In September, Concrete’s Editors-in-Chief, Matthew Stothard and Eve Attwood, sat down with UEA’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor David Maguire, to discuss his plans for the upcoming year. Since then, the VC has continued to prioritise dealing with the university’s financial difficulties. Boasting a positive outlook on the future of the Home of the Wonderful, Maguire acknowledged from the outset, “We are, I think, in an environment of stability—or more stable than it was.”

The News team sat down with the now permanent Vice-Chancellor to discuss this, alongside the higher education crisis, graduation costs and more. We began by asking Prof. Maguire what elements of the job he enjoys the most, to which he swiftly interjected, “Well, lots of things. It’s a wonderful place, and I’m really enjoying being here. I think the main thing is the people for me; it’s always about great colleagues, inspiring staff and students”. Commenting on the wider environment, he added, “The campus, of course, is lovely – especially this time of year. Norwich itself is something I didn’t really know very much about. Discovering Norwich’s environment has also been lovely.”

Contrastingly, pressed on the more challenging areas of his role, Maguire confidently explained, “I think obviously it’s been dealing with the financial challenges of the university. But at the same time, it’s actually quite satisfying because I think we’ve got it, if not solved, under control” adding, in a keen display of optimism, “We’re progressing positively and going in the right direction. So that’s a big challenge, but it’s also quite good that we’re progressing”.

Dig a little deeper into the Vice Chancellor’s CV, and you’ll discover UEA is not the first crisis-hit university he has been tasked with rescuing. Leading the University of Dundee through COVID-19 after a steady eight years at The University of Greenwich, the Professor of Geography is not averse to navigating rough seas in the turbulent world of academia.

Asked whether the conditions at UEA were unique, he expressed to us, “They’re more the same than they are different” and expanded, “There’s always a unique set of circumstances for each place – that’s the different thing – but fundamentally it’s about the same sorts of things. Universities are all regulated by the same regulator. We’re all in the same country with the same government. So a lot of the conditions in which higher education operates are fairly similar and identifiable”. Prompted on lessons from his personal experiences, he subtly added, “I could probably walk into any University in the country and understand what’s going on and make up a reasonable sort of contribution; and that’s not because I’m particularly all-seeing and all-knowing, it’s just a fact I think that there’s a high degree of similarity.”

Continuing on the theme of finance, Maguire shed some light on the costsaving measures that staff and students can expect over the upcoming academic year: “Last year was really intrusive, and dramatic and unfortunate in the severity of what we had to achieve in a relatively short period of time. But what that’s allowed us to do is build a platform where we can think carefully and purposefully in an organised way about how to take care of the rest of the problem. And so, we’re trying to make change much less intrusively so that people almost don’t know we’re almost trying to do it by stealth”.

Pressed on specifics, he summed up, “It’s a combination of increasing our income and reducing our expenditure but doing that progressively and iteratively so that it doesn’t have big, dramatic impacts on people”. Upon mentioning the scale of the sector’s widespread financial struggles, however, Maguire added, “I can’t promise that to be the case because there are only so many things that are out of our control. We’ve got the government policy changes and fluctuations in student recruitment numbers – it’s a competitive world with everybody else trying to optimise similar sorts of things. The things that we can control – we are controlling – and then we’re seeking to mitigate the externalities which also affect us.”

For clarity, we explicitly asked the VC whether there will be any new significant cuts (in addition to those that were set out in the Strategic Review Programme (SRP) in 2023), to which he responded “No, nothing is on the agenda. I can’t say that might not happen because at some point, who knows”, reemphasising, “Government could change policy and we’ll have to deal with the consequences or something unexpected may happen which we’re going to have to deal with – but there is certainly nothing planned and expected as we sit here today”.

Professor Maguire has often spoken out about the fragility of the UK’s overall university funding model at various industry conferences and with the media. With almost 60 UK universities recently announcing redundancies and other cuts (and a general election ahead), we asked what his message was to an incoming government.

Addressing his previous remarks, he said, “I have been quite critical of government policy as I’m seeing its impacts on our ability to do teaching and research – and to support students and staff – every day of the year”. In a rare display of directness for a leading industry figure, Maguire passionately argued, “The first and obvious thing to draw to the government’s attention to – if they don’t already know – is that their current model of funding of higher education is broken. There is not enough money coming in to fund a world-class educational system, so we’re having to reduce what we do and deliver things in a suboptimal sort of way; we need some help with that”.

Openly proceeding to offer up a “manifesto pledge”, Maguire added, “My number one thing would be an improvement in student maintenance loans and grants because it’s pretty clear that students are really struggling to make ends meet on a regular basis. At the top of the pile would be to put some money into supporting student living costs through maintenance loans and grants”.

Alongside this, the VC explained to us how the principal source of income for UK universities is fees from undergraduate student fees and how therefore, in his view, “We need the fee cap to be index linked to inflation, because the £9,250 cap (established in 2017) is now worth less than £6,000 in real terms under the current limitation”. Expanding on the tactical effect of this, he emphasised, “We’re trying to deliver effectively the same educational experience and outcomes with only two-thirds of the figure”, and pressed on specific numbers, said, “I’d like to be arguing for an increase to the £14,000, that it would have been worth, had it gone up with inflation. However, that’s unrealistic all-round but stopping the damage by index linking it to inflation would be important”.

Finally, the VC explained how reform of the funding model of university research was also needed.

With specific reference to UEA, Maguire told us, “The research that we do here is widely known because of how we do our accounting; we do it at less than full economic costs. Typically, we get somewhere between 60 and 80% of the actual research cost from the government and other external funders. So, we have to make up the other 20-30% from other sources” and concluding, “Even the government grants we get for research are not covered at full economic costs. We need the government to help us get closer to that.”

This previous interview with Concrete, the VC mentioned a “relaunch” of Arts and Humanities following the ramifications of the financial crisis in the first half of 2023. When asked if he believed this was achieved, he said, “I think there’s been a partial achievement, if I’m completely honest. It was important to get the Strategic Review Program (SRP) behind us. We drew a thick line under that in October when we completed the work that we needed”.

Once again, emphasising his optimism, Maguire stressed, “We tried to look forward instead of backwards and to concentrate on building places up rather than knocking them down. And I think, to some extent, we could say that we achieved that. Still, I’m also really conscious that there is much more that we can and should do”. Reflecting on the coming academic year, Maguire added, “With Sarah Barrow (Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Arts and Humanities) standing down this summer, we’re in the process of recruiting another Pro-VC to lead the faculty. I think that would be a good opportunity for us to think about what happens next and how we look forward with some new and different ideas”. In addition to this, we also discussed the ”process of rebuilding trust” among staff and students, which the VC addressed at the start of the year. Pausing momentarily, he stated, “Trust is a difficult thing – it’s easy to lose it and hard to earn it. You can lose it in a split second through a mistake or an action, and then it takes a long time to rebuild and earn that”. Expanding on this, Maguire stressed, “I’m a firm believer that with things like this,

‘theory’ is not really all that importantit’s practice which counts. So, what we’ve all been trying to do is to be positive, consistent, open and transparent in our dealings with people and to seek to have deeds and actions which are positive and honest”. In conclusion, he added, “Hopefully – combined with other policies around staff and student wellbeing and support – we’ll start to earn that back.”

Then asked if, on average, he thought staff would now feel more secure in their jobs and that a positive working environment has been restored at UEA, Maguire said, “It’s not easy for me to answer on behalf of the staff, but I hope so. I think we are in an environment of stability – or more stable than it was – and ultimately, the best way to make people feel secure is to provide an environment that financially, intellectually and socially is safe, rewarding and stable. Also, trying to create those sorts of conditions in which people can then feel that this is a place where they belong, that they find it interesting and challenging (in the sense of stimulating for the intellectual nourishment) and that we’ve got a good package of support measures across a range of different areas to make people feel comfortable and to concentrate on them doing their best work.”

Moving on to the student costs of living crisis, we put it to the Vice- Chancellor that numerous studies over the past academic year have consistently concluded that the vast majority of students are left with an average budget of £20 or less for a week’s food. We emphasised how Concrete has heard from several students over recent weeks expressing how “upset” and “outraged” they have been about the recently announced £20 graduation ticket fee and that this is not included in their fees.

Questioned on the university’s motive for this, Maguire emphasised, “The only thing that’s changed this year is that for family members, there is a charge to attend the ceremony for £20 or to attend the zone outside the hall (for £10), but for students – it’s entirely free”. When prompted about the wider costs of the day, he added “You don’t have to have a gown, you don’t have to have a photograph, and you certainly don’t have to pay for a ticket – so any member of the student community could effectively walk into graduation without spending any money whatsoever – although I do appreciate that family members would now have to pay a £20 fee to attend”.

Expanding on the context of the new fees, Maguire explained to us, “It costs [the university] £1.2 million to put on graduation”, adding, “I wasn’t able to go last year, but I’ve seen pictures and videos, and I’m told it is a spectacular event, so the £20 is a tiny subsidy against that really”. We remarked how the revenue from ticket sales would only cover an estimated one-fifth of his total cost (based on precious attendance), to which the VC responded, “Yes, so you’re actually getting a very expensive ticket for a very small amount of money. Going back to the earlier conversation – the university is in a deficit position. We have to look at all means available to try and reduce that deficit, and this is a pretty modest contribution.

So I hope that when people come, they think it’s a really small modest investment in an important event in people’s lives and want to celebrate their success and hopefully move on to bigger and better things.”

Briefly mentioning suggestions that the Student Union hold an “alternative free-of-charge graduation”, the VC quickly replied, “Good luck. We’ll see how many people turn up for that.”

We finished the interview by asking the Professor if any positive changes were coming to UEA for the next academic year. “Yes, there are lots of positive things!” he responded, adding, “I think one potential thing that we’re hoping to get underway is a plan to refurbish the ground floor of the library…the goal is to introduce more study spaces, and new furniture and to recast it with social learning as well as a learning space. If we can, the plan is to do it over the summer so it’s ready for when students return in October.”

You can read more about Professor Maguire’s experience and the newly developed ‘UEA 2023 Vision’ by going to the ‘Vice-Chancellor’s Office’ tab on the Menu of MyUEA.

Image: Concrete/Jamie Bryson