Speech by Professor Sally Mapstone DBE, FRSE, President of Universities UK

This is my inaugural conference speech as President of Universities UK, having taken over from Professor Sir Steve West at the beginning of August.

During his tenure as President Steve navigated the sector through a great deal of political flux as well as a number of international crises and led the sector’s recovery from the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. Steve did this with skill and poise and with great humanity.

He also kept us rightly focussed on the important matter of student wellbeing and mental health and I know he will continue to do so on the UUK Board. Steve, thank you for all you have done and all, I know, you will continue to do.

I recognise the privilege of taking on the role of President of Universities UK and am committed to doing that justice, for all of our universities, and all of you here. 

My colleagues at UUK have told me that I am the first President from a Scottish university since devolution and the fourth woman following Julia, and Janet, and Julia in a radical alphabetical break with tradition.

Since 2015 four of the five UUK Presidents have been women, which suggests that we might be getting to the point where we no longer need to draw attention to that gender factor, but when you look at the representation of women across the sector in academia, and the proportion of VCs who are women you may feel, as I do, that we still need to keep on working on this.

In 2021/22 48% of all academic staff were women, but that fell to 30% at professorial level; similarly, a third of all UUK member institutions, have a female VC. Other aspects of representation in the diversity of our sector including at its leadership levels, notably as ethnicity and disability, also require our sustained focus and intervention. 

This morning I want to use the time we have in this session to set out what I believe we must work on together for our institutions, our staff, and our students over the next two years. And I am grateful to all of you who have already been in touch with me to support my initial message round to you all at the start of August and talk about how it resonates with your own priorities.

This is a time of great change, in politics, both national and international, in the world of work, modes of study and how they relate to one another, and in how we teach, assess, and conduct research as AI challenges and can transform what we do. And whilst change has been a constant companion of ours over the last 15 years or so, this shift feels particularly significant and has the potential to be very different. A shift from one era to the next perhaps.

We all know that the end of one era and the beginning of another is a time of great opportunity, but it can also be a time of great risk.

As we look at this today, I believe we have a choice about how the narrative of our universities unfolds.

Our universities are crucibles of ideas, engines for change, and economic anchors. Our universities crucially exist for the pursuit of truth and scholarship and you should expect to hear me defend continually the importance of that defining intellectual feature of our institutions, their capacity to generate ideas and change minds.

Beyond this, our universities at their most essential level exist to bring out the best in people. They serve our students; our staff, our communities, our country, and beyond. They transform young lives and define their future direction, have the power to address social injustice, are often the antidote to the effects of postcode lottery, and, by the sum of their graduates, produce more creative, inquisitive energy than it is possible to measure.

As drivers of innovation and change, we have a responsibility to look forwards, to ask ourselves what society needs from us in the next 30 years and what we are going to do, today, tomorrow and in the days after, to step up and deliver it. And we have a further responsibility to share with others, locally, nationally, and internationally, what we are planning to do and to seek their partnership in it.

Some of you heard yesterday from Vivienne about our new strategic plan 2024 - 2030. At its heart, the plan sets out a vision for Universities UK, “Thriving universities, serving society”. And it is that vision that we need to make a reality over the next two years. 

To thrive, universities, of course, need to be well-funded and to have a strong and positive reputation. UK universities can best claim to be thriving if we are creating opportunity through high-quality education, if the knowledge and skills we create are driving growth and progress, and if we are globally competitive centres of research at the forefront of making revelatory discoveries with the capacity beneficially to change the world. These aspirations are familiar to us, yes, but there is something incredibly special to them. Few other bodies or sectors have this convening and enabling power; it's our responsibility to share that as meaningfully as we can.

Our narratives, the narratives of what our universities do, are not just inspiring and uplifting they are also essential evidence of both progress and potential. 

Our universities provide transformative opportunities and can intersect vitally with policy interventions. Sharing these accounts matters now more than ever given the counter-narrative that a university education isn't worth it.

Take Cynthia Ariana for example. Originally from Kenya she was the first recipient of a full three-year scholarship under the Article 26 asylum seeker project. Article 26 supports asylum seekers and forced migrants who wish to attend higher education in the UK but are unable to access funding via traditional routes.

Cynthia graduated from Keele University in 2018 with a degree in Psychology. The success of this pioneering scholarship influenced the growth of Keele's programme. The University currently supports 11 students with this bursary and three recently graduated this July. This story is just one of many. 

Our universities also drive growth and prosperity, creating places that allow communities to flourish. 

Take the University of Hertfordshire, which I visited earlier this summer thanks to an invitation from Quintin McKellar its VC. It has been steadily redefining the perception of a post-92 university with impactful research, career-focused teaching and a transformative record on social mobility. 
 
The University’s recent Powering Impact report lays out its achievements in numbers: contributing £730 million GVA to the UK’s national economy, supporting over 11,000 jobs dependent on the University and its activities, and supporting well over 600 businesses to achieve their ambitions. Behind these numbers lie countless stories of individual success.
 
One of the most notable developments for Herts has been its role as a vital hub for business and enterprise. Since achieving Enterprise Zone status in 2019, Herts’ has helped over 600 businesses in the region to expand, their business model.

Through schemes such as the Volunteer Business Support Scheme, Herts Sustainability Accelerator, Watford Young Entrepreneurs, and the Flare competition for students and alumni – numerous employers across the county have benefitted from the University opening its doors to the local business community, generating growth in the Hertfordshire economy, and giving individuals the facilities, funding or expertise to evolve a great idea into a thriving business.

But we need look no further than the university in which we are currently situated to find another of those important stories. Skills and employment levels in some of Manchester’s local communities are some of the lowest in the UK.

The University of Manchester is helping to change this through their leadership of The Works – an innovative employment and training initiative at the heart of local communities in Moss Side and Ardwick. 

Working in partnership with the Manchester Growth Company and several other large employers across Greater Manchester, the project is supporting thousands of local people to develop new skills and obtain employment. It matches people to the right job based on their skills and experience, and provides support throughout the application process.

So far, more than 5,000 people have benefitted, providing an estimated £80 million of social and economic value a year.

Earlier this summer I also had the pleasure of visiting the University of Gloucestershire in the company of its outgoing VC Stephen Marston and seeing the extraordinary transformation they are achieving on the massive site of the old Debenhams in Gloucester.

The University is creating a vibrant centre of health and social care and two libraries (the city library and its own) at the heart of the medieval city; it is bringing cultural, economic, and social life back into a part of the city that had had the dynamism knocked out of it. Universities can do this in a way that few other institutions can, and the multiplying effect and convening power that they have are essential not only to their local communities but to all of us.

The Gloucester site is of course an example of what some people would call a big shiny building. I think the time has come to speak out explicitly against this caricature. Those who inveigh against these projects do so as if they are referring to vanity projects, follies, massive mausoleums to superannuated vice-chancellors. On the contrary, buildings are crucially by and for people. They invigorate our communities, provide better student experiences and better space and conditions for students and staff. They are a necessary part of being institutions active in a global set of markets. As we proceed further into digital identities what we need for our physical buildings will change and we are all I’m sure planning and adapting for that, but let’s be honest and upfront about what our building projects are for and the value they bring rather than being apologetic or defensive about them.

These examples are at the heart of what we, as UUK, need to focus on. Both communicating the incredible things we do and finding opportunities to do them more effectively. 
 

Later today you will hear about work that London Economics has undertaken on behalf of UUK to quantify the economic impact of the UK’s universities.

This work has found that together our universities had a total positive economic impact of nearly £116 billion  and supported over 760,000 jobs in the UK in 2021/22. Our international students generated an additional £14.8 billion, bringing the total to over £130 billion. These are big national figures but ones with real local impact.

Here in Greater Manchester the region's universities had a positive economic impact of £4.7 billion and supported over 33,000 jobs in the same time period.    That is far from all they, and we, do though. In the next 5 years universities in the northwest of England alone will train over 32,000 nurses, nearly 12,000 doctors and 28,000 teachers. They will also provide over £900 million of support to businesses. 

It is clear that the UK economy has a growth problem. Since 2008, economic growth in the UK has averaged at a rate of around 1% per annum, substantially lower than the preceding period. Over the same period, we have seen sluggish productivity growth. As a nation we must address this challenge, I believe our universities can and should play a key role.

We know that increased levels of higher education have been the main factor making a positive and consistent contribution to productivity growth in the UK in recent years. And when it comes to research, every £1 invested to help businesses and academic partners collaborate on research and development reaps a benefit of £7 to £8 of net Gross Value Added.

It is manifest that the UK needs our universities to be engines of innovation and change.

To do this though our universities need a sustainable funding model. By 2025-26, funding per student in England will be the lowest in nearly 25 years, and only worth £5,800 in 2011-12 prices. Similar declines are being seen in Wales and Northern Ireland, where funding per student already lags England.

Due to the lower fee cap Welsh universities have less to educate each student and Northern Irish universities have on average received over £1,000 less per student for over 10 years. In Scotland, the situation is even more acute, funding per student will be nearly £2,600 lower in 2023-24 compared to 2014-15.   Last year UK universities incurred an annual £1 billion loss in teaching domestic students.

This situation must not persist. It threatens the opportunity for future students to have access to properly resourced and high-quality higher simply due to when they were born. And it threatens to diminish the UK’s ability to deliver world-leading research and innovation to drive our knowledge-intensive and globally competitive economy. 

Crucially, it inhibits our ability to plan and operate for the long-term. Our universities are the communities of people from which they are made. The UK only has a world-leading higher education sector because the academic and professional services staff who choose to work in them are world-leading, and committed. Funding stability would allow us to develop a long-term, shared plan with our staff to arrest wage decline and precarity, and to invest in and reward the hard work and potential on which we all rely

Last year, UUK launched a national conversation on university funding with the aim of identifying long-term approaches to the funding that universities receive. Our work covered the funding of tuition in England, with implications for devolved jurisdictions, and UK-wide support for research and innovation.  

A funding task and finish group, led by Professor Jenny Higham, Vice-Chancellor of St George’s, University of London, consulted a wide range of stakeholders on the challenges with the current models of funding, and what the potential solutions might be. Today we are launching the conclusions of this work. 

Maintaining access to high-quality higher education for future students will require two things:

• First and crucially, enhanced maintenance support for students in England, reinstating maintenance grants for those who need them the most.
• Second, growth and diversification of capacity in the system so all qualified learners can enter, succeed, and progress.

This means more places overall for people at all life stages to study in a way that best suits their needs.

We must also reduce our universities’ reliance on less stable sources of income by securing a more sustainable funding model. A sustainable model must reverse the long-term decline in funding for teaching, ensuring a greater proportion of our research is covered by public grants, addressing the real-terms decline in QR and equivalent funding, and scaling up the funds that support innovation. This is vitally important if the UK is to remain internationally competitive.

Whilst the UK leads the world in its impact of research, ranking first among its G7 counterparts and well above OECD and EU averages, UK investment in research and development as a percentage of GDP lags behind the G7 countries Germany, Japan and the United States.

To achieve these aims we need to be upfront about what is required: increased public investment, and in teaching funding a potential rebalancing of who pays for the costs of higher education, retaining but reforming the income contingent loan system in England. Higher education and research are neither wholly public nor private goods and their funding model must carefully balance this.

We must be realistic, however, and where we can be so constructively, pragmatic. Increased public investment at a time of fiscal tightening is a hard, hard thing to ask for and an even harder thing to secure. 

To gain the increased investment we need, we must help earn it. Yes, our universities are already engines of growth but how can we help this country to progress further and faster, helping it to grow so it can invest.

Over the next year we need to work together with governments across the UK on this agenda, clearly articulating how a competitive visa system and association to Horizon Europe are vital to the future of the UK’s research base and strengths.

Our aim is to identify and secure policies and funding that pump-prime higher and further education collaboration and IP-rich spinouts, and to set out a clear vision for the role our universities should play in the development of the UK’s public service workforce.

But that is not all we need to do. We cannot ask for increased public investment in the current context unless we have done everything we can to ensure our universities and the ways they operate are as efficient and innovative as possible. Those of you here yesterday will have seen some of the themes emerging from the work UUK is undertaking with PWC on this. We must make absolutely sure that we are delivering value for money and high-quality education to our students. 

I believe that it is imperative that we face head-on the question of whether and how we are delivering quality education to our students. If we don’t, we run the risk of undermining not just our hope of sustainable funding but also our reputation as institutions that are here to serve and act in the best interests of others. 

As universities, we have long accepted that there is a quality baseline which we must all meet and above which we must seek to drive improvement and enhancement. Whilst the concepts of assurance and improvement persist across the whole of the UK how they are realised in practice has diverged. In England, there is a continued debate about how a regulator first measures a baseline, how it enforces it and then how through this or other means it drives improvement. 

I think we have to accept that it is appropriate for a regulator to try to limit the growth of provision that is found not to be meeting that quality baseline and to introduce incentives into the system to grow the provision that does. Manifestly, we need to make sure that the baseline is the right one and that the regulator has fair and proper processes in place to assess performance against it, but I think we need to take on board that the premise is the right one and be constructive in how we engage with it. 

We need to look fully across our sector in terms of how we frame this. Quality should not be defined by primary reference to poor quality. Quality assurance in Scotland has long been defined by an enhancement approach which takes in quality assurance but looks beyond it to an enhancement of the whole student learning experience reinforced by partnership and collaboration. There is potentially much to be learned from this across the regulatory landscape if the willingness to entertain the underlying premises can be generated. 

As a sector we also must be alive to the fact that technology will continue to change the way we teach and assess and will change the world of work our students enter, potentially with increasing rapidity. It is also true that the current reform associated with the Lifelong Loan Entitlement, whilst promising to be potentially transformative for learners looking to access higher education throughout their lifetime, has the potential to impact how we shape and teach our courses. 

These are areas of change that we have to grasp for ourselves. Over the next few years we need not only to influence the regulatory and funding landscapes in which we operate but also to ensure the processes and approaches that we own ourselves are fit for purpose, and excitingly so where that is needed, not only now but into the future. 

If we want to make sure all our students continue to derive lifelong benefit from the education we deliver we need to be tireless in pursuit of quality, across the piece. 

I started these remarks by suggesting that we have a responsibility, to look forwards, to ask ourselves what society needs from us and then decide, together, how we are going to meet that need and what we require to do so. I recognise that is a big, challenging question. 

Let’s, for example, just consider the rest of this decade and give our focus to the role our universities play in training a skilled workforce. Between now and 2030, the number of 18 years olds in the UK will increase by a fifth. By 2031 it is predicted that 18% of current jobs are at high risk of automation and that 11 million more graduates will be needed by 2035.  England’s NHS workforce plan seeks to train an additional 50,000 workers each year by 2031. It is also estimated that 24 million additional jobs will be created worldwide by greener economies by 2030. We have to stop and ask ourselves what role are we going to play in this?

I hope we will be able to use the rest of this conference to start that conversation with discussions later today about what the campus of 2030 will look like, our role in combatting climate change, the impact of AI and what a long-term strategy for science and research could be. 

As I take up the role of UUK President, I am clear that we, as UUK and as sector leaders, need a dual focus. We must focus on the real and pressing challenges each of you is facing as university leaders; securing a sustainable funding model for research and teaching at our universities and upholding, through action, our universities' reputation for providing high-quality education.

But this is not and cannot be about self-interest. We are here because we have a common cause, a shared belief that the universities we lead are here to serve others. We, therefore, need to make sure we are focused on what society will need from us and how are we going to provide it.

But we must, as I said earlier, define that broadly. We have to be both practical and intellectual. We need to show how we contribute fundamentally to the needs and strengthening of our economy. We also need to stand up for how we speak to our society’s ideational and creative life, the spaces where new ways of seeing take shape. These forms of service are not contradictory; they must work together.

I’ve set out some of my thoughts on that topic today but I hope that over the course of this conference and the next two years of my presidency, we can and will work together to choose and then realise the next chapter in the story and history of our great universities. 

Find out more: Take a look at the speech by Vivienne Stern MBE, Chief Executive of UUK, at our 2023 annual conference.