President's weekly update
8 June 2023
Senate meeting and briefing on innovation
Senate members had an informal briefing on innovation from Professor Richard Jones, Vice-President for Regional Innovation and Civic Engagement.
At the main Senate meeting members approved various changes in regulations, heard reports from the two sub-groups on academic assurance and had updates from several senior staff including me. There was discussion about the importance of succinct summaries, the remit of Senate and an update on changes resulting from our external governance review.
My final meeting as Chair of Russell Group
At my last Board meeting as Chair, most of the discussion was about the impact of the UCU marking and assessment boycott on students. All were concerned about this impact, particularly on final year students. It was asked why UCU doesn’t boycott other activities, such as research, which would also hurt universities but would not harm students in the same way, recognising that postgraduate researchers contribute significantly to our universities.
We heard from those most closely involved that, subject to the formal evaluation, the USS pension position looks positive, largely due to strong markets, which may allow full restoration of the changes made at the last valuation. Of course, much depends on the pension regulator which last time ruled that USS was being less prudent that they would want and gave USS Trustee no leeway.
It is clear that there will be no increase on the current pay award given the known impacts of high inflation against declining (in real terms) UK student fees and the costs of the teachers’ pension scheme for many universities and other rising costs. The sector is also facing unknown potential impacts of the legal class action against UCL over lost teaching during COVID which may affect other universities, and on international student recruitment in light of the recent government ban on students (apart from those conducting research degrees) from bringing dependents to the UK. UCEA which negotiates with all universities and trades unions on pay and is leading current discussions on non-pay, is open to continuing negotiations on non-pay issues which are a key part of UCU’s demands.
Discussions with Heads of Departments
The marking and assessment boycott also featured strongly in my meeting with Heads in the Faculty of Science and Engineering. We also discussed ongoing staff shortages, particularly in Estates and Facilities where they are impacting on minor works because there is so much demand for tradespeople. They asked about an ongoing student disciplinary case, which of course I can’t comment on, but I referred them to our public statement.
Meetings with external visitors from TenU, GCHQ and strategic partners
TenU is a group of ten UK and international universities that collaborate on commercialisation of research. The current Chair is Andy Wilkinson who leads Innovation Factory, our own commercialisation arm. Colleagues from member universities visited us and we discussed the current government review of university commercialisation. Those from the USA (Colombia, Stanford and MIT) were surprised that in the UK universities rarely own intellectual property generated by students, particularly PGRs, and that if this was recognised, the UK would be doing at least as well, if not better than the USA on university commercialisation.
Professor Colette Fagan, Vice-President for Research, and I met the new head of GCHQ in the region. We already have strong collaboration with GCHQ in research and graduate employment and discussed how we can further build those links. GCHQ recruits graduates from all disciplines including many in Humanities.
We hosted a visit from senior staff from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, with which we have a strategic partnership. They had extended discussions on our areas of partnership and they met with our staff involved in collaboration. We also considered new areas of partnership including on museums (they were very impressed by their tour of our Museum), China studies (they met staff in our Manchester China Institute) and social responsibility (which they discussed with Dr Julian Skyrme).
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor