President's weekly update

25 March 2021

We held our annual accountability review at which our Board of Governors examines all aspects of our performance, as informed by our annual performance reviews. This is then published in our annual Stocktake Report, which will be appearing shortly. It was of course recognised that this had been a truly exceptional year with many new challenges.

Overall, the Board recognised the difficulties we have faced and praised our University’s achievements over the past year, which included continuing with future planning as well as managing the many day-to-day issues related to the pandemic.

This was followed by a formal meeting of the Board which included updates on many of our activities, a review of the accountability conference and consideration of my own PDR, for which I was obviously absent. A meeting of our Board North Campus Working Group discussed progress on identifying a commercial partner for Innovation District Manchester.

Our Board Nominations Committee considered recruitment of new members of the Board and our planned governance review which will be undertaken by the independent organisation Halpin. They agreed to retain the election system to appoint our Chancellor which will now continue for the recruitment of Lemn Sissay’s successor (to begin in the autumn), and to keep the appointment of the professional services members of our Board by our General Assembly, while the wider governance review is being carried out.

This week marks our submission to the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021, an exercise that assesses the quality of research across all disciplines in UK higher education institutions. Led by Professor Colette Fagan, our Vice-President for Research, the preparation started over five years ago and has involved an immense amount of work for our academic and professional service teams. I would like to thank everyone who has contributed to the production of excellent research during the REF period and those who prepared this strong REF submission for the University, which captures the quality and breadth of our research and impact. You can read more about REF on StaffNet.

At the Russell Group we met Susan Acland-Hood, Permanent Secretary (most senior civil servant) at the Department for Education, and discussed the potential time for return of all remaining students, the new academic year and the continuing decline in the funding per student for UK undergraduates. We also met the Chair and Chief Executive of the USS pension scheme to challenge the valuation of the scheme which is resulting in an unaffordable cost. We are aware of the very strong push back they have had from the Pension Regulator from the published correspondence. In a separate Russell Group meeting we met Lord James Wharton, the new Chair of the Office for Students, and discussed how the levels of bureaucracy and reporting can be reduced, freedom of speech, concerns about grade drift in degrees and future measures of successful outcomes or students.

An open meeting for staff focussed on pensions. An independent pensions expert Paul Hamilton described the position of defined benefit pensions (like USS), valuations and assumptions and the financial challenges faced by such pensions. This was followed by questions from attendees and in writing. We offered to hold a further meeting on pensions. You can watch the whole session on StaffNet.

I met the Minister for Science, Research and Innovation Amanda Solloway with a small group of others. The meeting was to discuss the government’s new funding agency:  the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA), but inevitably focussed on the serious cuts that are likely to be made to research funding via the Global Challenges Research Fund and to UKRI as a result of the costs of associating with Horizon Europe.  Universities UK, the Russell Group and I personally have been working hard to limit these very serious cuts that would impact on current as well as future projects.

We met officers of our Students’ Union to discuss support for international students, including those who may be unable to travel to Manchester at present. We will be working with Students’ Union officers to consider how we might support international students who have faced additional costs.

I attended a meeting of the N8 group of northern research-intensive universities at which Lord Jim O’Neill, former chief economist at Goldman Sachs and an honorary professor with us, spoke about the levelling up agenda, and the N8 proposal for ‘NetZeroNorth’ to deliver on carbon reductions through research and innovation.

Following a three-week campaign, the Your Voice, Our Manchester short pulse survey has now closed. Thank you to everyone who took the time to share their views and experiences of working at our University over the past 12 months. We will share the results on StaffNet in the coming weeks and action plans will be made based on the survey responses.

Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor

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