President's weekly update
23 April 2020
I hope that you all managed to have a break over the extended Easter weekend.
I know that you are working hard and that a key priority for many is to deliver online teaching and prepare for a very different form of exams.
We are hopeful of a gradual release of lockdown as soon as it is safe to do so, and our attention is now shifting from responding to the immediate impacts of the outbreak (though this remains very important) to planning for the future, which is likely to be very different. We do not yet know if we will be able to deliver face-to-face teaching in September so need to further develop our online learning programmes ensuring these are of a high quality and review the range of programmes we offer. We are considering the best approach to the start of the next academic year, either a delayed start, or potentially two start dates, one in September and another in January, likely with online elements.
In a message sent to all staff, I outlined our assumptions about the possible financial implications of the coronavirus outbreak, in particular a likely major loss of students, particularly international and EU students, in the next academic year, but which could last for a significant period of time. Of course we will not know exactly how successful our student recruitment has been until late September or early October, but we are already seeing significant loss of income in the current academic year, largely from student residences, and we expect more significant impacts in the next academic year. The message also outlines the actions we are taking now and may have to take in the future to respond to reduced student intake and other losses of income.
These very serious impacts were discussed at an additional joint meeting of our Board Finance and Audit Committees and in our now fortnightly update for our Board of Governors.
I outlined some of these challenges to Senate (which is also now meeting virtually every two weeks for a briefing on the coronavirus outbreak); in a meeting I attended with our trade union representatives and in a meeting with senior leaders from across the University.
Senior colleagues and I hosted an open meeting on Zoom for over 250 University staff and answered questions on online teaching, working from home and the financial effects of the pandemic. You can watch the event which was recorded. We will be holding further open meetings with the next one on 12 May – this will be promoted soon.
I’ve had numerous other video meetings, almost all focused on Covid-19. The Senior Leadership Team has been meeting twice weekly and we have held extra meetings of Finance Sub-Committee, Capital Planning Sub-Committee and a regular meeting of Planning and Resources Committee. You can see an animated diagram showing our key governance and management committees on StaffNet.
I joined additional meetings of the Russell Group and have been in regular contact with Universities UK (UUK). A proposal has been put to Government from UUK to agree that no university will exceed more than 5% of their stated target for recruitment of home undergraduates which could compensate for loss of international students, because over-recruitment by popular universities might seriously damage some other universities that struggle with home student recruitment. Part of this proposal included a request to double QR (Quality Research) funding and pay full economic costs of UKRI grants for one year. If approved, this would help in offsetting the reduction in international students which all universities are expecting.
Our Board Investment Sub-Committee recommended a major change to our socially responsible investment policy which, if approved by the Finance Committee and the Board, would result in a major shift towards full decarbonisation of all of our investments. My thanks to the hundreds of staff, students and alumni who responded to our consultation on this earlier in the year.
I chaired our Awards and Honours Committee which considers nominations for honorary doctorates, our Medal of Honour and national honours.
Professor Martin Schröder, Vice-President and Dean of the Faculty of Science and Engineering, and I ‘met’ the chair and director of the Rosalind Franklin Institute at Harwell of which we are a member.
In some very welcome good news we were ranked eighth in the world and first in the UK in the THE Sustainable Development Goals league table. Staff, students and alumni are invited to attend this year’s Making a Difference Awards live online this year – you can sign up on StaffNet.
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor