by HELEN LOCK | MAY 5, 2016
Boards need to help universities anticipate and plan for the future.
Boards need to help universities anticipate and plan for the future. Photograph: Alamy
In a period of rapid expansion and change in higher education, university boards are increasingly tasked with the future-proofing of their institutions.
Last week it was reported that the sector is set to borrow £3bn to fund major new building projects. These include plans for a new campus for University College London at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in east London and a second £1bn research-focused campus in White City for Imperial College London. The University of Glasgow has also acquired a 14-acre site for another campus.
As well as this building boom, universities are anticipating legislative change, with higher education reforms expected to be announced as part of the Queen’s speech on 18 May. The reforms are expected to make it easier for private providers to enter the market to compete with established providers. There is a greater focus on attracting students after the lifting of the numbers cap last year, and competition from global universities for the international student market.
“There’s a lot of change to deal with, both legislative change and in terms of capital projects,” says Martin Conway, the deputy secretary of the University of Manchester, who also has a role in the organisation of the university’s board. “One of the ways we have approached this is to try to recruit more broadly – instead of doing our usual advert in the Sunday Times, we’ve done a recruitment drive to look for more diverse people from different backgrounds, and from further afield.”
Critical friend
Conway says one of the most significant activities that the university has overseen in recent years has been a bond proposal and a new master plan, but that the main role of the board is to be a critical friend in these situations.
“It’s oversight rather than leadership, but it is still helpful to have people with the right expertise in these areas to give the right advice.
“Next we may look internationally for lay board members as the university has an international role, and also for people with specific experience in the oversight of capital projects,” he says.
Alison Cressey is an independent board member of Falmouth University who was selected specifically for her commercial background in the creative industries and experience as CEO of Women in Games. The small creative arts university in Cornwall almost doubled in size between 2006 and 2015, and has ambitious plans for the future.
Cressey says Falmouth was especially interested in her expertise because it was starting Launchpad, a business entrepreneurship graduate programme designed to help students start new games companies. She says she has been able to ask searching questions and support the course director as a board member.
Nimble and vocal
Her main advice for modern university boards is to make them nimble, vocal and challenging, as well as diverse in terms of skills and background: “I would also add, they could do with being smaller – many universities have up to 30 people on board, but that’s too large.”
“You need to all be able to speak and to hear each other. You need to have trust and good relationships between everyone to do the task well. And that task is to have candid, robust conversations with senior leadership.”
Similar advice is given by Stephen Parker, chair of the board of governors at Coventry University. He agrees that it is important to be able to have robust conversations with the university, a diverse skillset on the board and good relationships that are “both thoughtful and action-based”, but says that accountability and evidence-based decisions are also crucial in the whirlwind of change.
“All of our decision-making processes are very traceable – you can track each suggestion back to the person who made it. We also use data. If a new idea, a new strategy, was suggested we would evaluate, in a data-driven way, where it should be put in the pecking order of our priorities.”
Strategic plan
The Coventry board uses what it calls a “strategic roadmap” to guide decision-making, but Parker adds that decisions can still be made expediently where necessary.
“The university wanted a way of providing flexible learning opportunities for people in work, of the same academic standard as the main university, and so we set up the Coventry University College in 12 months. We can be quick – we have to be quite efficient with our time.”
Universities are very complex, says Parker, and consequently university boards can feel like a mixture of a charitable trust and a commercial board. Board members have to keep in mind the purpose of a higher education institution: “If you lose sight of what a university is about – learning, teaching, expanding knowledge – then you’ll get lost.”
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@GdnHigherEd: Contact the local soothsayer and fire up that crystal ball – HE boards must contemplate a changing future http://gu.com/p/4tpcn/stw #HigherEd Shared via TweetCaster
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