06 May 2021 
Martin Higgs, Communications Officer
Higher education has been struggling with a leadership identity crisis since the deregulation of student numbers and increased marketisation, write colleagues from #UHR21 partners GatenbySanderson. The pandemic has created a perfect storm where institutions must innovate or risk failing their students and the communities they serve. Market conditions, social restrictions and travel bans combined with Office for Students regulation and unsympathetic public scrutiny means that organisations must think more creatively about what good leadership looks like and how best to assess that skillset.
Here at GatenbySanderson, we have been speaking with recently appointed Vice Chancellors to explore their experiences on the journey to becoming a Vice Chancellor. The individual and organisational leadership challenges associated with the pandemic framed all of the interviews which addressed career to date, motivations for wanting to be a VC, the recruitment process, leadership qualities, building the leadership team and relationships with the governing body.
We are incredibly grateful to the VCs and aspirant VCs who gave us their time and candour. Without exception we met highly motivated, passionate advocates of the transformational powers of higher education. Some of the challenges facing recently appointed VCs are disappointing in their persistence. The issues of over complexity, lack of performance management, underdeveloped leadership pipelines, lack of diversity have been discussed as challenges facing HE leadership for many years now.
The key conclusions from this research are:
You can see the full report here.
Join the GatenbySanderson team at UHR21: Refreshing HR.
Wednesday 12 May, 9.15am
“Diverse recruitment strategies in a Post-Covid world. How the pandemic has affected candidates and changed behaviours” with Alison Elton and Sam Ellis
