Профессор Университета Мемориал считает, что закрытие кампуса в Великобритании было ошибкой упущенных возможностей

Professor says Memorial University missing an opportunity by closing its UK campus Tom Cooper has an idea to transform the campus Tom Cooper can understand why Memorial University made the decision to close its Harlow Campus in the United Kingdom. But he questions if it was the only decision that could be made, and he doesn’t think it was, and that Harlow Campus could have been transformed. Cooper is a professor in the Faculty of Business Administration at Memorial University (MUN) in St. John’s. He’s brought students to the campus — located in the town of Old Harlow in the county of Essex in the United Kingdom — consecutively for the last four years. But his connection with the campus goes back further than that. Eighteen years ago, he went three or four times and before that, while working in London, he used to go to the campus to teach in the evenings. He took his last group of students there in March-April of this year. WHAT HARLOW OFFERS He said having the opportunity to study at Harlow has many benefits for business students. “First of all, we’re located door-to-door, about 30 minutes from one of the premier financial centres in the world. That allows students to understand the importance of global markets. It helps them understand international business because a lot of them are travelling extensively.” He said they’re seeing different consumer industrial products, and looking at strategies around how international companies scale, how preferences can change and how business models can change, and see new opportunities and the importance of such things as supply chain management and pricing. “And how close we are here in Newfoundland and Labrador to not only the United Kingdom, but to the broader European market,” said Cooper. “Harlow was really kind of the launch pad for really getting amazing experiential learning for the students.” SAD NEWS When he heard MUN was shutting down the campus, Cooper said there was a lot of sadness. He admits he’s probably a bit biased because of his personal connection to the campus. “I probably wouldn’t be here now if it wasn’t for Harlow,” he said. “At the same time, I understand that the university basically ran out of what I would say runway in terms of its ability to continue on and fund it the way it should have been funded,” said Cooper. “I understand the pressures that they’re under but sometimes the most obvious answer is not the best answer. “I think it’s a real missed opportunity for the university, for the province and especially for the students in terms of all the things that they experienced and how that’s not going to be available for the next cohorts of students,” said Cooper. ANOTHER CHOICE “I think the choice did not have to be between maintaining the existing model and closing the campus.” Instead, he sees a credible third option that would have fundamentally repositioned the campus. It’s an option that he proposed to those making the decisions. “I was not advocating preservation of Harlow as it was. I was advocating transformation.” He said you just had to walk around the campus and see the challenges it faced in terms of cost, utilization, changing patterns of international education and the other problems that were going on. “But those problems raised a different strategic question for me; is that if the campus was just a place to send students, was that no longer valuable or was the existing Harlow business model no longer appropriate? “To me it was the existing business model,” said Cooper. Just sending students from Newfoundland and Labrador for 13 weeks was not enough. HIS PROPOSAL Before selling an international asset that Memorial will never be able to recreate, Cooper believes the university needed to give a couple of years to an idea he calls the Atlantic Canada-European Gateway. “My proposal was to position Harlow as a multi-user international platform connecting Memorial, Newfoundland and Labrador and potentially Atlantic Canada with the UK and Europe,” he said. That would involve the international and experiential education of all the awesome programs that Memorial offered but also shorter programs, intensive courses, consulting projects and expanding that out broader to other faculties at the university. Cooper said Memorial is not just a teaching institution. “It’s a comprehensive university and we do very well on research innovation.” He said the university could make Harlow a base for faculty collaboration, visiting research, interdisciplinary projects and partnerships with UK and European institutions. “Especially with what the prime minister has been going on about in terms of us needing to expand beyond that United States-Canadian partnership and look to new markets,” said Cooper. “We were so well positioned with Harlow to really help not only Memorial but Newfoundland and Labrador and Atlantic Canada and that ties into trade and small-to-medium enterprise development.” He said those UK and European markets, partnerships and opportunities come by visiting, talking and meeting, and Harlow is a really great centre for doing that. “I think academic industry collaboration could have been definitely there. Newfoundland and Labrador has really great capabilities specifically around ocean industries, energy, technology, culture, all those sort of things that once again Harlow could have been a launch pad for that.” Cooper said there was some testing, and the university was probably going to be able run some executive education including international programming for managers, executives, entrepreneurs and public sector leaders. NO RESPONSE FROM MUN LEADERSHIP Cooper said not everyone will put their opinions on paper, but he did. “And I was very happy to build a business model and help them with it.” So, he shared his proposal with MUN President Janet Morrison, but he never got much of a response. “I think I got ‘thank you for your email’.” He’s not surprised. “It is what it is,” he said. If he had gotten to share his ideas with Morrison, Cooper said he would have suggested giving it another three years to do this test and try and reposition it. “Call it a pilot and if it doesn’t work as a pilot, shut it down. Then you’ve done everything you could,” he said. “But I think they could have really positioned that and used that gateway as a way of basically, I wouldn’t say subsidizing, but as a way of creating an economic base for the campus that made it more economically justifiable and made it something that was even more valuable than it was for Memorial University,” he said. “I understand in senior management you’ve got to make decisions around exiting. That’s one of the important things, but sometimes you exit without really doing your due diligence.” He said similar things have happened in the past with the Harris Centre and the Signal Hill Campus, yet the university maintains other things. “We had a toehold in Europe. We had a toehold in the United Kingdom.” Cooper said that was something that was really unique. “I can’t say if my model would have succeeded, but what I can say is that I thought the opportunity was significant enough that we should have seriously tested the alternative before permanently giving it up. “Which is what happens with Harlow. Once it’s closed, that’s it. And I wasn’t proposing an indefinite subsidy. I was proposing a different business model,” said Cooper. He said it’s not about the history of the campus. “It’s more around internationalization and it’s whether an international physical platform can contribute to Memorial’s future in education, research, innovation and economic development. “And to me that’s a yes to all those sort of things,” said Cooper.