Author: Philip Greenish, Chair of Council
Please note: information in this blog was accurate at the time of the meeting – 27 September 2023 – and may now have been superseded.
Council met on the evening of 26 September over dinner with a guest speaker, Heidi Fraser-Krauss, chief executive of Jisc. In their words, this is “the UK digital, data and technology agency focused on tertiary education, research and innovation that provides products and services for digital transformation”. Jisc’s work is highly relevant to the University and Heidi’s talk raised many important issues. Later in the evening, Professor Andrew Atherton, Vice-President (International) and Kieron Broadhead, Senior Executive Director (Student Experience) responded with an update on the University’s progress towards digital transformation. While good progress is being made, we recognised the need for significant investment.
The following morning, Council was hosted by the Faculty of Social Sciences (FSS) with briefings led by the Dean, Professor Jo Swaffield and members of her senior team. We toured parts of the estate including the Maths Tower where we saw at first hand some of the problems with its material state. We also saw work that has been done to improve other older buildings, demonstrating what can be achieved for relatively small sums. We heard of the excellent work carried out in the school of Mathematical Sciences in achieving their Athena Swan SILVER award and were briefed on the move of the Business School to Building 175. Finally, we had a series of short briefs on research and knowledge exchange and enterprise in the faculty. It was an interesting morning with many valuable insights.
Our Council meeting was held in FSS Building 32 and we welcomed our new lay member, Lord Willetts, to his first Council meeting.
In his report, the Vice-Chancellor briefed us on the impact of the UCU marking and assessment boycott and on the significant improvement expected in the USS pension scheme funding position. He provided us with the latest data on under- and post- graduate recruitment for this academic year; we are likely to end with some 400 students over our target, which is an excellent outcome. We discussed the implications of the Horizon Europe decision which has been strongly welcomed, and the changes to processes in the current REF cycle which are the cause of some consternation in the sector. He outlined progress on the size and shape work, which will be the major item for the November Council meeting along with the associated decisions on infrastructure investment. Finally, we discussed the latest league table information including the Times Higher World league table which places us 97th (and 11th in the UK).
Ed Brooker, President of the Students’ Union, outlined key items in his first report to Council. His whole team of sabbatical officers is new and had spent much of the summer period getting up to speed with their responsibilities. Ed is particularly keen to increase transparency between SUSU and the student body and has been in contact with many students over the summer break. The SUSU Board has agreed to end its current strategy and has agreed four main priorities for the current academic year – sustainability, student engagement, external and civic engagement, and safety and wellbeing.
Professor Rebecca Taylor, Chief Executive of University of Southampton Malaysia (UoSM), then joined us via Teams to discuss her report on progress with UoSM’s expansion plan (which we had approved in November 2019). Despite the significant impact of COVID, the move to new facilities and delivery of an expanded programme portfolio has been delivered on time and under budget. However, student recruitment was significantly impacted, and recovery has been slow. Council questioned aspects of our policy for student recruitment at UoSM which appear to place us at a disadvantage compared to other providers in Malaysia including Monash, Nottingham and Reading but we were assured that the current growth plan is achievable. Crucially, we were also told that the support from UoS is now exemplary.
Our next item was a report from Deborah Gill, Vice-President, Education & Student Experience, on the National Student Survey (NSS) and the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). The changes to NSS are such that it is very difficult to analyse year on year improvement but, while student satisfaction remains good and is close to that of much of the Russell Group and our competitors, we are not maintaining the improvement trajectory we aspire to and not keeping pace with the NSS improvements of some of our competitor group. Performance at subject level also shows marked variability. Clearly, improvement is needed, and we discussed at length the actions that are planned. Similarly, while our TEF Silver award is a success, there are areas of the University where we also need to improve. There is no doubt that we have made great strides in recent years, for which University professional and academic staff should take great credit and satisfaction. It is crucial now that we maintain our upward trajectory.
Remaining agenda items included a discussion on the appointment process for Heads of School following Council’s previous concern that we were not achieving our EDI targets or aspirations. We were pleased to see a wide range of actions in hand. We considered progress of key performance indicators for the delivery of our strategy and noted our response to the consultation on the latest valuation of the USS pension scheme.
At our November meeting, we will focus on the key elements of our future size and shape and on the infrastructure development which will be necessary to deliver our strategy and plans.
This is an informal summary of the Council meeting; formal minutes will be published in due course.