Boris Johnson says London can lead the way on world stage

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UK universities must do more to exploit their “natural advantages” on the global stage and the country must renew its efforts to “explode any myths there might be about visas”, Boris Johnson has said.

In a rare return to a brief he held as a shadow minister from 2005 to 2007, the mayor of London told the Global University Summit 2013 that the capital had the “critical mass” to remain pre-eminent as a world centre for higher education.

“I want to take my text from the world of nuclear physics, expert as I am in that subject, and ask you to envisage London as a cyclotron of human beings,” he said. “That is what we have in London: the critical mass of talent, because we have more universities than almost any other city on Earth…more foreign students than I think any other city on Earth, and certainly more Chinese students, I am delighted to say, than any other city in the world - outside China, of course.”

He said that in his tenure as mayor he had seen London grow as an international “brand”, adding: “The foreign student population…is a huge part of London’s brand. And since the Olympics we have seen serious economic benefits from the brand - big investments coming into our city…and of course, investments by other universities around the world here in London, in a symmetrical way to London university partnerships [overseas]”.

The academy was also crucial in terms of producing the future workforce and entrepreneurial drive, Mr Johnson argued. But he said that there were still “some things we need to get right”, including helping London’s schoolchildren to go to “top” universities and being “clear that this city is open to foreign talent”. He also called for universities to be “even bolder in selling their brands overseas”.

“We need to get on with all these things, because other countries are obviously running to catch up,” he said. “But I am confident. We have lots of natural advantages. We have the right time zone - no way of changing that; we have more museums than Paris; we have twice as many bookshops as New York.”

However, the mayor wryly sounded a word of caution.

“We no longer have a monopoly on one of our most important assets, because they now speak it in Australia, Canada and, after a fashion, in America, and I now see - shock horreur - I now see in my copy of Libération that the French themselves are going to be teaching their university courses en anglais, mes amis…We need to get going before the French have mastered our language.”

Listen to our podcast from the Global University Summit 2013.

chris.parr@tsleducation.com