It’s been five years since Alan Gilbert came to Manchester from Australia, just as the project to create the University of Manchester was forming. Michael Taylor asks “the President” how the grand plan is measuring up against his own targets.
In the week we meet, Alan Gilbert has been involved in negotiations to resolve a bitter dispute arising out of the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza strip. No, he’s not turned his hand to diplomacy, a building at the University of Manchester has been occupied by protesting “students” as part of a campaign to pressurise institutions to sever links with Israel. He was also slated in Trot rag Socialist Worker as an “arch privatiser”.
And with a raging debate over the wish to raise tuition fees and deliver an ambitious ten-year plan, the anniversary of Gilbert’s fifth year in Manchester rather passed him by. He is also keen to remind the governors that the clock is ticking down towards the end of his seven-year contract in February 2011.
Gilbert believes the changes he has led cannot be stopped, and nor should they. “One of the really exciting things is, even if I said stop, I couldn’t, they’d roll right over the top of you.
When I leave there’s a real determination that my successor will have to sign off on the agenda we’ve put in place.”
The areas he targeted are better balance between teaching and research, more world- class research, better links with private business and a more commercial approach to the intellectual property (IP) of the university. “With the performance indicators we set out in the 2014 vision document we’re ahead of where we wanted to be. We’ve got the three Nobel Laureates,” he says. “We did well with the Research Assessment Exercise, which measures fundamental research. We’ve only had three years to prepare, but we put a terrifying level of resource into it. We added 2,800 staff in 30 months, that’s the size of a small university. We did better in that than in our wildest dreams.”
We talked about the change in the landscape of education in the UK and how Manchester could become one of the world’s top 25 universities.
“In the most realistic measure of research, the Jiao Tong (produced by Shanghai’s University), we’re 40 – up from 89 in 2003. We’ll be in the top 25 by 2014. We’ll break the golden triangle of Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial and University College London.
“We decided from the start that research would mean basic research and commercialisation.
We’ve changed our promotion and selection criteria so someone who wants to be promoted for research will have as much chance for commercialising an idea.”
But he realises that boasting about a few successes like Renovo and NeuTech Pharma skew the figures, and knows the economic conditions make the world a much less friendly place for such ambitions. The UMIP Premier Fund, which backs ideas incubated at the university, fell short of its £40m target.
“God must have been looking over our shoulder. We had hoped for a £40m close, but settled for £32m, which is still £32m more than most universities,” he says. “It will allow us to seed fund promising ideas until the next stage of funding is available and the economy has recovered. The university offers generous terms to inventors. In certain circumstances we would assign 100 per cent of the rights to an inventor. By the law of the land the university owns the IP of all its staff. We could claim 100 per cent, but there would be no incentive.
“It’s not about the university making money, it’s about a wider contribution to the economy and employing people who can become seriously wealthy. The members of staff who sold NeuTech Pharma became very wealthy. Fifteen per cent of massive success is better than 100 per cent of nothing.
“The UK has invested billions in the infrastructure of its universities and it would be nuts for those responsible for economic management not to be looking at universities to become more engaged.
It’s a big deal but it’s not the magic bullet, it is an important part of that.”
Also in: April 2009
-
Open your mind
It’s not often that I’m genuinely surprised, or genuinely impressed, with a piece of technology. But on a trip to the Sandbox at the University of Central Lancashire I witnessed the best interactive demonstration I’ve ever seen.
-
Navigating choppy waters
Large-scale private businesses are important for regional stability in the current climate. Rupert Cornford meets Michael Bibby, the head of Liverpool’s Bibby Line Group, to understand how it stays afloat.
-
Boom and bust
Dave Goddard is in chipper mood. As the leader of Stockport Borough Council – with its four-star rating for the fourth year running – not even the recession can get him down