Professor Sir David Watson
David Watson is an historian and Professor of Higher Education Management at the Institute of Education, University of London. He was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Brighton (formerly Brighton Polytechnic) between 1990 and 2005. His academic interests are in the history of American ideas and in higher education policy. His most recent books are Lifelong Learning and the University (1998), Managing Strategy (2000), New Directions in Professional Higher Education (2000), Higher Education and the Lifecourse (2003), Managing Institutional Self-Study (2005), Managing Civic and Community Engagement (2007), and The Dearing Report: ten years on (2007).
He has contributed widely to developments in UK higher education, including as a member (from 1977 to 1993) of Boards and Committees of the Council for National Academic Awards. In 1988 he was appointed to the CNAA Council and the Polytechnics and Colleges Funding Council, and in 1992 to the Higher Education Funding Council (England). He chaired the HEFCE Quality Assessment Committee until his retirement from the Council in May 1996 and was a member of its Learning and Teaching Committee between 1998 and 2003. He was a member of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation's National Commission on Education (whose report Learning to Succeed was published in 1993), of the National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education chaired by Sir Ron Dearing (whose report Higher Education in the Learning Society was published in 1997), and of the Roberts Review of Research Assessment in 2002-03. He was the elected chair of the Universities Association for Continuing Education between 1994 and 1998, and chaired the Longer Term Strategy Group of Universities UK between 1999 and 2005. He is a Trustee of the Nuffield Foundation and a Companion of the Institute of Management. He has recently been appointed chair of the NIACE Commission of Inquiry on The future for lifelong learning: a national strategy. He was knighted in 1998 for services to higher education.
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