PROFESSOR DYLAN JONES-EVANS

Last month,  I gave my inaugural professorial lecture at the University of the West of England (UWE) on the topic of entrepreneurial universities, a theme that has been of professional and personal interest to me since I started my academic career. The lecture gave me the opportunity to reflect on a journey that started twenty two years ago when I started my first job at that hotbed of entrepreneurial thinking back in the 1980s and 1990s, namely Durham University Business School. Led by Professor Allan Gibb , its small business centre revolutionised theory and practice in entrepreneurship across the world and the four exciting and intensive years I spent there not only fast tracked my understanding of the area but also formed the foundation for my subsequent career. Whilst I have since been appointed to various academic positions across the UK, I also consider myself blessed to have been able, as part of my job, to travel widely to some fantastic places and meet great people....

Having been in Finland for the past few days,  I managed to catch up with a former flatmate from Dublin, Jonne Saivosalmi, who now runs a company called Place Marketing , a media company that focus on promoting towns and regions in Finland. Some of the work they do is groundbreaking and I would love to see them pitch for work in Wales, especially given their quirky and innovative approach which is a million miles away from the advertising usually procured by Welsh organisations. Take, for example, their campaign to promote higher education to overseas students in Oulu in Northern Finland.  Not an easy sell, I can assure you, but they bring it off perfectly for their target market as the videos below demonstrate. 1. Jason from Oulu on Vimeo . Yu-hsuan from Oulu on Vimeo . Gisbert from Oulu on Vimeo . Shanila from Oulu on Vimeo .

Yesterday evening, I received a phonecall from a good friend asking me if I had read the Sunday Times that day. I hadn't and so he directed me to a story which, if true, could have serious implications for one of the Welsh Government's flagship policies. Unfortunately, due to the Sunday Times' web policy, I cannot provide the necessary link to the story (which may be why no-one seems to have picked up the article in the Welsh press). Essentially, the story suggests that the Welsh Government will have to pay the difference in fees for thousands of EU students wishing to study at English. According to the Sunday Times, "The loophole allows Europeans to exploit a decision by the Welsh government to pay any fees above £3,465 for students from Wales who attend courses in England from next year". It would seem that under EU laws, Wales is not permitted to offer a better deal to its own students than it offers to those of any EU state outside Britain...