Challenges and opportunities for Registrars in modern universities

1. Challenges and opportunities for Registrars in modern universities HUMANE SEMINAR, TARGU MURES, ROMANIA, 13/14 JUNE 2008

2. State interest in university governance • Why ? • Transparency and accountability in the professions and public life • Importance of universities in knowledge economy • Elite to mass to universal higher education • Students as ‘paying customers’ – value for money

3. External impact • Growing national governmental: • Interference and intervention • Instrumental view of universities • Accountability • Regulation and legislation • (A few!) examples:Freedom of information; Data protection; equality of opportunity; fair access; independent adjudicator for complaints and appeals; performance league tables

4. Challenges for institutions • Managing scale changes • Managing complexity (flexible delivery systems, 24/7, borderless, knowledge base fracturing) • Managing competition (recruitment vs selection, private providers in niche markets, speed of science and technological change) • Creating a self-reliant culture – “earned autonomy” • Professionalisation, new skills and specialisms • Working in partnership • Investing in Communications

5. Challenges and opportunities for Registrars • Finding the right leadership • Creating the Senior Management Team • Making structures work for improved capability • Appointing specialists • Developing generalists • Setting standards • Giving strategic leadership and functional competence

7. Being the Chief Operating Officer • Which hat are you wearing? – gatekeeper, defender/protector, interpreter, horizon scanner, strategist, advisor, protagonist, role model, enabler • Governance and/or management ? • When is a specialist wrong ? • Who will be next to go ? • What sort of visibility should I have ? • Who’s in charge ?

8. Putting it together…. • “If the Vice-Chancellor is going to spend most of his time leading, then he needs to recruit others to do the managing. He needs to put together a group of managers who have sufficient coherence to work together as a team. And sufficient competence and powers to manage the change. Hence he needs a good team of Pro-Vice-Chancellors and an outstanding Registrar or similar person – what a company would call a Chief Operating Officer – to head the administrative structure, to give it coherence, and to ensure that operational matters are dealt with effectively.” • Sir George Bain, V-C, Queen’s University Belfast, 1998-2004

9. Watson’s Laws • Issues generate heat in inverse proportion to their importance (car-parking) • Academics grow in confidence the further away they are from their fields of expertise (what they know about is provisional and ambiguous, what others do is clear cut and usually wrong) • You should never go to a school or department for anything that is in its title (Architecture, Business, Law) • The first thing a committee member says is the exact opposite of what s/he means (I would like to agree with everything the V-C has said)

10. Watson’s Laws continued…. • Courtesy is a one way street. • On e-mail nobody ever has the last word. • Somebody always does it better elsewhere because they are better supported. • Feedback counts only if I agree with it. • The temptation to say “I told you so” is irresistible. • There is never enough money but there used to be. • (Sir David Watson, V-C of Brighton University 1990-2005)

11. Questions please – but leave the difficult ones for Jon Baldwin.