Professor Geoff Petts, Vice Chancellor University of Westminster

The higher education sector will experience greater competition, greater change and greater uncertainty in 2008 according to Professor Geoff Petts, Vice Chancellor University of Westminster.

The biggest change of the year so far is the government enforced alteration to the funding of students who already have a first degree. “Central government is driving this change to the detriment of universities” says Petts. The University of Westminster are expecting to be £2m-£3m worse off as a result of the new regulations.

Increasingly the leadership team at the University of Westminster will need to be able to adapt their plans to a tighter financial environment. Petts comments “I am a new Vice Chancellor and am therefore introducing a senior management structure that is simpler, streamlined, and clearly outlines responsibility”.

It won’t bring back the £3m immediately, but the leadership training structures that Petts is introducing is expected to galvanise the junior and middle management, ensuring the calibre of future leaders is high and that each department is able to achieve success with limited resources.

The University of Westminster has always taken an international outlook to recruitment, because of its reputation it is able to attract leading academics from around the world, and as such Petts believes the organisation is relatively insulated to any local skills shortage. “ In our Business School, for example, our teaching staff comes to us from all over the world, 35% of the team are foreign born and we have 24 nationalities represented. Our students benefit from the vastly different experience and cultures that our staff brings with them.”

There is a skills shortage in academia, just as there is in business, but as always the degree to which the organisation is affected depends on its ability to attract the best. For example, you don’t hear Google complaining that they can’t find the right search engine experts, all the top people in their field want to work for them.

The approach the University of Westminster uses to retain its competitiveness is to continue to invest in that mix of skills from around the world. Petts says “we need to be able to attract academic leaders from overseas, as well as maintain the best of British values to ensure we continue to appeal to the brightest young minds in the world.”

Future leaders in academia will have a mix of public sector and private sector skills, they will likely have worked all around the world, and if the academic institutions of today want to attract the leaders of tomorrow they will need to continue to strengthen their brands on the global stage and benefit from an international mix of skills.

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