Sir – The time has come to respond to the campaign of misinformation against Oxford Brookes that has played out in the letters pages over the last month.
Repeated charges that Brookes has expanded exponentially and has ambitions to continue growing ad infinitum are a complete falsehood. The growth in student numbers in the last ten years has, under any comparison, been modest and has always been met with increased on-campus accommodation for new students.
Moreover, anyone who believes that student numbers will significantly increase over the next decade is ignorant of national demographic trends and the higher education funding outlook. Calls to reduce the size of Brookes must be considered in the context of the direct impact it would have on people’s livelihoods. We employ over 2,500 people.
The latest analysis from Universities UK shows that for every 100 jobs within a higher education institution, a further 99 jobs are generated in the wider economy.
We educate scientists, engineers, health care professionals, teachers, architects, and many other professionals, many of them from the county, many of them mature students.
Who could seriously argue that Oxford would be better off without our students?
Brookes has always been clear that our plans for our new buildings are about providing better facilities to match the standard of work our staff and students achieve currently, in shabby and outdated accommodation. Our plans have been drawn up after exhaustive consultation and the university made an enormous effort to invite the community to comment on and influence our plans on three separate occasions in 2006, 2007 and 2008.
The fact remains that during this process very few objections were received and the selective quoting of public submissions is an attempt to distort the overwhelmingly positive comments made.
Any notion that Brookes is all-powerful and can trample over democratic processes is nonsense. We are subject to the same planning rules as everybody else.
Professor Janet Beer Vice-Chancellor, Oxford Brookes University
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here