Author: Shaun Williams, Executive Director of Engagement and Advancement
The monthly 10-Year Plan UEB meeting this week set aside most of its normal agenda, instead to devote time to an important and heart-felt discussion about how we strategically prioritise and fund our University’s transformational projects at a time of continued financial constraint.
Today, perhaps more questions than immediate solutions, but critical ones nevertheless. At a time when the ability to fund new initiatives is very limited, how can we ensure we are investing in the right projects, and ones that are truly strategic and transformational? Are we at risk of encouraging lots of ambitious new ideas through concept papers, to be tested through the 10-Year Plan UEB against our Strategy, only to disappoint their advocates because they can’t be funded, at least not immediately?
How do we ensure we have the right balance between continual investment in our University, but also face up to the fundamental need to reduce our cost base, which we have, in truth, only partially addressed? How can we ensure we are agile enough to respond to break-through opportunities, yet still ensure we are able to invest in our current priorities?
We live in a world in which we ideally need to spend £50m pa for replacement or major refurbishment of buildings as they reach end of life, across our 100-building estate, and £10m pa to keep our IT systems at a sufficient level, particularly in an era of unprecedented cyber threats. How can we ensure we generate the required surpluses, and leverage our philanthropy and capital grants, to allow us to do so? Growth through international students can only be part of the answer as all parts of our economy, whether research, enterprise or commercial activities, need to be performing at the highest possible level.
Should we have ambitions to be an £800m university, not a £600m University? Or is our University already too big and complex?
Above all, how can we as a University ensure we capitalise on our ongoing successful financial management to control our own destiny at a time of seismic sector change, which is seeing many universities struggle?
And how do we achieve all this with the support of our staff, and with greater trust in the University’s leadership?
A lot of questions, and a lot of views, often passionate and heart-felt. To be continued…