President's weekly update
31 March 2022
International travel
I was due to travel to Dubai and Abu Dhabi on Sunday to meet alumni and university partners, discuss collaboration on graphene and celebrate the 15th anniversary of our centre in Dubai. However, on Saturday a PCR test showed that I was positive for COVID, despite a negative PCR test three days earlier and negative lateral flow tests every day. In fact, four out of five of us who were due to travel tested positive even though most of us have not been together. This shows that unfortunately the pandemic is still with us, though for most, symptoms are quite mild.
I did record some speeches for events in Dubai, managed to hold a couple of the meetings on Zoom and we are looking at rescheduling the visit. It is such a pity that this, my first overseas trip for the University since COVID, had to be cancelled. I am so grateful to Randa Bessiso, who leads the centre, and her staff for making it such a success and for all their hard work, and I hope to visit soon.
Pay gaps
We have published our pay gap reports. The gaps on mean and median pay gaps have reduced for all categories: gender 15.6% and 11.1% respectively (the lowest gap we have seen), ethnicity 13.3% and 9.9% and disability (reported for the first time) 15.1% and 13.1%. We still have much more to do to eradicate these pay gaps which are due to underrepresentation of some staff groups in more senior roles and overrerpresentation in more junior roles. Our Equal Pay Audit 2019 revealed that there are no significant pay gaps by gender, ethnicity or disability for staff paid within each of grades 1 – 8 on our University’s pay scale.
Chancellor’s Spring statement
While the recent Spring statement did not include much news for universities, there was an announcement of 1,000 new PhDs in AI and an R&D tax reform from April 2023 that will enable reliefs for data, cloud computing, and pure mathematics. The R&D investment announced in the autumn will reach a record level of £20 billion invested each year by 2024-25, rising to a target of £22 billion each year by 2026-27.
Ukraine
We have now announced scholarships for students and support for staff from countries affected by conflict or disaster. The total funding for this is about £5 million for three years. Obviously, those affected by the invasion of Ukraine will be a priority inititally. Full details of the scholarships and application information will be published as soon as possible.
Staff and services
Like many organisations, we are seeing additional staff absences due to the recent surge on COVID cases and difficulties in recruiting into some areas, notably IT and Estates. You have probably experienced this in other areas outside the University such as train cancellations, airport delays and difficulty in contacting many services. Hopefully the decline in COVID cases that we are now seeing will help to improve things, though some may be due to longer term staff issues that have been ascribed to Brexit.
Universities and business
I took part in a discussion about a recent report from NCUB (National Centre for Universities and Business) which had surveyed thousands of companies about their interactions with universities. The report was extremely positive, with 80% reporting that their interactions were very effective. It also indicated interactions over a wide range of topics and identified the key barriers for partnership as lack of resource in the company (especially smaller ones) and the difficulty of accessing the right people in universities.
Regional issues
At a meeting of the Board of Innovation Greater Manchester (IGM), we considered the next steps in the government’s levelling up agenda, the key areas for us to develop, notably including ID Manchester and what is needed to drive innovation, particularly in skills.
University Chancellor
Nominations have now closed for our next Chancellor to succeed Lemn Sissay. Only one nomination met the required criteria which will be considered by our Board Nominations Committee. The outcome will be announced soon.
And finally…
Graduations have continued to go very well with around 12,000 students who completed their degrees in 2020 and 2021 when ceremonies were cancelled, attending over the past two weeks and next week. There are so many great stories of very happy graduates.
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor