In this latest Think Education episode, we continue our conversation about leadership and managing change but were prompted for this session by recent articles regarding the impact of reduced international student numbers on university jobs.
This led us think about the role of leadership within a university and how are leaders trained? Chris talked about a recent IC Global event that highlighted the need for training as colleagues move to more senior levels and how relevant this is when, as is now the case, training budgets are among the first things to be cut. Chris therefore naturally turned to Judith to learn more about her diverse leadership experience, both throughout the UK and internationally.
A good senior leader is a good communicator. You might not always agree with what is being communicated but you value the explanation. This communication can of course be challenging given the size of some universities and requires a particular set of skills, training and of course, institutional support. How do we train for these types of roles? What skills should a university leader possess? Leaders have moved through different pathways – professional services and academic – and have therefore been exposed to different types of training.
To be a senior academic leader you have to be a senior academic, but does this prepare us for leading a university? Would a university run by a business professional be less of a university? Would having experts in the senior team be sufficient?
Judith explained that this debate can often come down to the use of specific words. Words like client, customer, business. The use of these will more than likely spark a heated debate across university campuses. Judith talked about her curiosity in how polarising the use of the term business can be and how much opposition it can yield in discussions. A university is a place of learning and research but in order to be this, it needs some form of ‘coin’ in order to keep the lights on and pay people’s salaries.
To what extent is a university becoming more of a transactional experience for students with a greater focus on employability? And if it is, does this mean that students see themselves more as clients? Within this conversation, what is the role of the leader? What do we expect them to do? What should their priorities be given the fluid nature of higher education?
What a university produces as a product is graduates so in essence, we are asking our ‘products’ to pay for their own production. They then become product, client and customer all at the same time and if their numbers dip, we don’t have the means to produce them at all – and feel the associated knock-on effect across the institution.
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