EXCITING times lie ahead in education as moves continue to develop for a university in Cumbria.

That is the view of Malcolm McVicar, vice-chancellor of the University of Central Lancashire, which has just taken on the University of Northumbria's former Carlisle campus, reports Andrew Thomas.

He revealed his vision for a university of Cumbria, providing the local economy with highly-skilled people equipped with high-tech knowledge.

UCLAN, which has its main campus campus at Preston, now has Cumbrian bases at Newton Rigg College, Penrith, and its new Carlisle campus. And this week it was announced that West Lakes Research Institute had selected UCLAN as its preferred partner to integrate the institute into a university.

Dr McVicar told a gathering of educational, civic and business leaders that UCLAN was working with other organisations, such as St Martin's College and Cumbria Institute of the Arts, to raise higher education provision in Cumbria.

People had talked about developing HE for years but the idea of creating a new university on a green field site was unrealistic. The Government was unlikely to provide huge sums for such a building and, as the county had various major centres of population, where should it be anyway?

"We have to do this from our own efforts, getting money out of government and funding agencies and so on. It is no use waiting for the Government to provide a blank cheque for a new university for Cumbria," said Dr McVicar.

Carlisle had the feel' of a university town and should be the hub, but it was important to have a distributed model', incorporating UCLAN and various other institutions, linked by broadband communication systems.

These would provide university education for both full-time students and also for people who wanted to take part-time courses - perhaps working people who had never been to university whose skills needed updating or those who had just come out of the labour market. Such people needed access to part-time, high-quality education within easy geographical reach.

Such a university would serve local people and also bring people into Cumbria.

It was crucial to cater for the needs of the Cumbrian economy, which needed highly-skilled people with high-tech knowledge, said Mr McVicar.

A relatively small' amount of Government money was needed - he estimated £30m to £35m over a five to six-year period "then all the ingredients are there to make this university work."

Proposals included building a student centre featuring social and recreational facilties at Carlisle, expanding the IT network to link the various institutions and improving facilities in further education colleges like Kendal College so that they could provide more courses which could lead people to degrees.

He added: "It is very exciting. More has happened about higher education in Cumbria in the past six months than in the last 30 years."

Chris Carr, principal of St Martin's College, which has sites in Lancaster, Ambleside and Carlisle, said: "There are a number of higher education institutions who are working together to build HE in Cumbria and anything which furthers that enterprise is to be welcomed."