Michael KellyFrancis Campbell has ambitious plans for St Mary’s University which he shared with Michael Kelly
MK: Where does a Catholic university sit in the context of a secular country?
FC: I think some people get puzzled about this idea of having a public university that is a Catholic university. In some cultures that would be impossible.
The day that a Catholic university won’t fit in in civil society is the day that Catholics won’t fit in in civil society. I think it would contract pluralism and it would mean that our democracy and our civil society was all the poorer because, in many respects, what you are creating is a space where faith and reason can engage.
There doesn’t have to be a rupture that there has been in other cultures and other societies.
There are 15 Catholic and Anglican universities in England and we are one of them. Each one is distinctive, each one has its own history, but they provide a space.
So, fundamentally for us, it’s not just that we provide education as part of the public sphere, it’s the fact that that represents something of a confidence in our civil society that it is not an intolerant secularism or a theocracy, but it is faith holding its own place with a distinct philosophy of education and that in turn enriches our democracy through a healthy pluralism.
MK: Traditionally, St Mary’s attracts students from Ireland. Have changes in tuition fees made it more difficult to attract Irish students?
FC: Last year there was a survey and I think 15% of the student body identify themselves as Irish. And there is no way it is as high as that. So you have a lot of British-born second- and third-generation Irish that come.
Traditionally, you have a lot of Irish students who come – I don’t think they are deterred by the tuition fees because you have people who are eligible for the same loans for tuition as a student born in England under the EU rules [a no-interest loan supported by the state].
I think they see it as a launchpad for London, so a lot of the students want the experience of living in London and they see it as a safe place to come into London where they won’t be lost and they will be supported.
A lot of students who have graduated are still here, some of them are working, some of them are doing further studies, they have part-time jobs and they like living in London. It’s an experience like being a foreign student.
This is especially true on the postgraduate certificate for teaching, because of the huge shortage of teachers in London and in the south-east of England, and because of a growing youth population in the schools.
There is a huge need for teachers. So our track record for the employment of teachers is over 99%. But in addition to that our track record for graduate employment is the eighth best in the whole of the UK. Within six months, 96% of students are either in full employment or in further study.
MK: You say that the day when there is no place for a Catholic university is the day there is no place for Catholics. You are not unaware of the debates going on in Northern Ireland – in particular – that threaten the very existence of faith-based schools?
FC: It’s not just about education. It is not just about a politician’s view or a minister’s view or a voter’s view about education and whether or not the state should support denominational education.
It is actually fundamentally about what sort of society you want to build and this notion that the state should consume civil society is certainly not part of the UK tradition or the British Enlightenment or the English Enlightenment or the Scottish Enlightenment.
It’s very much more like a French republican tradition were civil society is contracted and this state is supreme.
So my vision for a society that I would like to live in is where the state enables civil society and a multiplicity of providers and the state is acting as regulator, but that you are empowering and enabling choice, choice of student and choice of a parent and the idea that somehow the longest tradition of education that we have in the world, which is the Christian tradition of education, which founded our universities and our schools, that somehow all of a sudden that is a negative because it is denominational, in the belief that there is some neutral or objective ideology that is not denominational is somehow better, that would have very worrying implications for the sort of society that one would try to create.
It would be a significant departure from the evolution we have had of state and society in these islands going back many centuries. And for me it would be more like a French system, which wants to put difference on the periphery and to raise the state at the expense of society.
So, it’s not just about education, although that can be the Maypole, around which it revolves.
It fundamentally goes to the heart of what is the nature of the society, not just the state that you wish to create.
And what is the proper balance between the individuals, individuals who wish to organise collectively outside of the state, but within civil society, and the state itself and the powers that the state wishes to take to itself and I would be more of the view that a state should be enabling civil society, but having a small state, but with a multiplicity of providers and I come back to this thing of healthy pluralism.
These are big questions which some societies have still to face, but I would hope that they would give thorough time and respect to people who may have a different view about what the role and nature of the state should be in Western Europe
MK: It is a challenging time for Catholic institutions. What is your vision for St Mary’s in the short-term?
FC: There are huge macro changes going on. We have had liberalisation of student numbers within England, so you are now in a much more competitive environment, with the exception of education – teacher training – there is a free market.
That has seen swings within the recruitment process that are quite significant. When you do the comparison with last year you see a significant swing and within that there are opportunities, but also there are challenges because yes, you can be growing in some areas, but you have to retain the profile of the university. And within that, the biggest thing for us is: ‘what is the boundary to that growth?’, because we do want a limit to it.
A lot of the reason why people come to us is the sense of community and the size – and beyond a certain size it is very difficult to foster a community.
So it is an exciting time for us. There are lots of opportunities and there is all the energy and the excitement of a relatively new team coming with different perspectives.
MK: While many other Catholic institutions are struggling, St Mary’s is growing? What’s the secret?
FC: Partly it is the sense of community. I think it is always a work in progress. If we ever reach the point where we think we have got it nailed we will be complacent and smug. We must always be conscious that we are always open to new ways of doing things. We start with a number of things. One is ‘how do we run this?’ ‘Do we run this [St Mary’s] ethically?’
We have to be very careful because we will make mistakes. We are a human organisation, we are made up of fallible human beings, but we try to do the right thing.
We pay [all our staff] the London living wage [at least £9.40/€11.00 per hour], which costs us financially, but which benefits us in many, many more ways such as building up that sense of community, that identity, that loyalty.
So we know that our employees are getting the London living wage, their pension contributions are being paid, they are able to raise a family, they can afford to live and that is reciprocated to us – as a university staff and students – with stability of workforce and kindness.
So you are creating a point where people may not share your [religious] confession and you may do things that they do not like from time to time, but they make a judgement that you are trying to do the right thing and they say that when this organisation talks about values it is inclined to live them as well.
Another thing is identity. Part of that is the centrality of the church physically on the campus.
Where I think it is a work in progress, which will be there in our corporate plan is the question ‘how is our education distinctive?’ We say that our approach to education is not just about giving somebody a degree certificate, it is about forming the person with character, with virtue, with being able to communicate, to have a wider sense of the world in which they inhabit, and to play their full and active part as citizens in the democracy and in civil society.
MK: You speak of the Catholic identity as a living reality. And yet, 80% of the students at St Mary’s are not Catholic. Does that present challenges?
FC: There could be. If you are on the continent, people are used to what the Catholic university is. In England, people don’t really know what it is. In a strange way, when you ask people what they like about St Mary’s, they always come back to the community feel.
And you ask what it is about community they like and they come out and say the cleaning staff or staff, they are not people I see once a month and contacted in and out. And why is it that we do that? And if we didn’t have the Catholic identity, if we didn’t try to run this operation along the lines of social justice, what would be the motivating principle for us to do that?
You like the manifestation of what you see, you may not know why we do what we do, but you can see that there is something different..
MK: St Mary’s has taken a lead in the fight against human trafficking. Why did you set up the Research Centre for human trafficking?
FC: On the trafficking centre, somebody suggested that we open it and take a lead and we said, let’s try and take a few steps further. The trafficking centre is one thing we can do through research and contribute to policy-making, etc. through evidence.
But there are two other dimensions, we should consider. One is ‘what would success look like in ten years?’ Success could look like, perhaps there is a victim of trafficking, who is out there now who has yet to be rescued, but is not able to return to their own home country, who came here originally on a false enticement that they were coming for a good job, that they were motivated for a better life.
Could we somehow help them achieve that better life and restore their faith in humanity? And how could you do that? And what would success look like? And success could look like somebody in ten years’ time, who is today feeling trapped, is trafficked, could be in a classroom teaching.
This could be graduating, and if the educational route is not open to them – because we employ our own staff – perhaps we could provide a safe space in which people could be reintegrated.
So it’s things we are doing and we’re saying to ourselves, we have this 50-odd-acre site in West London, which has been bequeathed to us through the Church. And how do we keep it unique? How do we leverage to do things and provide a service that the rest of society is perhaps not doing?
This came home to us when we were in Rome for the world Congress on Catholic Education and we had a large group out there.
In Pope Francis’ words, impromptu, he set aside the speech and he spoke from the heart, he was there with 2,000 Catholic universities, telling us to be on the periphery. He was telling us not to be afraid, not to follow the professional metrics all the time and to go out and be prepared to take risks to serve on the periphery.
