Less Cambridge, more York: Leavis's later ideas about the university

Leavis’s name is synonymous with a resolutely negative verdict on mass higher education: he went on record as saying ‘There’s no redeeming the democratic mass university’ (The Living Principle, p. 7). What relevance then does Leavis have for the majority of us involved in a system of widening participation, whether as students, researchers, teachers, managers or other stakeholders? The key to answering these questions in a productive way lies in our understanding of Leavis’s time at York. It is the work of this period that opens a dialogue between Leavis and contemporary debate on higher education. Appreciating Leavis’s later and currently more neglected work undertaken at York gives pointers to ways in which he can begin to be a meaningful presence again in relation to our thinking about the ‘democratic mass university’.

Survival or Sustainability? Contributions of Innovatively-Managed News Ventures to the Future of Egyptian Journalism

In the repressive political climate prevailing in Egypt in 2013-15, news ventures aspiring to high standards of reporting were forced to innovate. This paper analyses three Egyptian start-ups that experimented with novel revenue streams and news services during that period, to gain insights into their approaches to managing journalism. In the process it compares different criteria for assessing sustainability and concludes that, in adverse political environments, narrow economic measures of profitability and survival may give a misleading picture as to the sustainability of the kind of journalism conducive to democratic practice. Operating collaboratively, transparently and ethically may slow productivity and profitability in the short term while laying stronger foundations for durable relations among media teams, as well as with readers and advertisers, in the long run.