New Campus Glasgow: Strategic Benefits Analysis
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Employers and the economy
7.10 The new campus can enhance the way that colleges engage with employers, and
improve the colleges' responsiveness to employer needs:
• Engagement with employers will benefit from colleges sharing knowledge about
employers skills and training needs, and by the fact that employers can engage
with particular curriculum institutes - eliminating confusion about which colleges
offers which provision.
• If collaboration across the colleges leads to the colleges being able to offer more
flexible, 'bite-sized', and tailored provision to employers, then the impact of the
new campus will be further enhanced.
7.11 However, as with some other impacts, realisation of these benefits is critically
dependent on the ethos and attitude of the colleges to engaging with employers (and the
mechanisms through which employers articulate their demand). The new campus may act as
a catalyst for some of this to happen, but the benefits will not flow 'automatically' from the fact
of simply having a new campus and cross-college working.
7.12 The new campus will establish the existence of the city's learning quarter, and
cement the city's reputation as a learning city. By establishing improved access points to the
learning quarter, the new campus will encourage footfall from the core retail heart of the city
into the learning quarter (and towards the Clyde and the location of the Thistle St campus).
This will support the integration of these areas into the city core - and encourage the public to
engage with the learning environment.
7.13 The three colleges currently generate significant economic impacts. The bulk of these
impacts are associated with the increase in expected earnings of learners on completion of
their study. But the colleges themselves also generate significant impacts in terms of the
employment and GVA that they generate directly in the local and national economies.
7.14 However, the additional economic impacts of the new campus are relatively small.
This is largely because of the assumption implicit in the proposals that the number of staff and
students will remain approximately constant on completion of the campus. The economic
impacts are thus limited to the construction jobs created during the construction of the New
Campus, and some increase in spending within the Glasgow economy associated with a
slight increase in the number of international students attending the colleges.
Contribution to policy objectives
7.15 Throughout the report we have highlighted how the new campus will contribute to the
aims of key policy and strategy. The contribution the new campus will make to policy can be
summarised as follows:
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Appendix 13: Economic Impact Report