President's weekly update
16 March 2023
Spring Budget 2023 and the ‘Manchester Prize’
In his statement the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, said that inflation will fall to just below 3% by the end of the year. He announced the creation of 12 investment zones and three research and innovation areas of which Greater Manchester will be one. Each will receive funding of £80m over five years to drive innovation. We have to now decide across GM, which region(s) and areas to focus upon. He also announced an annual £1million prize for the best British AI research to be named the 'Manchester Prize' to honour the world’s first stored programme computer, ‘the Baby’, created at The University of Manchester.
Russell Group Conference
In our internal discussions we focussed on pressing issues including the impact of inflation on our staff and students and our continuing efforts to lobby government to increase students’ maintenance loans. You will have seen that we are now providing further cost of living funding to another 10,000 students. Combined with the earlier support we believe that this is the most generous student support in the sector. We also talked extensively about the value of Horizon Europe, major delays in security approvals for international students and staff, ongoing industrial action and the implications of new legislation on lifelong learning and on freedom of speech.
External speakers included the Shadow Minister for Higher Education, Matt Western. From other speakers we heard positive viewpoints on the public and the current government’s views of universities and research, including that the government is really committed to research and innovation and levelling up. This counterbalanced somewhat depressing talks from experts on the future global and UK financial position. There was also a fascinating session on the use of AI in teaching and assessment including online tools such as ChatGPT. We were told that we shouldn’t ignore platforms such as ChatGPT, we can’t ‘outrun’ them, so we must embrace them. Our Vice-President for Teaching, Learning and Students Professor April McMahon has written a Viewpoint blog exploring the impact of ChatGPT.
School visit
Students in the School of Engineering raised questions about industrial action and the impact on some of their studies, student occupations, IT infrastructure and strengthening the roles of student-staff liaison committees. In the meeting with staff, we talked about delays in government security approval for projects and people, support for EDI, IT infrastructure (the meeting unfortunately coincided with a Wi-Fi outage in MECD), technical and PS staff shortages, health and safety reporting, ChatGPT and developing collaborations between Engineering and the health disciplines. The latter was timely as the new Christabel Pankhurst building has just been handed over.
International
I met John Edwards, His Majesty's Trade Commissioner for China. I’ve previously met John several times in China. He said that life in China was returning to normal after prolonged COVID lockdowns and people are starting to travel again. I reported very strong student applications from China but also concerns about delays in approving research collaborations and student and staff visas.
Board committees
The Board nominations committee met this week to consider new members of the Board to replace those who have retired, and the election of Senate and a Professional Services staff member.
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor