PRESIDENT'S LOG:EVERY Saturday evening in our house a hush descends upon the place as one member of my family focuses closely on an event of real cultural significance. I am, of course, referring to the BBC's Strictly Come Dancing, writes FERDINAND VON PRONDZYNSKI

As the professionals and the amateurs, the celebrities and wannabes move across the stage, they get our full attention. Well, when I say “our”, I mean that I can sometimes be found hovering in the background, looking at the dancing and hearing my partner’s exclamations about the dancers. But I hear enough to be able to take part in a conversation on, for example, Ali and Brian’s alleged off-screen relationship. (Good luck to them, I say.)

Actually, the most remarkable thing about Strictly(as all people in the know call it) is that it doesn't involve Simon Cowell. Now how did that happen? I thought it was a legal requirement for him to be on the panel of any TV talent contest on either side of the Atlantic. Indeed, Cowell is never far from the news generated by talent shows. In my experience, there are as many strong opinions out there on Cowell's views on the Jedward twins on The X Factoras there are on John and Edward.

If you have no idea what I am talking about here, then maybe I should stop for a moment to explain. It's all about popular culture. If you think that "culture" is about Shakespeare, Yeats, Dickens, Beethoven and Heaney, then you may find it distasteful to have the word associated with The X Factor.

I often find that, as some of my English acquaintances think civilisation ends just north of Watford, so some of my more highbrow friends think that acceptable culture travels as far as (but not quite to) Andrew Lloyd Webber. Indeed I have some friends who think that culture only includes stuff that nobody can really like at all, such as the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen. Once something is popular, by definition it has no cultural value.

So how is this relevant to universities? Well, third-level colleges need at all times to promote and encourage excellence in learning and scholarship. Therefore, intellectually they must present themselves as elite institutions.

On the other hand, we cannot and must not be elite socially, and if we adopt the cultural icons and idioms of the upper middle classes we cannot hope to be open and inclusive. But it’s more difficult still than that. We need to do more than just learn a little about popular culture; we need to have some understanding of it.

Of course, this needs to permeate all layers of our academic institutions, but I thought I would have a look at the cultural awareness of some of my fellow university presidents, most of whom were good enough to respond to my questions on this.

Apart from television, I invited them to tell me about their interests in sports, movies and books. And what emerges is a pleasing mixture of interests and cultural awareness. So I am happy to report that I am not the only president who watches The X Factor, though more watch The Apprentice. One president doesn't watch any reality TV but closely follows Desperate Housewives. another is a popular science fiction addict.

One president regularly watches The Premiershipand Match of the Day,which leads me to sport. Every president supports some sporting team or event. This ranges, in order of importance, from Galway United soccer, via Mayo football and Cork hurling, to Manchester City and Manchester United. Not to forget Newcastle United!

On the other hand, when it comes to books it appears we are all unrelentingly highbrow, with not a Mills and Boon in sight. Recently read books are dominated by literary fiction, with Philip Roth appearing several times in the lists. I rather think that this is as it should be, for in the end we do represent intellectual values that need to be nurtured and expressed.

What is my overall point? Universities need to negotiate a tricky path between elitism and snobbery. We should believe in and pursue the highest standards of scholarship, and often that includes the celebration of cultural innovation and artistic excellence. But we are also servants of a wider society that has enthusiasms and interests of a more popular nature, and we can’t do that if we believe that popular culture is beneath us.

So there it is: my advice to the academic community is to switch on the telly for the next X Factor, I'm a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here!, Strictlyor, indeed, anything on MTV.

Don’t just watch it or think of it as a chore, but get into the mood.

• Ferdinand von Prondzynski is president of Dublin City University