The Headlines
Changing the operational culture of universities in the UK
Governance and leadership in British universities looks strikingly similar to each other. Are there other ways to run an institution?
By John O’Leary
"Board members at Manchester University were going to discuss agility with representatives of Formula One."
"We need to invest in academic leadership within universities so that they have the skills and abilities to be able to take on the huge burden of responsibilities.”
In brief
- To survive modern financial and political pressures, experts suggest institutions must stop being "self-referential" and start adopting successful management strategies from sectors as varied as Formula One and global streaming services.
- A reliance on academic-only leadership has created a "sink or swim" culture that often lacks professional management rigour.
- The solution lies in professionalising the Vice-Chancellor pipeline and finding a "middle path" between rigorous process and progress-driven outcomes. By investing in leadership training and streamlining executive structures, universities can move beyond traditional "councils".
Universities around the world are often compared unfavourably with business for the speed and efficiency of their decision-making. Their leaders are said to be drawn from too narrow a pool, overpaid but still hamstrung by arcane processes that prevent them from taking the necessary action to keep their institutions out of financial and/or political danger.
But given the differences in character and regulation, are such comparisons fair? The UK’s Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) convened a webinar last month featuring senior figures with experience of leadership in both universities and other sectors to test the thesis.
There was little doubt in the minds of most participants that university leaders could learn lessons from other sectors, but many of the examples cited were from the public sector rather than business. Strictly speaking, universities in the UK are not part of the public sector, but they share many of the same pressures since they draw the majority of their income from government through research grants and loans for student fees.
The discussion was hosted by Advance HE, the development agency for higher education based in the UK, whose Chief Executive, Alistair Jarvis, listed a number sectors – both public and private – facing similar challenges to universities in funding pressures, responses to AI, digital transformation and international uncertainties. “I think it’s important that we do all we can to learn how other sectors are facing these similar challenges, sharing insights, seeking solutions, looking at how others are solving problems and seeking out some good practice,“ he said.
Philippa Hird, chair of the board of Manchester University, who has held senior positions with ICI and Independent Television (ITV) and chairs the National Health Service pay review body, said universities tended to be “self-referential” when presented with unfamiliar challenges, limiting their search for possible responses to other universities facing similar problems. Her instinct was to seek out those who had dealt successfully with them, whatever the setting. Board members at Manchester University were going to discuss agility with representatives of Formula One motor racing, for example.
Other areas of productive advice included streaming companies on the use of data analytics and digital transformation, the financial sector for budget management and scenario planning, and commercial companies for their adaptability and willingness to invest in training for leadership at all levels. In companies such as Unilever, she said, senior managers had experience of all aspects of its work, whereas the “separateness” of academic staff from professional services limited the supply of potential university leaders.
Hird said informal advice from other sectors was widely available at no charge. Delicate areas such as the tension between competition and collaboration, which were often seen as unique to higher education, were actually not unusual in other fields, although they required careful management on where the boundaries lie in such arrangements.
Manchester University has introduced a new executive structure in the last year, combining the responsibilities of the senior leadership team, the planning and resources committee, and the finance and capital planning sub-committee into in a single University Executive meeting more regularly. It already had a board, rather than the traditional university council, which Hird sees as an indicator of modern management.
Nicola de Jongh, Chair of the Committee of University Chairs, said she had been “slightly depressed” to find that a recent session for 10 new vice-chancellors contained eight white male professors and two female. “Individually, you pick the best person for the job but as a sector, where the hell are we getting our learning from? I think we’ve got three or four vice-chancellors who are not academics,” she said. “I think we might have one who came from the professional services route. We’ve got a serious diversity issue at the very top.”
Khadir Meer. Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Finance and Operations at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, drew on his experience in the National Health Service, as well as central and local government. He questioned the effectiveness of strategic planning in many universities. “When you hear and see institutions announcing significant financial challenges, deficits or significant staffing reductions, I do wonder about the level of thought that has gone into strategic planning over a three to five-year period.”
At a time of unpredictable student demand and financial circumstances, more agility is required. Instead, optimism bias is evident in many plans, he said. “I think we need to think a bit more carefully about whether we have the right capacity and capabilities, whether we are challenging ourselves sufficiently at executive and board level around financial sustainability and how we plan and respond to what we see in any given year.”
Meer echoed Hird’s call for stronger leadership training in universities. “I have been struck, coming into the sector in the last four or five years by how much rigour goes into academic appointments and I’m not sure we sometimes have the same expectations for academic colleagues in leadership roles,” he said.
“It’s a bit of a sink or swim approach. I think we need to invest in academic leadership within universities so that they have the skills and abilities to be able to take on the huge burden of responsibilities they are expected to carry and the decisions they are expected to take.”
Rod Bristow, Chair of Council at the University of Bradford and Founder of Pearson’s College Online, said universities, which are seen as slow to make decisions, had to consider the tension between process and outcome. “Universities, for very good reasons, require a lot of process for decision-making,” he said.
“I wouldn’t for a moment argue that they should be removed, but equally it’s too easy to end up with process as the goal, not progress. The knock-on effect can be a lack of speed in decision-making compared with other sectors and maybe even worse a feeling that the job is done if the process is complete.
“There’s no silver bullet but those universities able to find a middle path will have greater agility and that will be a great advantage to them. All sectors have this challenge, but few more than higher education.”
The one area of disagreement was over shared services. Meer questioned the need for five neighboring institutions each to operate their own professional services, but Bristow warned of the danger of adding layers of complexity unless any necessary changes were made at institutional level first. Mary Curnock Cook, former Chief Executive of the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS), argued that most universities had sufficiently large budgets to justify running their own services and would be better investing in improvements to them.