Give administrators a shot at top job, says registrar turned v-c

In a sector where the highest tier of jobs remains largely the preserve of leading researchers, Ken Sloan comes from an unusual background for a vice-chancellor. Having risen through the administrative ranks, his last job in the UK sector was as registrar and chief operating officer at the University of Warwick.

Now in charge of Harper Adams University, the Shropshire-based agricultural institution, Professor Sloan urged governing bodies to think about hiring leaders with more diverse career backgrounds. “I would encourage all boards to ask the question about how far and wide they have considered,” he told Times Higher Education.

Professor Sloan joined Harper Adams last November from Melbourne’s Monash University, where he was deputy vice-chancellor for enterprise and governance. In making the move Down Under in 2017, he was part of an exodus from the UK of ambitious professional services staff who turbocharged their careers by transferring to a sector that has traditionally been much more open towards giving administrators a seat at the top table.

“If you have a look across the Australian system, you will see a diversity of leaders in different settings and people who have come from different backgrounds. And I think the benefit of that is not only reflecting the diversity of the institutions, but also when leaders from different institutions come together, they have diversity around that table as well – different elements of perspective,” Professor Sloan said.

Academic literature shows that UK universities focused mainly on producing outstanding research benefit from being led by an outstanding researcher, he said. However, in the UK, “there really is a diversity of institutions, and therefore there is room for a diversity of leadership”, depending on a particular university’s mission and challenges.

Professor Sloan recently authored a chapter on the topic, to be published later this year in International Perspectives on Leadership in Higher Education, edited by Alasdair Blair, Darrell Evans, Christina Hughes and Malcolm Tight. In it, he argues “that ‘others’ can bring a particular set of skills that can be valuable to modern higher educational institutions and which are complementary to the skillsets of ‘expert’ academic leaders”.

But as governing boards can choose only from the candidates who put themselves forward, Professor Sloan urged those from non-research backgrounds to step up.

“If there are individuals out there who believe that they have developed a distinctive set of capabilities based on the choices that they’ve made, and they think they’re relevant to an institution, its context and its needs, then they should have the courage to put themselves forward,” he said.

Professor Sloan said he was drawn to Harper Adams because his role at Monash had included oversight of the university’s food innovation and agricultural activities, which sparked an interest in food production, sustainability and security.

Being at an institution where sustainable food production is the “relentless focus” caught his imagination, he said. “In farming, whether it’s animal farming or arable farming, everyone is facing up to the fact that there needs to be a more sustainable model,” he said.

“We’ve just seen in the situation in Ukraine and Russia, you’ve got almost 20 per cent of the world’s wheat production being disrupted.”

At Harper Adams, Professor Sloan is working to widen entry routes into the university by developing degree apprenticeships and offering more flexible study options. He is also exploring ways to diversify the institution’s income streams, expand its partnerships and bolster its global reputation.

“There’s never going to be a time where the whole issue about food security and sustainability and the future of food and farming is going to be more under scrutiny but also under development,” he argued.

Comparing Australian and UK higher education, Professor Sloan noted that while both sectors had experienced significant marketisation, in Australia this had led to more innovation.

“I got the impression – and I’ll soon find out whether it’s an impression or reality when I’ve been back a bit longer – that that ability to experiment and translate that experiment into practice seems to be running faster over there [in Australia].

“Thinking about the nature of the education product – how it’s created, developed and delivered, where it’s delivered, et cetera –” is more advanced in Australia, he said.

He did, however, suggest that his Australian colleagues were envious of research funding in the UK, that they “would look to the UK and say that the governments are investing more in research”.

rosa.ellis@timeshighereducation.com