Nottingham: A History of Britain’s Global University, by John Beckett

Abstract

Is Nottingham ‘Britain’s global university’? Of course not. In terms of global influence, it performs respectably, but not spectacularly. The most recent rankings saw it placed 147th in the Times Higher league, and somewhere similar in the Shanghai classifications. With branch campuses in China and Malaysia, it does have a global reach, to be sure. And it is only fair to note that these were the first branches established by any British institution. But, even taking account of such intriguing offshoots, it is scarcely the most internationalised of Britain’s very international universities. Forty-one per cent of its students—or 27 per cent if one only counts those resident in Nottingham—are from overseas. By contrast, 67 per cent of students at Imperial and 69 per cent of those at the LSE are non-British. The title of this book, and its concluding claim that Nottingham is ‘Britain’s one truly global university’ (p. 516) is somewhat disconcerting. So is the fact that the manuscript was read by the vice-chancellor and is now prefaced by a glowing foreword from the registrar, celebrating a project which ‘took longer than everyone imagined’ but nonetheless has generated important ‘outputs’ (p. vi). Its glossy paper; its 487 full-colour photos; its (surely subsidized) price: all this, too, evokes a promotional piece rather than a work of history. The tone of the text, which begins by extolling ‘a story of success when measured in terms of the higher education world more generally’ (p. 2), is likewise typical of the sorts of corporate celebrations that many universities now delight in.