The Universities in the North West are providing support to individuals and
businesses through their existing teaching and knowledge exchange activities and
through new initiatives specifically designed to provide support in the economic
downturn. Alongside their ongoing and long term activities,
North West universities have responded swiftly to the economic downturn,
offering support in a multitude of different ways: by helping individuals
affected by redundancy and new graduates unable to find work; by helping
businesses ride out the recession through knowledge transfer and skills
development; and by providing the region with the skills and research
capabilities required to support an economic recovery. The region’s universities
have made a concerted effort to open up their doors to business in times of
difficulty. Through their knowledge exchange functions, they are a source of
expertise enabling companies to make significant step changes using research and
innovation based support.
NWUA has collected information on this activity as
part of the HEFCE-funded Economic Downturn Project. The majority of this has
been recorded in the HE Barometers, designed to provide HEFCE and other
stakeholders with an overview of how the HE sector is responding to the economic
downturn. The Barometers can be viewed
Here. However, we were not able to
capture the full range of activity within these documents and a wider sample of
university responses is provided in these pages. Please use the menu on the left to view different areas of activity. Please note, this is
intended as a historic record and some of the initiatives may no longer be
available.