Tidying up, I just found an essay I wrote when I was 16 which was published in the Western Morning News after it was placed second in the Western Morning News – South West Enterprise Limited Business Essay competition in 1997. This is the opening of the essay, I think you’ll see why it made me laugh….!
“As a whole the Westcountry has a poor economy, characterised by high levels of unemployment and migration, and decreasing levels of industry. To improve the economy these processes have to be reversed.
To do this the area has to develop a policy committed to improving further education facilities and communications, particularly in the form of information technology and Internet links.”
I go on to argue:
‘One of the major reasons that talented young people leave the region is the lack of further education facilities. The universities in Plymouth and Exeter offer good opportunities, but are still somewhat distant for students in the far north or south of the region. So further education facilities should be made more available within the Westcountry.
To do this a branch of an existing university could be built to service the remoter students, perhaps on the north coast around Barnstaple…. Universities in the Westcountry could also develop intern[et] links allowing students to participate in further education while at home…. In Scotland the University of the Highlands is developing this method of computer links, which it uses with some success…’
See why I found this funny?! Apparently regional development and the role of the university sector has been of significant interest since I was in my teens. What surprises me looking at this is that my comments preceded the development of the Combined Universities in Cornwall initiative and looked to the University of the Highlands and Islands as a model. Who would have thought that seventeen years later I would be working for the University of the Highlands and Islands, working on practical delivery of careers guidance through web technologies, and studying a PhD in higher education and migration in a rural community…?! Who would also have thought that Combined Universities in Cornwall would have taken off, and that now I look to them as an alternative model of education delivery in a rural area….? What I am struck by is how my perspectives on these issues have changed very little, even if my writing style and acacdemic rigour have (hopefully) improved somewhat!
Within the essay my other main argument is the need to stimulate new businesses, and particularly skills based industries in the region. I state that skills based industries ‘will employ highly skilled labourers, who generally prefer to live in an attractive rural than urban environment’ and I ‘discourage extra road building as this will lead to a deterioration of the environment, which, if anything would discourage the skilled industries’. These are interesting ideas, and I suspect come from a projection of my own desire to live in a rural environment. From my perspective now I wouldn’t agree with my younger self, instead I believe that some people will want to live in rural environments and some people would prefer to live in urban environments. However, it did remind me of some debates about how to quantify the value of natural resources and to account for this in calculations of the value of infrastructure development. The role of image, culture, and place making which is almost the subtext to my essay is also very much part of debates on how to attract migrants to areas.
I had one other argument in my essay too – which was about extending and diversifying the tourist base for the westcountry. As part of this argument I suggested extending the tourist season and thought that ‘a high profile advertising strategy could be employed, such as that used to attract tourists to the Scottish Highlands in Autumn’. Which again made me smile: sitting, as I am in my home in the Scottish islands looking out over a rather dreich autum / winter afternoon. Ever felt that somehow your destiny is mapped out for you….?!
Dr Rosie Alexander 