Colleges are at the heart of UHI's founding and mission

But through each new status milestone, UHI has remained first and foremost a partnership of colleges, each anchoring their local communities while simultaneously adding to the potential of the overall partnership.

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Given how higher education often takes precedence over further education in perceived prestige, it would be easy to assume that bringing partner colleges together under the umbrella of university status would drown the work of further education.

But that isn’t what happened with UHI. And it was no accident.

Dr Val MacIver OBE, former education convenor for the Highland Regional Council and later vice chair of the UHI Board of Governors, said that attaining university status was as much about enhancing the further education capabilities of partner colleges as it was establishing a place for local students to earn degrees.

“The prize wasn’t just for the further education colleges and their staff but for the whole area. The knock-on effect that the whole thing has had is that you’re keeping talent here, and the economic benefit to the area has been enormous.”

It wasn’t a smooth ride from idea to university, she said. Sometimes two steps back felt like the price for every step forward.

“You thought you’d just gone over the last jump and then you turn the corner and there’s another jump, and another. It was a long, hard race.

“But the prize was there for everyone to see.”

Dr Val MacIver OBE (left), former Highland councillor retired in 2010 after two terms in the prestigious, ambassadorial role of rector – charged with helping UHI to achieve its mission and chairing the UHI Foundation community link group. (Image: University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI))

The prize may have been obvious for the project’s supporters and the leaders of the soon-to-be partner colleges. Still, it took years of tireless campaigning—and a few strokes of luck – to finally wear down the political machine with the power to make UHI a reality.

Fake it until you make it, and then make it big

For most of Scotland’s universities, two decades is a grain of sand in the hourglass. The so-called ancient universities trace back to the 15th century and rode the waves of the Scottish Reformation. It’s hard to know exactly what their first 20 years looked like.

But to put an age on UHI, you have first to decide when it was born, and to do that, you have to define what makes it a university. 

Was UHI born in 2017, when the partnership could finally award its own doctoral degrees? How about in 2011, when it received full university titles from the Privy Council, or 2000, when UHI Limited was confirmed as a higher education institution?

There might be a case for each, but those closest to the university in its infancy would trace its real beginnings back to 1991 when Dr MacIver was appointed to chair a steering group considering the possibility of a University of the Highlands and Islands. 

Robin Lingard, the first director of the University of the Highlands and Islands Project in the mid-1990s, considers 1991 the beginning of UHI because that is when Dr MacIver and Professor Sir Graham Hills arrived on the scene.

“Graham’s inspiration was to look at whole area and realise we had all of these colleges already. There was a base, if you like, for further education. So why don’t we think about having a dispersed university?”

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But key to that university, he said, would be retaining the individuality of each college. In many ways, the project was built on the continuity of the partner colleges and keeping them running as colleges.

“Graham noted that each of these areas had a special nature to itself, a special remit, a special history which could be reflected in the specialisation of the college. And with that, you could get a distributed curriculum as well as a distributed university.”

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Formerly principal and vice-chancellor of Strathclyde University, Sir Graham Hills occupies an almost mythic status in the history of UHI. If you were to spend roughly two hours speaking with three of the partnership’s founding and early years and ask them about their roles with UHI, they’d spend more than half of that time on Sir Graham Hills. 

After retiring and moving to Inverness, Sir Graham Hills devoted himself to the UHI project in the 1990s. Much of his vision relied on the internet's growing potential, and even before it was officially awarded status as an institution, UHI was attracting global attention for its distance learning efforts.

Allan Bransbury, former Assistant Project Director of the University of the Highlands and Islands Project and Honorary Master of the university 2013, as mace bearer during university title celebrations in Inverness in 2011. (Image: University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI))

Allan Bransbury, Assistant Project Director of the University of the Highlands and Islands Project, was instrumental in developing the technological network that knitted the partnership together and, in many ways, still serves as part of its backbone today.

“Horizons were being stretched,” he said with a look which meant that was very much an understatement. “As the technology came on board and we able to do more with that technology, the collaboration also took place.”

As much as the technology helped propel the project forward, Allan said that the real driving force was the unsung staff members whose names didn’t make the history book but who put in overtime hours to campaign and help with cross-college collaboration.

“I can recall a number of faces of those who were never senior staff, but they found the time and, more importantly, the energy. They weren’t being paid anything more, but it was something they genuinely believed in doing.”

The campaign trail was well-worn throughout the 1990s, even after the UHI project got its first breakthrough with a major grant from the Millennium Commission for £33.35 million in 1996. Martin Wright, former director of marketing, communications, and planning, played a major role in UHI's receiving its official university title in 2011.

Community guests, students and staff celebrated the awarding of UHI's university title at Eden Court in Inverness in 2011 (Image: University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI))

He said that, much like today, UHI’s success is tied to its ability to sell its story.

“There was an element of ‘fake it till you make it.’ We had to sell it, particularly to politicians. We had to sell the vision.”

The sales pitches were well-rehearsed because, in the earliest days, the politicians were very much not on board.

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But sometimes, the story can sell itself, he said. Such as the mother from Mallaig, he said, who used to take her child to the nursery housed in the same building as the Mallaig Learning Centre.

“Just through going in and talking to the tutors there, she decided to sign up for an introductory course. Several years later, she ended up with a degree and ended up managing the Mallaig Learning Centre.”

All of this, Mr Wright said, because of a college. 

“Because the colleges are part of the community. Each college has got to continue to serve its local community. Each college is distinctive and serves its local community.

“It’s that integration in the community that makes UHI accessible. Universities are forbidding places for people who haven’t been to one, but they know people who worked and studied at the local college. 

“It’s a lot easier to walk into your local college than onto a university.”