Homeward bound

It's an odd slogan to find on a recruitment flyer: "University? You don't have to go!" But the UHI Millennium Institute is an unusual place. Print off its campus map and you get an image covering the larger part of the Scottish landmass. The northern and western islands are there, plus most of the mainland from John O'Groats southwards to within an hour of Glasgow.

As an institute of higher education it is like no other, and Professor Bob Cormack, who moved in 2000 from the pro-vice chancellor's office at Queen's University Belfast to the principal's office in Inverness, is used to being quizzed by incredulous visitors.

First there is the matter of names. It is not the University of the Highlands and Islands; at least not yet. If you think of the future university as a butterfly, then the UHI Millennium Institute is its chrysalis. (Until 2001 it was in larval stage as the University of the Highlands and Islands Project.) It hopes to burst forth from its chrysalis in multicoloured glory sometime around 2007.

Already UHI has more than 5,500 students studying for degrees validated through the Open University. Defying normal profiles, two-thirds of the undergraduates are mature students, almost half are studying part-time. "Defying normal profiles" could well become the university's motto.

Funding from the Millennium Commission lottery project really got things moving, not least with £75m of aid for electronic infrastructure. Highlands and Islands Enterprise is a major backer and cross-party political support shares its view that UHI could be the best and biggest thing to rejuvenate this vast area.

Cormack clocked 28,000 miles in his first year visiting the 15 partner institutions. They include further education colleges from Shetland to Perth, a marine research station and a Gaelic college. All have strong local identities and attract fierce loyalties. Heavy-handed centralism could prove disastrous, while lack of coordination would leave only so many unconnected institutions.

Even agreeing the branding at the various sites is sensitive, but, Cormack says, there are more important issues. "Quality is at the absolute centre of our agenda," he explains. "Quality assurance and then quality enhancement and the accumulating evidence is that we are delivering.

"The Quality Assurance Agency subject reviews have produced good results, the QAA audit was very positive. What is also coming through from those reports is an increasing sense of a very student-centred provision."

This, he says, reflects the strong student orientation of the further education culture which is going to prove vital in the future. FE students progressing to UHI stay in the familiar college environment, avoiding the disruption which causes people to drop out elsewhere in higher education.

But an FE tradition scarcely promises a research base, as Cormack recognises. "We are not expecting all our staff to be research active. We have picked out a few areas where we can have serious excellence of an international quality and those are the areas we will develop."

Taking advantage of UHI's special location, they include environmental science (which secured a 4 in the last RAE), archaeology (Orkney alone is littered with world-class sites) and Gaelic language and culture.

"We have a Scottish centre of excellence in Sabhal Mòr Ostaig on Skye. It is a wonderful place of serious scholarship and in an area where Gaelic is a living language," says Cormack.

Researchers are used to collaborating over great distances. UHI is harnessing teaching resources in the same way. Seventeen subject networks, such as the degree course in cultural studies, have been identified, drawing cognate departments together, generating synergy, creating classes of viable size and freeing staff to develop courses.

Different centres provide the lead for the different networks.

Video conferencing has a key role in bringing students and staff together. UHI is a major user of the format and Phil Masterson, the video conferencing coordinator, finds manufacturers regard his network as the obvious place to new products. "Some days there is more video conferencing going on in UHI than the rest of the Janet network [linking all UK universities] put together," Masterson concedes.

While technology underpins everything, early enthusiasms for a virtual university are played down. Cormack draws a sharp distinction between UHI and other models of distance learning. Many systems are delivering continuing professional development to confident, middle-class graduates.

"Our folk are often first-time university entrants, not confident learners, probably not particularly confident with IT," says Cormack, "so we need to give support, and a lot of that support actually comes from peers so that even if they are not studying on the same course they are meeting up in the learning centre."

The learning centre is a defining characteristic of UHI. Community learning manager Iain Morrison's definition is painstaking, but only because the centres - more than 60 of them - come in all shapes and sizes.

An established college may have several full-time staff and a suite of rooms; in a far-flung community a part-time worker might look after a few computers in the room behind the post office.

On the Ardnamurchan peninsula, a new community school comes complete with a purpose-built community learning centre. Some are funded by European money, others by local initiatives and organisations. Trained volunteers back up the managers.

The common factor, says Morrison, is the welcome and reassurance and the chance to share experiences with other students. Degree course and FE students of all ages mix with those persuaded to come in on taster courses. He is evangelical on the subject: "If you get people across the door you are likely to keep them, but you have got to offer progression routes.

"Someone comes in to do 'Computing for the Terrified' - what's that got to do with UHI? Well we're committed to lifelong learning and we see that as a step on the ladder."

He talks about Marie who came into the Mallaig centre in May for a taster session. She's 51 and had brought up her family. She didn't think education was for her. Now she's doing an HNC in business administration. "It's life-changing if only you can get people through the door."

Morrison describes himself as a "returner", back from Southampton to his home town of Tain, intent on helping future generations do what he couldn't - complete their education in the Highlands and Islands.

That, of course, explains the odd recruitment slogan. You really don't have to go to university: now you can help put an end to the Highland brain drain and take your degree at home.

For folk o'all ages

Bilingual prospectuses are not uncommon in the British Isles, but the UHI Millennium Institute, in its prospectus as in so much else, does things differently, with no fewer than five linguistic forms. Predictably English and Gaelic feature extensively, but there are also passages translated into Scots, Shetlandic and Orcadian, the dialect of Orkney. Somehow a mission statement seems rather more personal in Orcadian: "All the colleges in the Highlands and Islands workan together tae mak their own university whar ordinary folk o'all ages can cerry on their schooling tae the highest levels in their own community and celebrating their own wey o'doing."

Mountain studies range widely

People in the Highlands have not been in the habit of defining mountains. They just come, as they say, with the territory. That was before the Centre for Mountain Studies (CMS) was set up at Perth College, one of the rapidly growing research bases in the UHI Millennium Institute.

Dr Martin Price arrived as director of CMS on what he describes as a non-traditional career path, though it included seven years' work on mountain studies at Oxford. An early task was to define a mountain area for the first time. Starting with a global database, giving average altitude for every square kilometre, he consulted scientists, policy makers and mountaineers and devised a set of criteria to produce a map of mountain areas. After 16 revisions, a map is nearing completion for the European commission. It is really a measure of "lumpiness" rather than altitude, he explains. "You can be very high but very flat."

Mountain areas affect everyone, says Price. Water and forestry policies impinge on communities hundreds of miles away; urban communities cherish recreational opportunities; mountains can have sacred and political significance. His colleague Rhys Evans observes the social interactions of communities and mountain habitats. He cites the emotions raised among urban Scots over land ownership in the Highlands.

Next September CMS launches an online masters degree in sustainable mountain development. It fills a gap in the market, Price believes, and will help integrate UHI's existing strengths, ranging from climate change in Thurso to rural development at Lews College, Stornoway.

Open equally to arts and science graduates, the degree's target market includes new graduates, environment professionals and Scotland's large "hobby" student market, learning about where they live.

The course has potential on the international front. "The commitment to using modern technology for teaching in UHI reflects the reality that in most mountain areas of the world people have always had to leave to get tertiary education," Price says. CMS is already building links with Bhutan, the University of Central Asia, Chile and northern Europe.

As a contributor to UHI's 4 rating for environmental science in the RAE, the centre is bullish about future research, not least as a resource for the area itself which has historically had to import research skills.

To establish what research has been done on the area, the centre is hosting a conference in 2004 on environment change in the Highlands and Islands.

"We know lots of people have done research here but they rarely come back to speak to the people they research."

If that applies to anyone you know, Price wants to see them in Perth next March!