President's weekly update
18 June 2020
We held a meeting of our General Assembly by Zoom. I reported on our response to COVID-19, the likely financial impacts and the steps we are taking to mitigate the scale of this. Professor April McMahon, Vice-President for Teaching, Learning and Students, explained how we are adapting to offer the best possible experience and environment for our current and future students. Professor Peter Clayton, Deputy Vice-Dean in the Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, described the remarkable work our staff are doing to try to understand and treat COVID-19. We had questions on our work on equality, diversity and inclusion – prompted by the Black Lives Matter campaign – attracting international students, moving to blended learning and on environmental sustainability.
We had one of the regular briefings for our Board of Governors and updated on current activities and how we are responding to the pandemic. We also met the chairs of our Board committees to discuss our financial position and the more difficult environment for securing loans. We went into our financial position in more detail at our Board Finance Committee where we also discussed next year’s budget, recognising that there are so many unknowns.
We held a briefing meeting for Senate members, again focussing on the University’s finances, where John Cunningham, our interim Director of Finance, described the finances of the university sector, our major income streams and how we spend our money - this has been detailed in a message on StaffNet. John also explained the likely major financial impacts of COVID-19, largely because of likely reduction in students, and how we might further mitigate against these impacts. We reminded Senate members of the key factors that will influence our future financial position: student recruitment, take up of our voluntary measures and possible Government support. We also described options for short-term loans and explained that we had already planned for savings before COVID-19 because our major income streams have not increased, while costs have risen significantly. A further major concern is the escalating costs of pensions, which have been hit hard by COVID-19 and are likely to be further impacted by the global recession. We were very open about all aspects of our finances, and a recording of a similar presentation at an open staff meeting held today will be available on StaffNet shortly.
Today is the closing date (which has been extended) for UCAS applications for undergraduate students to study at university. This may give us an indication of likely recruitment of students in the next academic year, but of course many may be waiting to see what happens over the next few months, especially international students who will be concerned about safety, visas, flights and quarantine. We have sent out many messages to all prospective and returning students and I have recorded messages, as have leaders in Greater Manchester and nationally.
I spoke to Sir Michael Barber, Chair of the Office for Students (OfS). He will attend our Board meeting in July. I raised our concerns about the extent of reporting and accountability that we seem to face with OfS, particularly when we have major issues of concern.
It was a great pleasure to celebrate, again on Zoom, the enormous generosity of one of our alumni, Lex Greensill and his company, who have donated £2.5m towards our rapidly developing centre in fintech within our Alliance Manchester Business School. We were joined by a number of alumni in financial services, many of whom asked for contacts and to keep in touch. Our new Greensill Professor of Fintech Markos Zachariadis spoke about his aspirations, including working with businesses and supporting new start-up companies.
I’ve spent some time over the last week talking to a number of our major donors across the world. They are all facing the same issues as us and philanthropy, like many other income streams, is likely to be depressed, though our fundraising team has done a brilliant job in raising support for student hardship and COVID-19 research. We are now inviting suggestions on how the funds for student hardship could be best used on StaffNet.
As we begin to carry out Performance and Development Reviews across the University I was delighted to hear that more than 2,700 staff are actively using our Staff Learning and Development online resources. Around 1,000 colleagues have taken part in Zoom learning and development activities run by the team, with another 250 people signed up to take part before the end of July.
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor