Our Vision & Mission

Advocacy for the five Regional Universities and for the North East

Policy & Advocacy

The voice of the sector and the region, positioning North East universities to advocate for evidence-based policy development.

Innovation & Business

Working with industry in the UK and internationally to promote North East England as an attractive place to invest in business, infrastructure and innovation.

Widening Access & Participation

 Enabling access to Higher Education through our collective widening participation efforts, supporting global social mobility and through our civic responsibilities.  Work in this area is through our collective partnerships with the North East Raising Aspirations Partnership, Outreach North East and through our partnership work overseas.

Positioning & Marketing in NE

Our global ambition is to position the North East universities collectively as anchor institutions. We will ensure that the universities’ shared commitment to the economic, social and cultural success of the North East is fully understood by our audiences. 

Our Commitment

Skills

We are central to the creation of the higher-level skills which underpin the regional economy. In the next five years, we are projected to train around 11,000 nurses, 4,000 medics and 8,000 teachers. We produce the graduate engineers, IT professionals and managers who lead our companies and are a key factor in companies investment decisions. 

We will:

  • Engage directly with government to shape the details of Skills England. 
  • Work with schools, the FE sector and others to address the specific areas of skill shortages in the NE, particularly those in the clean energy, digital and other sectors growing rapidly in the region. 
  • Explore micro-credentials and other forms of new flexible lifelong learning opportunities to sit alongside degree apprenticeships as ways for the sector to respond to new area of skills need quickly. 

 

Widening Access to Higher Education

Our ‘North East Raising Aspiration Partnership  (NERAP)’, a decade-long collaboration of five universities, aims to address regional inequalities and increase higher education access for disadvantaged groups. Annually, we support over 30,000 young people and provide bespoke support for care-experienced students through our unique Regional Care Leaver Covenant.  

We also support the regional Uni Connect programme, funded by the Office for Students, to deliver targeted support for students in areas with low higher education  participation. 

We will:

  • Develop new collaborative approaches to enhance regional HE access and support attainment. 
  • Help young people to understand higher-level skill pathways and related, regional career opportunities. 
  • Strengthen our support for care-experienced and other under-represented groups. 
  • Collaborate with regional stakeholders to improve education, skills and career support. 
Research and Innovation

We, along with other public research organisations such as Catapults, are disproportionately large contributors to the region’s R&D ecosystem, critical to driving productivity and competitiveness. We broadly welcome the new government’s  commitment to a 10-year funding settlement for UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)  and of the previous government’s commitment to at least 55% of UKRI spending to be outside the ‘Golden Triangle’ of Cambridge, Oxford and London. 

We will:

  • Work with UKRI to help further develop their ‘place’ agenda, including the roll out of more place-specific schemes (for example our Northern Net Zero Accelerator scheme). 
  • Work to create aligned regional innovation plans in the North-East and Tees Valley. 
  • Launch, in collaboration with the North East Combined Authority, a new early-stage equity commercialisation and spinout fund to invest in the most promising new businesses being spun-out of research in the region. 
Business Partnerships

We support regional businesses through the training of new graduates, the upskilling of existing staff and via specific schemes and projects aimed at supporting innovation, including access to our specialist technical and scientific facilities for business and supporting the new regional Innovation Zones. 

We will:

  • Work to see the whole regional business support and innovation support ecosystem put on a steady footing. We would like to see long-term programmes for schemes such as the Shared Prosperity Fund, along the same lines as the stated aims of a 10-year UKRI funding agreement. 
  • Work with partners to encourage other, broader initiatives which will lead to the step change in the regional innovation ecosystem we aspire to. 
  • Present the North East as a test bed for good ideas, piloting new methodologies of increasing collaboration between businesses and universities, improving innovation in products, services and processes. 
International Students

We welcome students from all over the world, who make an enormous impact in the region: For example, Durham and Teesside Universities have students from over 120 countries, the net impact of overseas students to the economy of Sunderland is over £153m per annum at 2021-22 rates and Newcastle East has the highest contribution from international students (£2,560 per member of resident population) of anywhere in England. Graduates from the North-East play a crucial role in becoming ambassadors for the region when they return to their countries and take leadership positions worldwide. 

We will:

  • Recognise and build upon the very welcome changes in messaging from the new government. We strongly believe that this change in tone should lead to the lifting of the restrictions imposed by the last government on spouses and families of international students, which have made the UK a less attractive location for global talent. 
  • Build on the success of the highly skilled and Entrepreneurial visa schemes, which have supported graduates setting up businesses and creating jobs in the region. 
Trade Investment

We work closely with the inward investment teams across the region, who recognise that universities are a critical part of the region’s messaging on skills, emerging sectors and R&D strengths. The Government’s investment in industrial strategy is underpinned by strong university expertise in areas such as Advanced Manufacturing and Green Industries (including Offshore energy, Batteries, Electric vehicles and advanced low-carbon manufacturing, materials and research). 

We will:

  • Strengthen our relationships with the inward investment agencies, via a more embedded and strategic approach, for example, using the universities’ physical assets such as conference facilities to showcase the region on a national and international stage, and encouraging use of university assets for companies locating in the region. 
  • Progress our plan for an International Institute of Sustainable Energy, in collaboration with universities in Saudi Arabia.