Hard on the heels of the merger of Dartington College in a Devon/Cornwall regional development and student numbers battle, disturbing news from Kent. Staff at the University College for the Creative Arts (UCCA) have been told that the Maidstone campus may be closed. Officially there is to be a 'feasibility study into the withdrawal from the Maidstone campus', as a result of the plan to build a new £75m campus elsewhere in Kent, at a site not yet decided. The Kent campuses at Rochester and Canterbury will also be affected if these proposals go ahead. According to the message to staff from the rector, Elaine Thomas, 'In the longer term the new campus will eventually incorporate all the existing teaching in Kent.'

Teaching staff at Maidstone, up to professorial level, were not consulted about the academic plans. These involve, according to UCCA's press release, 'diversifying the academic portfolio to encompass the performing arts' (music, postproduction, etc). These are all reasonable ambitions for UCCA, but seem so far to have been drawn up by the five heads of college with minimum discussion with existing academic staff, for whom the single campus plan is a shock. UCCA wants to 'grow' UCCA from its current 6,500 students towards the 9,000 that it needs for university status, which is its primary institutional goal (along with securing its income). One way to grow is to keep existing staff on side.

The consultation process is only beginning now - in the form of 'executive roadshows' for staff. At stake in the plans are not just continuity of commitment to a particular area - including a large proportion of working-class students who would not necessarily travel to another campus - and pride in a college's individual history. Staff experienced in recruitment and in course development are concerned about the viability of UCCA's business plan for the notional new Kent campus. Reassurances are being offered to staff about employment, but a calculation is being made on the savings that redundancies will bring. One estimate mentioned at the executive roadshow is £3.3m - which will not go far towards a £75m plan when the human and financial costs of UCCA's merger (it is made up from the former Kent and Surrey Institutes of Art & Design) are still being felt. In the short term, prospective new students for courses at Maidstone are apparently going to be asked whether they would favour completing their courses there or at another campus, which is hardly likely to help recruitment or UCCA's reputation. The effects of the possible closure on admin and support staff, who are often the people who actually keep colleges going through upheavals of management and direction, also need to be considered.

Maidstone - or rather an out of town site close to junction 7 of the M20 - is still being mentioned as one possible site for the proposed super-campus, though the others are the Thames Gateway area and Medway, site of UCCA's Rochester campus, which offers courses at degree and MA level including design, photography and fashion. UCCA planners would seem likely to favour Thames Gateway/ Rochester because of its proximity to London and to population centres, and the stronger prospect of access to preferential development funding. The courses offered at Maidstone include MA, degree-level and foundation degrees in graphic design and media, degrees in illustration and animation, and a degree in video arts production - this distinctive course is the inheritor of the famous time-based media course set up by David Hall and subsequently run by Al Rees; professors include Nicky Hamlyn and Andrew Kötting.

The head of college at Maidstone, Claire Mussell, has accepted voluntary redundancy. Laurence Wood, the head of college at Canterbury (home to fine art and architecture degrees and a large foundation course), did not offer any comment on the proposals. Dianne Taylor, former head of college at Rochester, is now executive dean with academic responsibility for the three Kent campuses - this post itself is perhaps an admission of doubt on UCCA's part that the institution's challenging geographical logic and understanding of local needs can be easily grasped by a rector and management team based mostly in Farnham. Taylor stressed that no decision had been made about Maidstone, and wanted to emphasise the positive aspects of offering a wider range of courses and centralising resources such as libraries: 'the process is only at the beginning'. One model for the new campus was a 'hub and satellite', allowing for more 'blended learning, flexible learning' and e-learning. She sees the 10-year plan not as being solely concerned with the pursuit of a university title, but as a positive response to UCCA's need for 'sustainability' - ie increasing its income from student fees. She also said that the message from consultation with students was that 'they don't consider Maidstone culturally vibrant'.

The Maidstone campus at Oakwood Park was formerly Maidstone College of Art, and its best known former student is Tracey Emin, who studied printmaking there. It was consolidated into the Kent Institute of Art & Design (KIAD) with the colleges at Rochester and Canterbury. KIAD did at least have some geographical identity that made sense, though it suffered from some entrenched management difficulties. In 2005 it was merged with the Surrey Insitute of Art & Design, with sites at Farnham and Epsom; and Vaughan Grylls, KIAD's then director, subsequently 'left the academic world to return to his own work fulltime', leaving suspicions in place that Surrey's sharper management team had the upper hand in the merger. The local economic and human effects of any closure of the Maidstone campus on Kent's county town, which is currently pursuing city status but is by no means full of wealthy people who all live in oasthouses, are also a concern, just as they are for the areas of south Devon and Totnes affected by Dartington's co-option by Falmouth.