Interviews with Professor Robin Mason, University of Birmingham, Pro Vice-Chancellor (International), and Professor Toby Wilkinson, University of Lincoln, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (External Relations)
When we first spoke to you in the early days of April, you were in the thick of the muck and bullets of the Covid attack. We were impressed at the time with the way your institution had swept into crisis mode and put emergency measures in place across the entire University. At a general level, how has the “temperature” evolved since those days?
R: With the end of term and graduation ceremonies now navigated, it feels as though there is a bit of breathing space. Having said that the start of the new term is not far away. The clear brief for our away day as a senior management team is that we take a 5 to 10-year view. Everything for the next 12 to 24 months is in train and so the Vice-Chancellor wants to encourage us to take a long-term view to ensure that we take all opportunities that come.
T: It was incredibly impressive how quickly individuals and institutions adapted to the situation. Now three months in we are at the point of taking stock of what has worked particularly well, and we have identified what we don’t want to lose. We are now in the phase of a “collective institutional debrief”. We are asking ourselves, “What are the learnings?” and “How do we build back better?”. We must see this phase as an opportunity. Lincoln is a challenger institution and so this is how we look at the world. We are an agile institution and we will make the most of a changed environment. We are now beyond the emergency response phase.
“Internationalisation” is a concept that means different things to different universities, and the models are commensurately diverse – but in your own institution, do you envisage a radical change in governance, strategy, management and delivery, and in its overall contribution to the university’s operations, finance, student numbers and reputation?
R: Potentially yes. We are going to be thinking very hard about our global physical footprint. We currently have a campus in Dubai, and teaching activity with local partners in Singapore and Guangzhou, but we will be thinking very hard about the diversity of our overseas operations and activity. Covid has brought home the need to diversify away from China, though given its scale no one country can take the place of China. Therefore, we are thinking about a strategy looking at 5 or 6 countries. This will be much more complex and so will require different structures and governance.
T: It is fair to say that Lincoln is in a youthful phase in terms of internationalisation. In light of Covid-19, energy and resource will now be focused on internationalisation at home: can we give all our students an international experience even if they don’t leave the campus. This has been the Cinderella of internationalisation in UK HEIs – it has never really been addressed properly before. This agenda can have significant benefits for our students, especially WP students, in part through providing virtual mobility. This must be front and centre in our thinking. It is a reality given travel restrictions. Virtual mobility can also support widening access and remove barriers to an international experience from those who are traditionally less likely to access this.
Articulation agreements are also important, but in the short term many overseas markets have been equally affected. We are starting to see many Indian students looking to gain a British degree, and so we are exploring a partnership with an Indian institution where an Indian student studies a Lincoln-mapped degree at home in India for the first year, the idea being that they will study their second and subsequent years on campus in Lincoln. Whilst this offers a short-term fix, it could be an interesting model to develop more fully, and could also generate a pipeline of postgraduate students, particularly with the post-study work visa coming back in.
“we will be thinking very hard about the diversity of our overseas operations and activity”
There have been many predictions about the impact of Covid on international student recruitment ranging from British Council estimates through to institutions’ often bleak analysis. What is your own assessment at your university?
R: We are a little bit more optimistic than two weeks ago, but this could change again. There is still every sign that it would have been a bumper year but it’s a brave person who trusts to the application data alone. We have to hope for the best but plan for if not the worst then a significant drop. You would expect PGT to bounce back a bit more quickly. The problem is that a missed undergraduate intake stays with you for a few years. A lower foundation intake stays with you for four years. So we must look three years ahead: it’s a fool who thinks this is a one-year issue.
T: International student numbers at Lincoln have been on a very steep upward curve in the last 3 years and our target numbers for next year are also up. It has been interesting to see the breadth of opinion on predictions for international student numbers, but what we see on the ground, through our students and through our agents, is that the appetite is still very strong. It will depend on practical challenges.
Parents are worried about health and safety, but the students just want to get on with their lives and still have the ambition to study in the UK. Lincoln has done a lot of work to reassure students by offering a comprehensive support package and producing videos on safety and hygiene and campus culture next academic year. Predictions may not be as dire as some have forecast, but we need to prepare for multiple scenarios. It is also true that so much is out of our hands: we must plan for the worst and hope for the best. We have created models for many different scenarios between these two extremes.
“Parents are worried about health and safety but the students just want to get on with their lives and still have the ambition to study”
What are the immediate effects of Covid on research funding and on future international research collaboration?
R: At this point it is looking optimistic that there is going to be close to full cost covering of research, but I can’t see it getting to 100 per cent. Charitable funding is a significant component and it is very difficult to think that they would be able to reach full funding. UKRI will probably get close to FEC (full economic costing), but there is no capital grant from HEFCE anymore and so this needs to come out of surpluses: this is critical for research. The only remaining place for income is international students. Research funding will improve, but cross-subsidisation will need to continue.
T: Lincoln has just recruited a whole raft of global professors to strengthen international research collaboration. Much of our research funding to date has come from Innovate UK and companies, with our research being very much on the applied side. Therefore, Covid-19 has perhaps not impacted research activity at Lincoln as much as at other universities. We are more regionally focused in research. What we are seeing is a real interest from our global partners on research in the impact of Covid-19. For example, we are looking at rural care: how do you deliver healthcare in rural areas with dispersed populations and low levels of transport/digital connectivity? Covid-19 has thrown these issues into sharp relief, and has stoked research conversations with partners in Canada and Australia in particular. This represents another opportunity and supports Lincoln’s mantra to be “from local to global”. It makes this real.
Transnational education has been a rapidly evolving area of priority for UK universities. How will this continue to evolve and change as a result of Covid? How will TNE strategies change?
R: We are currently thinking hard about our global physical footprint. I don’t feel we need to be only thinking about multiple branch campuses. There are other models one can consider. Working in partnership brings agility and shares risk whilst also having a physical presence in country. Our Dubai campus will be about 10 per cent of our total student population under current plans. Diversifying away from China is a sizable challenge.
T: TNE is going to see significant expansion. There is a much larger number of students studying a UK degree outside of the UK than within it. There are 700,000 TNE students, compared to 460,000 physically in the UK. The number of TNE students saw a 73 per cent increase between 2010 and 2016, and so we know that there is massive demand for this. Lincoln’s activity has grown – not in terms of number of partners, but in terms of number of students. The strategy is to develop a small number of partnerships with quality assurance at its core. We’ve all seen the horror stories and there is no need to go back to the wild west days. In the current context it is all about long term sustainable partnerships. We have four key TNE partners and we may add a fifth, but we would never have more than half a dozen or so.
Technology teams have emerged as the HE sector’s equivalent of NHS heroes over this outbreak. What do you see as the “next new thing” in terms of technologies on the horizon that we will need to embrace to support internationalisation strategies and activities in the future?
R: No one’s crystal ball is perfect on this, but interesting opportunities are opening up. There are emerging models where UK HEIs provide distance learning and a local, in-country partner provides the wrap-around support. I think there will be a partial or total shift to this, and it will take the place of flying faculty. We do have a small portion of fully online courses that are really good, but we will always want some element of the students meeting face to face with Birmingham faculty.
We have found that we can keep existing research partnerships going very effectively. This is much more difficult with nascent partnerships where you aren’t able to work directly with the stock of people you have been engaging with. There have been some really interesting innovations through existing partnerships. For example, we will be holding large-scale global webinars with our Brazilian partners looking at Industry 4.0 research. Previously we would have tried to do a face-to-face conference to move things forward which would have taken much more time.
I’ve been really heartened by what I have seen. Some existing partnerships have picked up pace, though new ones will be hard for the next 12 months.
T: Technology will play a big part in the internationalisation at home agenda. Moving classrooms online has been swift, but there are mixed feelings from students about this. Most students want to come to the UK to study to experience the culture, and to secure post-study rights to work in the UK, and so it is not just about the course content. We have to be careful in understanding the key drivers for international student recruitment. It’s about the lived experience of being in the UK more than anything else for students.
At Lincoln, it is our intention that all students on all courses will have some level of face-to-face teaching each week from the start of the coming academic year. We have been very careful to articulate what the campus experience next year will look like. We need to remind ourselves not to use too much sector jargon. For example, “blended” is an unhelpful term for a prospective student audience. Messaging is so important in international strategies, particularly as things will get lost in translation.
My view is that we should not get overexcited about technology or use it as a panacea. What the sector has learnt is that it can play a much bigger part in delivery as well as affording increased opportunities for collaboration.
To what extent have the culture/attitudes towards internationalisation shifted since the beginning of the pandemic, and how do you expect these to develop following the crisis?
R: Internationalisation is not a particularly difficult sell at Birmingham. The challenge has not been to get people on board with an international agenda, rather to foster innovative thinking. Growing this enthusiasm for international is actually easier now as a result of Covid. One area of concern is how early-career researchers will develop the international networks and connections they need to progress in their careers. ERCs will need to get stuck into global webinars, but will miss the all-important meetings in the gaps. Institutions will need to keep a very close eye on this.
T: The culture at Lincoln has changed enormously in respect to internationalisation. We now have College international directors, international student recruitment and mobility have soared, and staff are actively seeking international opportunities. All markers suggest that the culture has changed. The Vice-Chancellor’s vision of Lincoln as a “challenger” institution has supported this change. We have been able to weave into this narrative that we have to be a global university. Internationalisation does still occasionally go into the “too hard box”, and there are areas of mild resistance, but it is easier in a young institution to create this narrative. The “what’s in it for me” phrase is a classic question that you have to be able to answer, and you do need strong commitment from the top.
It is easy to see why Covid-19 may have had a detrimental effect in some institutions in terms of the international agenda as people batten down the hatches in response. Lincoln’s mindset is to look for the opportunities: there has been no retrenchment on internationalisation. People don’t want to put internationalisation to the side, rather they are motivated by it.
Institutions have never thrived by turning in on themselves – they actually have a critical role to play in their communities. Now is the time that we need to be more actively and more vocally international than ever before. Academia can provide a link across peoples and cultures, and so from a philosophical and ethical standpoint internationalisation is crucial.
“Academia can provide a link across peoples and cultures, and so from a philosophical and ethical standpoint internationalisation is crucial”
If necessity is indeed the mother of invention, what would you say is the most positive initiative at your university to have emerged from the dark days through which we continue to live?
R: There is one initiative, but I can’t talk about it! We have been asked to bring three big bets to our strategy day though one in particular has come to the fore. I can say that this is something around working with and in developing countries. The positive is that we would not have been brave enough to think about this opportunity without Covid-19.
T: For Lincoln is it the internationalisation at home initiative. If we could say that every student on every course is exposed to an international experience in some form “from home”, then that would be a distinctive achievement.
Biographies
Professor Robin Mason joined the University of Birmingham in March 2016, as Pro-Vice-Chancellor (International).
Robin moved to Birmingham after seven years at the University of Exeter, where he was first Professor of Economics, then appointed Dean of the University’s Business School in 2011, and Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Executive Dean in 2015. He had previously been the Eric Roll Professor of Economics and Head of Economics at the University of Southampton. His first degree is in Natural Sciences; after a stint working in finance, he returned to Cambridge to do his PhD in Economics. He was a Prize Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford; then went back, yet again, to Cambridge to work in the Department of Applied Economics, before moving to Southampton. His academic research concentrates on how firms respond strategically to uncertainty; and, more broadly, the incentives faced by economic agents in situations when they have imperfect information about their environment. (Formally, his area is game theory with incomplete information and learning.) While this research is theoretical in nature, it is motivated by the applied problems encountered while advising regulators and companies.
Robin is a Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research, and a member of both the Competition and Markets Authority (formerly the Competition Commission) and the Financial Conduct Authority. He has acted as advisor to a number of regulators, in both the UK and internationally; to the Prime Minister of Mauritius on competition policy; and to a number of private-sector companies worldwide. He sits on the Accreditation Board of EQUIS, one of the two major international accreditation bodies for business schools. He is a dual national, Canadian/UK, being born in Kingston, Ontario.
Professor Toby Wilkinson is Deputy Vice-Chancellor (External Relations) at the University of Lincoln. He holds a First Class Honours Degree and a PhD in Egyptology from the University of Cambridge.
Prior to joining the University of Lincoln, Toby served for six years as the inaugural Director of International Strategy at the University of Cambridge, devising and delivering an institution-wide strategy for global engagement, working closely with partners in Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and the Americas. Toby’s earlier appointments focussed on external relations, schools liaison and widening participation, fundraising and alumni relations, and institutional strategy. In his academic career, Toby has held research and teaching positions at the universities of Cambridge and Durham.
Toby is an internationally acclaimed Egyptologist, and the prize-winning author of ten books which have been translated into eleven languages. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and the Royal Historical Society, and a member of the international editorial board of the Journal of Egyptian History. Toby is also a school governor and a trustee of the Thomas Wall Trust.
Toby’s responsibilities as Deputy Vice-Chancellor include internationalisation, partnerships and transnational education (TNE); communications, development and marketing; the Lincolnshire Educational Trust; faith on campus; and engagement with a wide variety of local, regional, national and international partners.
