apart from individual qualms like the cancellation of courses and loss of money through website design , in general everybody feels that the official line is correct and that the merger will enhance Manchesters reputation as a university and increase its league table ranking?

The combined university will be better than both Manchester and UMIST as they stand today?

They will build on Manchester's fantastic history: splitting the atom, the first mainframe computers, a great school of social science and economics, historians like Lewis Namier, plus UMIST's fantastic tradition in engineering... and the business school, and so on...Manchester has already won 20 Nobel Prizes (without the preferential funding and networking that historically has gone to Oxbridge) , and the fact that nobody knows about that achievement illustrates the point-a lot of it's down to PR (PR is one thing Oxbridge and London are world class in)-of course that becomes even more important now-it's no good being a class act if you come over all shy about it...

I totally disagree with the point you're making.

Firstly, in UK higher ed. we're absolutely terrible with PR. Universities here have not promoted themselves anywhere near as well as in the US. I would actually argue that, with the recent exception of LSE, London has been one of the worst. Despite their reasonable achievements, nobody has heard of UCL or Imperial outside of Europe (sometimes even within Europe!). There is no international recognition there at all. Over the last few years there has been some improvement, with Warwick (particularly its Biz School) and increasingly Imperial, City University Business Schl to mention a few examples. This is actually something that UCL have themselves admitted, about its lack of a global brand name due to poor promotion.

As for the Oxbridge point, you're way off!! They haven't needed any effort to promote themselves, even on achievement, 120 Nobel Prizes between then, that is more than any country in the world, with the exception of the USA. Oxbridge haven't been anywhere near as active in their promotion as compared with say Harvard, some of this could be due to a lack of finance. The point is that these 2 universities have achieved so much, they haven't needed to shout about it, it's blatantly obvious for the world to see.

I think with Manchester Univ., and this is something I've seen often in your posts quite often, you're looking too far back and you're missing the present. It's not that due to bad PR people aren't aware of how fantastic Manchester *has been*, it's just that people aren't so bothered about it anymore. Manchester has been a very prestigious institution, but even if you look at their list of Nobel Prizes, in the last 20 years there has been very little. Which is exactly why over the last 10 years the university has declined in prestige. You see, you can keep rattling on about your past achievements for only so long, and then there comes a point where people cease to listen. I think the example of Liverpool FC is relevant here, during the early 90s they'd constantly refer to past title victories, and so many then actually did think that this sleeping giant would reawaken. Now, 10 years later, nobody has any time for Liverpool fans rattling on about their illustrious history in a way which suggests they're going to return to that golden era sometime soon. It's the same for Manchester Univ., yes nice, they have done well, but what about now?

What about their RAE ratings now? How about a/v A level grades? For any university to be taken seriously, it needs to at least be selective and have a good research profile. Manchester does reasonably well on both, which is why its considered to be a reasonably good university-no more.

If it counts for anything then I disagree with you completely.

I think it may count for more if you could give me your reasons for doing so