John Cater

Dr. John Cater is the Vice-Chancellor of Edge Hill University, having been appointed in 1993. As a social geographer, he has published extensively on race, housing, economic development, and public policy and co-authored major research studies for the Social Science Research Council, the Commission for Racial Equality, and their successor bodies.

He was a Director of the Higher Education Careers Service from 1994 to 2013 and was Chair of Liverpool: City of Learning from 2003 to 2005. He chaired the Standing Conference of Principals from 2001 to 2003, having been Vice-Chair from 1997 to 2001. He was a Director of the Teacher Training Agency and its successor body, the Training, and Development Agency for Schools, from 1999 to 2006 and chaired both the Accreditation and the Audit Committees. He is also the Chair of the Guild HE/Universities UK Teacher Education Advisory Group. He was a member of the Department of Health’s Expert Advisory Panel on Nurse Education and Training from 1995 to 97, and has sat on Universities UK’s Health and Social Care Committee since 2004. He also represented all Vice-Chancellors on the Joint DH/DfE Social Work Reform Board. He represented the sector on HEFCE’s Good Management Practice Panel from 1999 to 2003 and sat on both the HEROBaC and HEIF1 and HEIF2 Panels.

He is past Chair of the Knowsley 14-19 Collegiate Consortium and the Greater Merseyside and West Lancashire Lifelong Learning Network, and a former member of the QAA’s Advisory Committee on degree-awarding Powers.