I am sat now in Mumbai checking the final details of the second of our latest series of Oxford Brookes University alumni events in India. Last night, we successfully hosted the inaugural event for our Chennai alumni chapter, when graduates of the university’s courses from over the past 30 years met up together in the city’s most luxurious 5* green hotel. To say that I can be continually surprised by these type of events is an understatement. You never really know what to expect, and most of this disconnect is probably down to the weak relationships that many UK universities have with their alumni. Most of us now in the sector realise this as a mistake of the past, and we’re working hard to repair the damage and put in place sustainable engagement mechanisms for the future.
If I focus down on the detail of last night’s event in Chennai, I may be able to explain some of the issues facing us. Back in Oxford we have a newly reconfigured Alumni Engagement and Development office. It’s populated by good people who use a variety of media to drive attendance at these meetings in far-flung parts of the world. The locations are those we have strategically opted to focus on for future international student recruitment. Our intention is to open local offices in each of these regions so as to have people on the ground who can act as outreach teams. Operating besides these will be our alumni chapters made up of committed graduates of Oxford Brookes University. To give you an idea of scale, the university has about 130,000 graduates out there in the wider world. Currently, we only have active communication with a relatively small percentage of these people, but we do have a live database with contact details for about 25% of this figure. The use of social media applications like LinkedIn and Facebook and a dedicated CRM mean that we are fast re-connecting with many more of these ‘friends of the university’.
Yesterday, I was privileged to sit amongst a group of alums and engage in a conversation of ideas. These were graduates going back over a quarter of a century. They weren’t fresh-faced and recently graduated innocents. These were men and women with a phenomenal amount of life experience, able to reflect knowingly on their years out in the real world (how I dislike that term). One man talked about how he has adapted his university experiences of designing sustainable buildings at the Oxford School of Architecture to be able to set up his own practice in a different culture and accompanying professional standards. Another explained how his academic grounding in Public Health has been expanded to embrace cutting-edge research in the field of Health Informatics. Working with colleagues around the world he is designing innovative healthcare products and services.
Because we are in India we also got to discussing the inevitable elephant in the room – the UK government’s seeming obsession with stopping Indian students getting work there. Ordinary people in India express their sadness about these developments, and speak about the special relationship between our two countries. Throughout the evening we touched upon the measures which need to be invoked to encourage the next generation of highly motivated students from India to our shores. Competitive costing of postgraduate programmes, post-study visas, professional placements and internships, plus teaching and research partnerships between UK and India institutions. Of course, the Indian government’s inability to move the Foreign Education Providers Bill through parliament also faced criticism. After all, this is an initiative that The Times of India was reporting in 2010 as close to getting the nod from Cabinet.
In many ways the event yesterday evening took the form of an academic seminar where we all respectfully expressed our differences of opinion whilst marvelling at how much we shared collective memories of our time in Oxford. Most impressive though was the dedication and commitment that these alums showed to developing the Chennai alumni chapter, and helping with the recruitment of new students to the university. I sat quietly istening to Law graduates fondly recalling their times sat researching historical texts in the many libraries in Oxford, then launching into a very current argument about intellectual property law in the age of the Internet. We even had the luxury of a couple of university professors and a retired Dean to pepper the dialogue with searching questions and challenging hypotheses. All life was there, and the two hours went quickly. We ended with the obligatory group photographs, exchanges of business cards and contact details and then everyone walked off separately and in small groups to reflect on their coming together. I left the room safe in the knowledge that this will become one of our strongest alumni chapters.
Most of today has been taken up travelling by plane and taxi over to the west coast city of Mumbai. As I gaze out now from my hotel window at the sun setting over the city skyline, I’m reminded how much confidence there is in this country’s future. The sky scraping buildings make a lie of the evident poverty. But better writers than me have pointed out the many contradictions of India. I have their books with me to provide the contextual details. The metaphorical and literal weightiness of these tomes cheered up the Jet Airways counter staff earlier today at the airport as my love of reading cost me dear yet again. I had breached the 15kg allowed baggage limit.
I have always enjoyed travelling on planes, but internal flights in India tend to be a bit hit and miss. Today, I had been folded into the row of ‘toilet seats’ at the rear of the aircraft (so-called because of their proximity to the on-board washrooms). I’m a tall man who needs legroom and that was in short supply today. However, the short-comings of the airline couldn’t hold a candle up to the experience of taking a taxi ride from Mumbai’s international airport to the hotel. I say ‘taxi’ but in fact, this being 2016, it was an Uber moment. The private car travel sensation sweeping the world has reached this part of South-East Asia only recently. You make a call using the app and the nearest private car ownero comes to collect you and take you at highly competitive rates to your desired destination. Unfortunately, we were attended to by a rather frightened young man who drove his car like he’d that morning passed his driving test. After reversing into a concrete pillar in the airport car park he then proceeded to bump into two other vehicles whilst travelling in the opposite direction to where we needed to head. We abandoned this mode of transport after 20 minutes and placed ourself in the care of a seasoned Mumbai taxi driver, who looked me in the eyes and uttered the immortal line, “don’t worry, I will get you to your hotel safely.” He did.
Tomorrow, besides hosting the Mumbai alumni chapter meeting at the Hotel Marine Plaza, I will also be carrying out business meetings with the leading agents we use here to recruit students. With a bit good fortune I am hoping I will as well get the opportunity to engage in a little photography, which I’ll be able to share with you on these blog pages.
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