Kent does a spot of California dreaming

An American-style federation of higher and further education institutions could be the blueprint for future university development, David Melville, chief executive of the Further Education Funding Council, said this week.

Professor Melville is leaving the FEFC later this year to take over as vice-chancellor of the University of Kent in September. He hopes to implement his model, dubbed a "multiversity", at Kent. Professor Melville predicted it would become a blueprint for the development of a significant number of English universities.

Kent will work with higher and further education institutions in its area to "stretch collaboration to the limit". He said the aim was to build a network that might mirror the further and higher education system in California.

The collaborative network might stretch to continental Europe, taking advantage of the local Channel Tunnel terminal.

Professor Melville, who was vice-chancellor of Middlesex University before joining the FEFC in 1996, said: "Kent sits in a region where there are many collaborative possibilities, with the added advantage that it is as near to Paris as it is to London on the train.

"There is huge potential for the university as the heart of a new multiversity -a collection of institutions that all have their own identity and an important part to play in working together to deliver further and higher education and support economic regeneration in their area."

Professor Melville said he wanted to draw on his experience in higher and further education and, working closely with government officials, to turn his vision for Kent into a model that could help take higher education into "a new era of collaboration".

Further and higher education would inevitably be drawn closer together in the future, as it was not possible for universities to effectively deliver on widening participation without stronger links with colleges, he said.

Looking back, Professor Melville said he thought the FEFC had turned the incorporation of further education colleges into a "huge success", building a unified funding and inspection system.

His only "disappointment" was the flattening of student numbers that resulted from the "over-rapid" withdrawal of franchising and the demand-led element of funding by government officials.