President's Weekly Update
26 March 2015
Earlier this week, we held the annual Planning and Accountability Conference with our Board of Governors where we reviewed progress towards our Manchester 2020 goals. The Board reaffirmed our ambition to be amongst the leading universities in the world and recognised that we have performed well in many areas over the past year, but pointed out that we will need to significantly step up our performance if we are to reach this ambition in the face of rising costs, declining public funding and increasing global competition.
An important example of the scale of those challenges is that we heard earlier today that we will see a significant reduction in government funding under the Quality Research (QR) core funding allocation as a result of the lower volume of our staff returned and those judged at the highest levels in the Research Excellence Framework 2014, compared to 2008. As expected, we will lose £10.5 million in 2015/16 (this includes some benefit from transitional funding) and more (~£14 million pa) in subsequent years. Taken together with other changes, such as the likely increase in costs arising from pension changes, this means a ‘hit’ of around £20 million to the University’s bottom line from 2016/17.
We also need to find significantly more than £20 million in order to create the financial ‘headroom’ to continue to invest in our strategic priorities. We have a range of plans to increase our income, but we are also examining our cost base to ensure that we are as efficient and effective as possible – and that includes the 50%+ of our expenditure that we invest in staff costs. In addition, there will be some activities where we will have to reduce investment, cut costs, and others that we may have to stop altogether.
Having received the full endorsement and support from our Board of Governors, we must now turn our plans into actions and outcomes.
Sir Howard Bernstein, Chief Executive of Manchester City Council, spoke at the Conference about the role of universities in cities and regions. The Board members then viewed posters on each of the five research beacons: advanced materials, cancer, energy, industrial biotechnology and tackling global inequalities. Just before dinner, Professor Colin Bailey (Deputy President and Deputy Vice-Chancellor) spoke about our public spaces, and then Dr Teresa Anderson (Director of the Jodrell Bank Discovery Centre) talked about the Centre, which has just been extended with the opening of the new Star Pavilion.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, officially opened our National Graphene Institute (NGI) last week. The NGI is a spectacular £61 million building on Booth Street East which houses state-of-the-art facilities for research on graphene and other two dimensional materials. In spite of organising the event at very short notice (to fit in-between the Budget and the pre-election ‘purdah’ period), it was very well attended. The Chancellor went on a short tour of the building and saw some demonstrations of applications of graphene with Professor Kostya Novoselov. Professor Colin Bailey and I both gave short speeches followed by the Chancellor, who spoke of his excitement about the potential applications and benefit of graphene, then unveiled the official plaque. He had just come from naming a train ‘The Northern Powerhouse’ and was going on to see apprentices and Sir Bobby Charlton at Manchester United.
I spent a couple of days in London at the Royal Society Council meeting and the Council for Science and Technology. In between meetings I met Sir Chris Evans, who is a major investor in life sciences and health research, who I have known for many years.
One evening in London I attended a dinner hosted by David Giampaolo who runs Pi Capital (a London based investment company) with about 40 senior business people. The theme of the dinner was opportunities in Manchester. Sir Howard Bernstein spoke first about the opportunities presented by the growth of Greater Manchester, recent major investments, particularly from overseas and the devolution of powers and major budgets to Greater Manchester. The economist Jim O’Neill, who holds an honorary chair with us, talked about his review of city regions and the potential to ‘join up’ northern cities to create prosperity. I then talked about the University, its core activities, distinctiveness and future plans. There were many questions and a lot of interest, with several attendees saying that they wished to visit Manchester and the University.
We had two meetings this week about ESOF (EuroScience Open Forum), the major conference which we will host in July 2016, as planning for the event steps up. The Steering Committee, which oversees the conference, heard updates on progress and started to discuss potential keynote speakers and the Local Organising Committee went into more detail on timetables and actions and events around Manchester as ‘European City of Science’.
Two reminders: first that nominations can be submitted for the next Chancellor of the University, closing date 13 April see:
Secondly, if you have not done so yet, please complete the Staff Survey, closing date 20 April see:
It was a great pleasure to visit Jodrell Bank to see the live transmission of ‘Stargazing Live’ by the BBC on Friday morning. As usual it was presented by Professor Brian Cox and the comedian Dara O’Briain with support from many of our own staff at Jodrell and a large number of BBC staff and equipment. This was a special extra programme (other live programmes were shown on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday evenings) to show the eclipse of the sun. Fortunately it was clear at Jodrell so we got a fantastic view of the 90% eclipse and also watched live film from the plane above the Faroe Islands where there was a full eclipse. The programme attracted over four million viewers (over half the UK viewing audience).
It was a special occasion because the Director General of the BBC, Lord Tony Hall, was there to see the programmes on Thursday evening and Friday morning. I accompanied Tony on a tour of the site with Professors Simon Garrington (Director of Jodrell Bank Observatory) and Tim O’Brien (Associate Director) and Dr Teresa Anderson. The Head of BBC Science, Andrew Cohen was also there. Andrew is one of our graduates (who I taught) and holds an honorary appointment with us. Tony and all of the BBC staff were delighted with the programmes which are technically very demanding to show live. You can see all this year’s ‘Stargazing Live’ programmes at:
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor
Feedback
Please send comments to president@manchester.ac.uk
President's Weekly Update
26 March 2015
Earlier this week, we held the annual Planning and Accountability Conference with our Board of Governors where we reviewed progress towards our Manchester 2020 goals. The Board reaffirmed our ambition to be amongst the leading universities in the world and recognised that we have performed well in many areas over the past year, but pointed out that we will need to significantly step up our performance if we are to reach this ambition in the face of rising costs, declining public funding and increasing global competition.
An important example of the scale of those challenges is that we heard earlier today that we will see a significant reduction in government funding under the Quality Research (QR) core funding allocation as a result of the lower volume of our staff returned and those judged at the highest levels in the Research Excellence Framework 2014, compared to 2008. As expected, we will lose £10.5 million in 2015/16 (this includes some benefit from transitional funding) and more (~£14 million pa) in subsequent years. Taken together with other changes, such as the likely increase in costs arising from pension changes, this means a ‘hit’ of around £20 million to the University’s bottom line from 2016/17.
We also need to find significantly more than £20 million in order to create the financial ‘headroom’ to continue to invest in our strategic priorities. We have a range of plans to increase our income, but we are also examining our cost base to ensure that we are as efficient and effective as possible – and that includes the 50%+ of our expenditure that we invest in staff costs. In addition, there will be some activities where we will have to reduce investment, cut costs, and others that we may have to stop altogether.
Having received the full endorsement and support from our Board of Governors, we must now turn our plans into actions and outcomes.
Sir Howard Bernstein, Chief Executive of Manchester City Council, spoke at the Conference about the role of universities in cities and regions. The Board members then viewed posters on each of the five research beacons: advanced materials, cancer, energy, industrial biotechnology and tackling global inequalities. Just before dinner, Professor Colin Bailey (Deputy President and Deputy Vice-Chancellor) spoke about our public spaces, and then Dr Teresa Anderson (Director of the Jodrell Bank Discovery Centre) talked about the Centre, which has just been extended with the opening of the new Star Pavilion.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, officially opened our National Graphene Institute (NGI) last week. The NGI is a spectacular £61 million building on Booth Street East which houses state-of-the-art facilities for research on graphene and other two dimensional materials. In spite of organising the event at very short notice (to fit in-between the Budget and the pre-election ‘purdah’ period), it was very well attended. The Chancellor went on a short tour of the building and saw some demonstrations of applications of graphene with Professor Kostya Novoselov. Professor Colin Bailey and I both gave short speeches followed by the Chancellor, who spoke of his excitement about the potential applications and benefit of graphene, then unveiled the official plaque. He had just come from naming a train ‘The Northern Powerhouse’ and was going on to see apprentices and Sir Bobby Charlton at Manchester United.
I spent a couple of days in London at the Royal Society Council meeting and the Council for Science and Technology. In between meetings I met Sir Chris Evans, who is a major investor in life sciences and health research, who I have known for many years.
One evening in London I attended a dinner hosted by David Giampaolo who runs Pi Capital (a London based investment company) with about 40 senior business people. The theme of the dinner was opportunities in Manchester. Sir Howard Bernstein spoke first about the opportunities presented by the growth of Greater Manchester, recent major investments, particularly from overseas and the devolution of powers and major budgets to Greater Manchester. The economist Jim O’Neill, who holds an honorary chair with us, talked about his review of city regions and the potential to ‘join up’ northern cities to create prosperity. I then talked about the University, its core activities, distinctiveness and future plans. There were many questions and a lot of interest, with several attendees saying that they wished to visit Manchester and the University.
We had two meetings this week about ESOF (EuroScience Open Forum), the major conference which we will host in July 2016, as planning for the event steps up. The Steering Committee, which oversees the conference, heard updates on progress and started to discuss potential keynote speakers and the Local Organising Committee went into more detail on timetables and actions and events around Manchester as ‘European City of Science’.
Two reminders: first that nominations can be submitted for the next Chancellor of the University, closing date 13 April see:
Secondly, if you have not done so yet, please complete the Staff Survey, closing date 20 April see:
It was a great pleasure to visit Jodrell Bank to see the live transmission of ‘Stargazing Live’ by the BBC on Friday morning. As usual it was presented by Professor Brian Cox and the comedian Dara O’Briain with support from many of our own staff at Jodrell and a large number of BBC staff and equipment. This was a special extra programme (other live programmes were shown on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday evenings) to show the eclipse of the sun. Fortunately it was clear at Jodrell so we got a fantastic view of the 90% eclipse and also watched live film from the plane above the Faroe Islands where there was a full eclipse. The programme attracted over four million viewers (over half the UK viewing audience).
It was a special occasion because the Director General of the BBC, Lord Tony Hall, was there to see the programmes on Thursday evening and Friday morning. I accompanied Tony on a tour of the site with Professors Simon Garrington (Director of Jodrell Bank Observatory) and Tim O’Brien (Associate Director) and Dr Teresa Anderson. The Head of BBC Science, Andrew Cohen was also there. Andrew is one of our graduates (who I taught) and holds an honorary appointment with us. Tony and all of the BBC staff were delighted with the programmes which are technically very demanding to show live. You can see all this year’s ‘Stargazing Live’ programmes at:
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor
Feedback
Please send comments to president@manchester.ac.uk