Canon Michael Wedgeworth looks to a new educational future for Blackburn.

Blackburn: a university town? It's more than possible.

A couple of weeks ago Gordon Brown announced that the Government is planning 10 new universities to be located in less prosperous areas of the country.

I am shortly to end my term as Chair of the governing body of Blackburn College, and nothing would please me more than that the efforts which have been underway to expand our higher education work should come to fruition over the next few years in the creation of a new university here.

It has always been a moving experience over the years to attend the annual Higher Education Awards ceremony at King George's Hall and see so many mature students receive their degrees.

You always hear stifled shouts of "well done Mum" from a child in the audience, but this year was the first time I heard anyone cry out "Well done, Grandma"

Of course, dads got awards also. Many parents are taking a second chance after rearing young children to get the qualifications they always hoped for.

These students can't live away from home, nor in the style of the young undergraduate.

A university on their doorstep is the only way they can combine study with family responsibilities.

I hope and expect that religious studies would feature on the curriculum of a university serving East Lancashire.

I say this not because I want special privileges for my faith, but because any university must give its students the opportunity to grapple with fundamental questions.

And there is a growing demand that this should be done, not from established leaders, but from the consumers of education, students themselves.

Religion in its many forms trades in why' questions, rather than the how' questions of science.

Faiths respond to the really basic issues of meaning and existence and moral purpose.

In an area like this, mutual understanding and co-operation between Christianity, Islam, Judaism and dialogue between them and secular opinion is critical to community cohesion.

The Cathedral, through its Exchange programme led by Chris Chivers and Anjum Anwar, is playing a big, innovative role in all this.

Could this is the forerunner of a department of faith studies at the new University of Blackburn?