Who we are
Agora is a new independent think tank whose mission is to promote serious and searching discussion about higher education and its role in our society.
Agora started life as an informal academic discussion group, set up by Professor Hugo de Burgh, director of the China Media Centre at Westminster University and author of studies of investigative journalism and the Chinese media, and Professor Jeremy Black, Professor of History at Exeter University and author of 70 books of history. At the end of 2006 Agora secured funding to allow it to formalise and become a think tank. We have recruited a director, Anna Fazackerley, a Journalist and expert on higher education, to take Agora forward.
We have witnessed a massive, and in many ways exciting, expansion of our university sector in recent years. Yet what has often been missing is any deeper strategic thinking about where we are going, or even what today's universities are supposed to be for. Agora was set up to provide a new space in which people from different educational, personal and political backgrounds could question and investigate the key issues and trends that are shaping higher education.
Agora believes, broadly, in independence for universities. Public funding - no longer enough to support our expanding student population adequately - comes with numerous strings attached. The British academic experience is becoming known for a culture of audit and box ticking that is far removed from the passion that drives the majority to become lecturers and researchers. If our universities are to compete with the best in the world, they must not be constrained by unnecessary bureaucracy.
We believe that British universities occupy a strong position on the world stage - yet that stage is changing. As other countries improve their higher education provision, and as higher education itself becomes a more global concept, we cannot afford to be complacent or to stand in isolation. Hence Agora aims to take an international perspective in much of what it does.
Agora will operate by bringing together experts - including fresh voices wherever possible - for discussion and debate. While we will publish papers, pamphlets and books where useful, we will not aim to produce regular research reports, a need we feel is already met elsewhere.