President's weekly update
19 August 2022
I hope you are all managing to have a break and enjoy some of the recent warm weather.
Of course, many of our staff are working very hard at the moment, including all those who are involved in student admissions, with A-level results out yesterday. I know many of you all worked through the previous weekend and long days in preparation for Confirmation and Clearing and I’d like to thank you for all your efforts.
We remain an extremely popular choice for UK and international students. This year we have seen a grade profile that is returning closer to the pattern we saw before the pandemic. So far, it seems that we are close to target in all areas. We are likely to be only marginally above target for UK students and a little more over target for international students – though there tends to be less certainty generally for finalising international student numbers and there have been some delays in visas being applied for and granted. We are in Clearing for only a very small number of programmes, so the situation feels more like a ‘normal’ year.
I visited several of the admissions centres on-site with Professor April McMahon, Vice-President for Teaching, Learning and Students and Dr Simon Merrywest, Director for Student Experience. As expected, phone lines and emails were extremely busy, but it was all incredibly well organised and staff were doing a great job.
Latest ARWU rankings
We have just received the latest Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU, also known as the Shanghai Jiao Tong index). There was quite a lot of volatility in the table this year. We have dropped three places to 38th globally and 6th in the UK, due mainly to slightly lower citations and publications in the very top journals; ARWU only counts publications in Nature and Science.
External and internal engagement
I chaired a meeting of Russell Group vice-chancellors with Professor Dame Julia Black, President of the British Academy. I’ve known Julia for a number of years through her membership of the Council for Science and Technology. Several of us expressed concerns about the apparent focus of some in government on science and engineering, when in fact the UK is exceptionally strong in arts, social sciences and humanities, which also brings major income to the country. I’m a frequent advocate for humanities with various audiences and in fact we are expanding our humanities activities.
It was a pleasure to meet our Equity and Merit scholars who have almost completed their Masters courses. They are from Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia, and Tanzania, and are supported largely by our very generous donors. I gave them a short presentation on my research career then took questions and asked them about their experiences in the UK and at the University. As always, they were so positive about their programme, their supervisors, colleagues, facilities, support and the city. The only negative was the weather!
We held an induction for new Students’ Union officers at which I gave them an overview of the University and our aim to work closely with the SU. We discussed the challenges for the next year, particularly cost of living pressures for students.
I met Professor Dawn Edge who is leading for us on the 100 Black Women Professors programme, to feedback on the experience of my meetings with the five members of our staff who are part of the programme. My feedback overall was very positive and included some suggestions from staff of where we could make improvements.
And finally
Thanks again for all your efforts through the admissions process and everything you have done through the past year. I do hope that everyone will be able to enjoy some proper downtime before we start the new academic year in September.
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor