The Northwest is the United Kingdom's 'academopolis', boasting the highest concentration of students in Europe. Harriet Swain and Alison Utley look at how institutions are working to give the region's economy a boost.
The Manchester Ship Canal of the 21st century is how enthusiasts like to refer to an imaginative collaboration between Manchester's four universities.
Just as the canals underpinned the Industrial Revolution by providing a cheap and efficient transport network, so the sophisticated use of telecommunications networks is central to ambitious plans to regenerate the Northwest: the information revolution.
Academics came up with the idea for G-Ming, and the project, which has developed further over recent months, will eventually offer high-speed telecommunications links to 40 sites around the city including town halls, teaching hospitals, halls of residence, libraries, science parks and local businesses. It will also transmit events such as medical operations for teaching purposes or theatrical performances. Cross-campus seminars will become commonplace and remote access to learning materials a doddle.
But what contribution can G-Ming make to the economic regeneration of the Northwest? In the view of the European Regional Development Fund, which has just awarded the project Pounds 400,000, the development of an infrastructure in Greater Manchester will give the region an important headstart.
Robin McDonough, professor of computing at Manchester University, agrees because, he says, the opportunities for collaboration are enormous and the potential cannot even be imagined at this early stage. "Of course there is the education-to-education collaboration but this really opens up opportunities. For science parks, for instance, to work with education and industry. That has to have an impact on jobs in the region."
The idea began in 1993 when a feasibility study got under way to examine the scope for a telecommunications infrastructure for the educational community of Greater Manchester. The consortium of Manchester University, UMIST, Salford University Manchester Metropolitan University plus the Royal Northern College of Music, represents Europe's largest educational precinct. There are more than 12,000 computers connected to the universities' networks.
All the institutions faced a common need to provide distributed teaching services and to open up links for research. A high-speed backbone was needed to establish a pervasive multimedia service to be shared between the institutions.
This backbone is now in place and will have the capability to integrate with further education colleges and other educational establishments within the Northwest. Its protagonists believe it is unique in higher education.
It does not come cheap however. The total capital cost of the first two phases was Pounds 730,000. Extra funds have already been secured from the Universities Joint Information services committee. Now that phase two of the project has been given the go-ahead, thanks to the ERDF backing, the team is confident of securing further funds over the next year from the Higher Education Funding Council for England and from Europe.