David Floyd talks to Middlesex University vice chancellor Shân Wareing

Amongst the major organisations based in the borough of Barnet is Middlesex University. The university, which has 38,000 students studying over 300 courses, has its main campus in Hendon as well as specialist sports science and nursing facilities at Saracens’ Stone X Stadium in Mill Hill.

Professor Shân Wareing, who became its vice chancellor in April, invited Barnet Post to discuss the university’s role in the local community. Barnet Post asks Professor Wareing how she’s finding her (relatively) new role. She says: “So far, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it. A lot of modern universities have many things in common and the thing that sets Middlesex apart partly is a legacy – I go places and I meet people who say they studied at one of its previous iterations.”

These iterations include Middlesex Polytechnic but the university has also incorporated other institutions including the Hornsey College of Art. The other key difference with Middlesex, Professor Wareing explains, is its location in Barnet which “is completely distinctive and impossible for somewhere else to reproduce. The thing that makes the university special is the connection to the place. I think those relationships with local colleges, local schools, London Borough of Barnet and local employers are totally distinctive.”

Barnet Post asks what kind of employers the university is particularly focused on. Professor Wareing explains: “I see the public sector as absolutely core. If you’ve got a large [population] as we have here, they’re always going to need those public services. I think it’s really important to have a local university providing staff because students can do a work placement locally then go on and work there. And because you’re doing those work placements employers come back and feed into the degree.”

She says these local connections are a key reason why online learning will not fully replace “bricks and mortar” universities because “you can’t reproduce those local connections on a global scale.”

Professor Wareing is keen to emphasise the university’s working relationships both with Barnet Council and with other local community groups, including hosting Age UK Barnet’s Silver Sunday event at the Hendon campus in October. She says: “We’re a big employer locally, we buy services, we buy products – so we’re intrinsic to the life of the local community but it’s always something we can get better at.”

Like most universities, Middlesex is currently facing financial challenges from the combination of rising costs and reductions in income from international students. One of the ways she wants to tackle this to “make sure that we are very visible locally and make sure we’re recruiting local students”.

Professor Wareing says one reason for the local focus is that “for lots of people [studying while] living at home allows them to do other things at the same time as work or caring responsibilities but it also is a way to manage their costs.”

She adds: “one of the things we’re very proud of is that we have a very high number of students who had free school meals at school […] it means that we invest in our students and in their experience to really open up the possibilities for the rest of their lives”

Barnet Post asks Professor Wareing what she’d like to have achieved by the time she ends her role. She says: “I’d like to think that I’d left the university stronger than when I arrived but also that I’d left a legacy in central north London where the university was benefiting the communities.”

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