End of Nottingham’s expansive era leaves new v-c taking stock

In an era of shortening tenures, the University of Nottingham’s leaders have been notable for their longevity.

After the 20 years served by the pioneering Russell Group co-founder Colin Campbell, economist David Greenaway was vice-chancellor for close to a decade.

The last incumbent, art historian Shearer West, did seven years – longer than the average five-year stint – but there was still some surprise when she announced her departure last year to take over at the University of Leeds.

Stepping into her shoes, one of the first tasks of Jane Norman, the university’s former provost and deputy vice-chancellor who was given the top job permanently at the start of the year, will be to appoint several new members of her executive team, with registrar Paul Greatrix – himself in post for 18 years – among other notable recent departures.

This end-of-an-era feeling extends to what has been Nottingham’s story for much of the past 20 years; rapid expansion of both its East Midlands base and large overseas campuses in China and Malaysia, to accommodate more than 10,000 additional students.

For Norman, as the sector appears primed to enter a new paradigm that will seemingly be characterised by constrained resources, it is now time to take stock.

“We have grown a lot in the last 20 years and that has been great, but we are almost certainly at the point in our UK campus that we have reached peak size, and we need to think carefully about what we do next,” she told Times Higher Education.

“I don’t see us getting any bigger over the next five years. If we are to grow, it will be only in areas where there is student demand or to meet particular research needs. And it may well be that we shrink in some areas.”

Nottingham’s vast University Park campus, gifted to it by Jesse Boot, who led the Boots pharmaceutical company, looks likely to bear the brunt of any such constriction.

“It’s one of the biggest estates in the country, both in total size and per member of staff, and we need to ask ourselves if that is a good use of money,” said Norman, who added that the heating bill had risen by £10 million last year.

“I think we will move to a smaller estate but one that is better quality and make sure we fit ourselves out for the future.”

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Growth has not come without a price for Nottingham either, and Norman said there was work to be done to update processes that hadn’t really kept up with the pace of change.

Financially too, there have been signs that the university’s expansive model is faltering. A £17 million deficit posted last year – driven in part by a large spend on severance payments – will be followed by another deficit this year, she said, which was “clearly not sustainable”.

Norman said Nottingham was somewhat protected by its relatively low levels of debt, but “we will have to make some difficult decisions over the next year to make sure we are as effective and efficient as we can be”.

Along with the estate review therefore, the university was looking at its teaching and research – with a pared-back focus on the areas where the university excels likely to be the direction of travel.

“We are thinking about what sort of university we want to be, what activities we want to deliver, and then we need to think about how we get there. We are in the early stages of that at the moment,” said Norman.

“Universities like ours have been in the position over the last 10 years where we have expanded our way out of needing to have those hard conversations and think carefully about what we are doing.

“That expansion both in terms of finances and students is probably coming towards an end, so we are going to have to have those conversations that many organisations – the NHS, for instance – have already been having.”

One area where growth remains a possibility is at Nottingham’s international campuses. Groundbreaking for their time, the Ningbo, China site celebrated its 20th anniversary last year, while the Semenyih, Malaysia campus turns 25 in September this year.

Although both are already large sites – with 9,000 and 5,000 students respectively – Norman thinks both can still get bigger as demand for education in Asia continues to rise.

And she wants to encourage more cross-campus exchanges for both students and staff, potentially involving opportunities that last only a few weeks.

“I think we need to be more flexible with it, so we are purposefully planning more pathways where you do some time in the UK, some in China, some in Malaysia,” she said, replicating the model of a “global MBA” that is taught jointly by the university’s three business schools.

After a lull in interest in branch campuses, more UK universities are looking to open sites abroad – particularly in India – but Norman does not think Nottingham will be joining them.

“It’s definitely not an immediate priority to open up a campus anywhere else. I won’t say, ‘No, we will never do it’, but I think we would need to be really thoughtful about why we were doing it.

“If you are a university tempted to do it because you think it is going to be the answer to your financial woes, you are going to be disappointed because it is not a way to make money.”

What’s more, some of the new sites feel a bit transient, said Norman, confined to rooms in office blocks teaching small numbers of students as opposed to Nottingham’s large campuses that each feature a replica of the main Trent Building that is the focal point of University Park.

“I would much rather we did big, substantial, effective, meaningful activity and did that really well than more transient or smaller things elsewhere,” she said.

Shifting geopolitics is another key consideration when setting up bases abroad, and working in China has become more difficult in the past two decades, Norman conceded.

But she sensed a shift in more recent years that has allowed both sides to work out a framework for research collaboration.

Engagement works, she said, in areas such as food security and health, where the UK is facing issues such as unseasonal weather that China has dealt with for some time.

But there are other areas where researchers need to be wary of protecting UK security interests, she said, pointing out that China itself has a very similar approach.

“We’ve had to be more thoughtful about it, but we have ways of doing it. I am confident we do things in the right way and in a way that is constructive both for us and our partners in China.”

Growing its research base in general has been another feature of Nottingham’s success – last year’s research income of £141.6 million was driven by increased applications and was its best result for many years – but again Norman, whose academic career focused on maternal and fetal health, sensed a more focused approach will be needed in future.

A member of the board of UK Research and Innovation since last year, she said “problem-orientated practical research” was becoming more important, but that did not undermine the case for “fundamental curiosity-driven research”.

“I don’t see these things in tension. But it is important to have an environment where people doing the fundamental building blocks can talk to the people who are doing the more applied stuff and there’s a real synergy between the two.”

A 31p deficit for every £1 spent on research at Nottingham has largely been covered by money from international students, but this cross-subsidy model is coming under strain.

The university was “not yet at the stage that we wouldn’t do research because we can’t afford to subsidise it” but there was a need to think about how to make best use of limited resources, Norman said.

“It does make us think we should focus on the things we are utterly world-leading at, and there are an awful lot of those. The things other people arguably do better, we probably shouldn’t be investing in.”

tom.williams@timeshighereducation.com