Duncan Ivison: higher education is a system, not a market

Some university heads can make their names turning around an institution that is heading to the wall or coming out of a period of boardroom tumult. Following in the footsteps of Dame Nancy Rothwell, a trailblazing research leader and science communicator who spent 14 years at the helm of the University of Manchester, new vice-chancellor Duncan Ivison will have to take a different route.

But Professor Ivison, who joined Manchester in August after more than two decades at the University of Sydney, is not lacking in ambition. Succeeding a leader such as Dame Nancy did not necessarily make the job “harder or easier”, he said: “I just see it as a massive opportunity.”

And for all of Manchester’s strengths – 53rd in Times Higher Education’s latest World University Rankings, and second globally in its Impact Rankings, to take one measure of esteem; or, if you prefer, Professor Ivison’s first impression, “I’ve never been at a university that is so embedded in the communities that it serves” – there is much to do as the institution reaches the end of its bicentenary year.

Despite being in one of the UK’s great university cities, the student experience at Manchester “isn’t good enough”, said Professor Ivison, while, for staff, “We don’t make it easy for people to work here sometimes.”

Add to that a sector funding crisis driven in part by faltering international student recruitment – a scenario painfully familiar to Professor Ivison from his Australian experience and his Canadian homeland – and setting a clear course will be more important than ever.

“I want us to be one of the best universities in the world for being seen as committed to harnessing our teaching and research for the public good and demonstrably doing it,” said Professor Ivison when asked to identify his priorities at Manchester.

“That means you’ve got to preserve, cherish and support basic, discovery-driven research in science, humanities and social sciences – that’s so important,” he told THE.

“But I think the really exciting challenge is, how do we get that extraordinary work out into the world making a difference?

“We have an obligation to harness our research and teaching for the public good, but also the world demands it because of the nature of the crises we face.”

Professor Ivison has already made some headway on this, launching Unit M to support start-ups, industry engagement and skills provision, while work is under way on Sister, the £1.7 billion transformation of the former University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (Umist) campus into an innovation district.

The political philosopher listed his other top priority as helping students to develop the skills to “engage in dialogue across difference”, having “difficult conversations in reflective ways”.

But he acknowledged that universities would need to “calibrate” the scale of their ambition in straitened times, arguing that the rapid growth in student numbers and campus estate seen at Manchester over the past two decades was “over”.

At an institutional level, he argued, universities “sometimes don’t think enough about potential new revenue sources”, suggesting that online education was one possible area of expansion.

At a national level, he said, there was a need for a “new compact” between the Westminster government and universities on funding, but he was “not assuming it’s going to be fixed any time soon”.

More broadly, he argued, there was a need to look at UK higher education “as a system, rather than a market”, highlighting how Manchester’s universities already worked together in a number of ways, for example, with a shared student mental health hub.

“I think we need to think about that on a national scale: how do we cluster our universities in new ways, how do we share resources, share infrastructure and create pathways for our students among us?” he said.

“I think we need to ask, what do we want our higher education system to be? – what is it for? – and move back to the policy settings that would help drive that. It’s all about collaboration and porosity and creating incentives for universities to cooperate at a level we haven’t before.”

Stabilising international student recruitment could be another big part of the solution and, while Professor Ivison said he was encouraged by the welcoming messaging from the new Labour government, his experience in Australia – where a left-of-centre administration swiftly shifted towards capping overseas enrolments – showed that universities had to constantly emphasise the pedagogical and economic contribution of foreign learners.

With Canada the “canary in the coal mine” as its enrolments run well below the caps set by its government, Professor Ivison said UK universities could capitalise on the negative signals being sent out from elsewhere if the government ensured “clarity and stability” in policy terms.

“We need to be very vigilant, [but] there’s a huge opportunity for the government to get this right at a time when, frankly, Canada and Australia have lost the plot a bit,” he said.

chris.havergal@timeshighereducation.com