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HERALD EXPRESS - 17 July 2007
Getting hold of the cash is the biggest single risk factor involved in the highly controversial move to merge Dartington College of Art with a Falmouth college and turn it into part of a new Cornish university, a new report has revealed.
The capital cost of shifting the Dartington campus to Cornwall will be £19.6 million alone - plus at least another £3 million to cover running costs during the move, a new consultants report published jointly by Dartington and Falmouth college governors explained.In its risk assessment the report puts failure to get that £19.6 million at the top of its list as 'high risk, high probability'.
Other deal breakers would be loss of staff and student numbers at Dartington in the three-year run up to the move.
Said the merger report: "The four risks which stand out as most significant are failure to gain the capital funding required to accommodate the performance practices specialist provision at Falmouth; loss of key staff in the critical phase of merger; adverse impacts on the recruitment and retention of students at Dartington during the period up to merger; and failure to deliver the benefits sought from merger."
In-depth details of the merger plans so far have been released at the same time as Dartington and Falmouth governors' announcement that they plan to press ahead with the merger.
The report entitled 'A new University for the Arts in Cornwall - merger plan by Dartington College of Arts and University College Falmouth' runs to 33 pages and details the finances, feasibility and a timetable for the proposed move.
From January next year, the governors plan to operate a single college between them with campuses at Woodlane and Tremough in Cornwall and Dartington - with Dartington shifting to Falmouth in 2010 followed by an application for university status the following year.
At the moment Dartington has 576 UK and EU students.
By 2012 the new joint college expects to boast around 4,000 students, said the report.
It also declared that the driving force behind the merger was: "To establish a university for the arts in Cornwall which brings together art, design, media and performance practices to offer distinctive learning, business engagement and research opportunities in a unique environment through which the students and staff may realise the highest levels of achievement."
It has been calculated that the Dartington pull out will also strip almost £5 million a year out of Totnes economy and leave a massive hole in the culture and character of the area.
But, the report said, it will help boost the economic and cultural regeneration of next door Cornwall.
"The new university will be a powerful magnet for the inward migration, development and retention of creative skills within the Cornish economy - working for, and contributing to, a creative and confident region.
"It will make a significant commitment and contribution to the economic, social and cultural regeneration and prosperity of Cornwall and of the wider South West region," it explained.
The two sets of governors are expecting the cash to fund the move and build what they see as a potential new University of Cornwall to come from the EU's 'convergence funding programme for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly', the Higher Education Funding Council for England and the South West Regional development Agency.
A statement issued last week by the governors admitted that the merger is still subject to funding approval. They will be putting in their bids for HEFCE and EU cash in September and they expect to hear about funding some time in October and November.
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