University Registrars Talking About Stuff

And now for something completely different. Based on an original idea by Jenny Lawrence and Jackie Potter, who came up with it on their way to a meeting of the Heads of Educational Development Group, it is time for the Higher Education Shipping forecast. 

With a general synopsis and reports from the major Higher Education and Shipping areas, your full forecast can be heard here.

Drawing its inspiration from the classic 1973 song by the Faces, this episode of the podcast was a live recording at the spring conference of AHUA held at Swansea University in April 2025. 
The recording provides an opportunity to hear from two departing/departed AHUA members in conversation discussing their reflections on their long careers in the sector. Featuring Lee Sanders of the University of Birmingham and Paul Greatrix, formerly of the University of Nottingham the focus is very much on those areas where valuable lessons have been learned.
Subjects such as being selective in the battles you pick, the convening power of the registrar, the challenge of complexity and the importance of pragmatism are covered along with issues such as delivery focus versus PhD acquisition and trying to be serious most of the time. The various attributes needed to survive as a registrar are discussed too, drawing on recent surveys of AHUA members and some insightful contributions are provided by the audience.
And without getting too maudlin or self-indulgent they do try to remind everyone that they were the future once but actually things look much better now for the next stage of development of a more diverse and inclusive AHUA.
This is a longer podcast than usual and carries all the features of a live recording. Huge thanks though to Robin Henderson for providing the equipment and Stella, his daughter, for cleaning up the audio as best she could. 

For this edition of the podcast I have the great pleasure to talk to Nicola Maina who is the Union Development Officer, a sabbatical position (equivalent to President) of the University of Nottingham Students' Union. 
We start off by discussing Nicola's decision to study Law at Nottingham and how she found the learning environment in the immediate post-pandemic period. Whilst she loved the course and her lecturers she did find the cold and dark winter climate a bit too much. Campus and residential life and the immersion in British culture were clear positives and then things really developed when she discovered student representative activity and was persuaded to stand for the part-time position of Students' Union International Officer.
Having been elected into the role she really focused on trying to develop a shared sense of community for those studying away from home, noting the difficulties which often exist when trying to promote engagement with home students. Building on her enthusiasm for democratic representation Nicola was then elected to her current sabbatical position following a campaign which lasted for what she described as two of the hardest weeks of her life. 
Nicola discovered she had a huge amount to learn as a new sabbatical and we discuss the ways in which she sought to contribute effectively to represent students at the highest levels within the University and how important the place of officers like her is within the formal structures. It's a really steep learning curve and there is so much more to the role and the students' union than most students imagine.
Finally, we learn that Nicola hopes to build on her law degree in terms of future work plans but nothing is certain yet. It is a really good conversation with a hugely impressive student representative.

This edition of the podcast features, for the first time, two non-Registrars (of which I am of course now one). The foremost of the pair of us though is Olivia Kew-Fickus, Chief Data Officer at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. We begin by learning about Olivia's highly valued and extremely transferable history degree and then her move into UK higher ed leading to a series of roles at the University of Birmingham. 
After six years as Director of Strategic Planning at Birmingham Olivia returned to the US for a different kind of planning role and then after a couple of years became Chief Data Officer at Vanderbilt. Apart from learning a slightly different higher ed vocabulary she has worked hard to bridge across  the technical data issues and the strategic level matters. 
Rankings are a big issue for Olivia and her university at present - whilst Vanderbilt does well in domestic rankings there is real concern about the dubious nature of the methodologies used and the sketchiness of sector data employed. Vanderbilt commissioned a study by a Chicago research unit, NORC, into the issues with ranking methods to inform an exciting new project Olivia is involved in.  (You can see the report from NORC here - https://www.norc.org/content/dam/norc-org/pdf2024/college-rankings-review.pdf )
Finally, Olivia reminds us that, whilst universities can be seen as small towns with everything that entails, they also have challenges that few can anticipate. It's a really interesting conversation (in which I over-use, legitimately, the word fascinating) and I hope you enjoy it.  I'm sure all in higher ed will also want to celebrate Olivia's achievement in being shortlisted to be Chief Data Officer of the year!

Swedish and UK Registrars learning from each other over four decades

This episode of the podcast sees a second discussion with Lee Sanders, Registrar and Secretary and Chief Operating Officer at the University of Birmingham. This time we are talking about a  long standing collaboration between Swedish and UK Registrars, generations of whom have been meeting at a biennial seminar which has been running since 1984. Lee and I both joined the group in 2011 having been tapped on the shoulder for the Cardiff conference and since then have experienced a series of successful events where Registrars from both countries have shared information on similar challenges faced. We note the impressive standard of English of Swedish colleagues and the commonalities and differences of the two national systems as well as the political contexts. 

Topics for consideration at seminars over the years have ranged from Brexit and Covid impacts to international research security and student involvement in governance. We also discuss some of the big differences in Sweden which have been explored including the way in which HE capital  funding differs and the national student record system in Sweden (Ladok, which also inspired an essay by Paul Greatrix published by HEPI in 2023). In addition to tours and excursions there is a social element to the seminar which also involves a singing competition of dubious quality.

It's a brief run through of the many virtues of a really distinctive collaborative arrangement which has been operating successfully for over 40 years now.

Note that the early history of the collaboration is covered in a report, referred to in the podcast, entitled The Meeting of Minds, An Account of the Joint Seminars of UK and Swedish University Registrars and Secretaries during Three Decades, published in 2015 by Lars Ekholm (sadly not currently available online).

It's time for more exciting bonus content. Whilst on this podcast you will usually find me in conversation with registrars and other higher ed notables, I've got some other diversions to share.  There will be some new podcasts along soon but in the meantime I wanted to provide a bit of bonus content.

In this short Registrarologue then you can hear me going on yet again about regulation and setting out a a very personal perspective. This time it is a 10 point plan to save a whole load of much-needed money for the sector by cutting the regulatory burden. 

In this episode of University Registrars (and Others) Talking About Stuff I talk to someone who is very much not a registrar but a notable figure nevertheless. Dr Vince Wilson recently retired as Associate Professor at the University of Nottingham and among the stuff we learn about is Vince's distinctive academic journey from a degree in pharmacy to a research degree, a Royal Society fellowship - as part of which he spent a period in Germany - and then a post-doc in Glasgow.
Vince joined Nottingham in 1989 where he was based in the Queen's Medical Centre and being in the same building as a hospital was a big attraction, particularly for translational research. We discuss some of the differences in scale and technology in HE since the 80s but also the increased pressure on academics.
Other significant developments which Vince highlights are the outreach and widening participation agenda which he was involved in and a specific transnational medical education partnership with Thailand which had delivered strong results over many years, as well as enabling him to enjoy a period of work in the sun during the cold winter months.
Vince's passion for music has been ever-present - as well as providing a vehicle for engaging with the public when he was a locum pharmacist and students in the classroom, he highlights the hitherto largely under-reported contribution of one of his heroes, the late, great Gil Scott-Heron, to academia. However, it is to Miles Davis and John Coltrane he turns for his priority Desert Island disc selection.
It's a really different and entertaining conversation and I am sure you will enjoy it.

In the latest episode of University Registrars Talking About Stuff I chat with Dr George Turner, University Secretary and Clerk to the Council at the University of Roehampton.
We naturally discuss George's early academic career which, quite distinctively, started out with him forming a punk band at 16 and then being inspired to study music at Sheffield. He stuck with music as a discipline, ending up with a PhD thesis on the place of the electric guitar before deciding he needed to earn some money, taking the first job he could which happened to be at the University of Derby. After a period working as a cleaner at the university he moved into the challenging area of student complaints and then turned down a job offer at the University of Nottingham in favour of an opportunity at Brunel.
Following a brief diversion on the changing emphasis on the importance of strong written English in university administration, noting the bigger issue for George is skills in data presentation, we move on to his next step, being  encouraged by a great boss to apply for the job of Deputy Secretary at Roehampton.
Whilst a big step up he had a real opportunity to grow in the role including honing those governance skills through taking on support for Council committees. A change in VC resulted in the creation of a new role of University Secretary which George successfully applied for. Although admitting to his fair share of imposter syndrome he cites the really strong and supportive environment at Roehampton.
We talk about the features of the university including its long history from its original constituent colleges, three of which include a religious dimension, bringing interesting perspectives to Council. Naturally we discuss regulation too and the approaches to dealing with regulators' expectations on Council in terms of compliance and the impact on its work.
Finally, we discover that, like me George is a big fan of campus security reports.
It's a really good conversation and I hope you enjoy it.

It's time for more exciting bonus content. Whilst on this podcast you will usually find me in conversation with registrars and other higher ed notables, I've got some other diversions to share.  There will be some new podcasts along soon but in the meantime I wanted to provide a bit of bonus content.
In this short Registrarologue then you can hear me going on a bit about some of the challenges of dealing with Freedom of Information requests in universities. But I also thought I would share with you some FOI examples which highlight the concerns I have with the operation of the legislation in HE.

This episode of University Registrars and Others Talking About Stuff finds me in discussion with higher education sector data guru Andy Youell. 
Whilst Andy started his working life at Rolls Royce working on various aircraft he soon found the appeal of data and HE funding (not to mention sector acronyms) irresistible and joined PCFC just before it merged with UFC and then HEFCE. He became heavily involved in data collection and indeed it was his phone number given as the contact for HESES enquiries. This certainly helped build his sector network, something he continued to develop upon joining HESA in 1996, the beginning of a long engagement which saw him work on all sorts of exciting data projects, including a three year stint running a major sector data improvement programme, HEDIIP (another acronym).
Andy has some excellent insights about the use and misuse of data by both regulators and institutions and the challenges of data governance and the risks for what is still an immature science. We also talk about learner analytics and the data work Andy is doing for his current employer, the University College of Estate Management. 
Finally we learn about Andy's ongoing part-time rock star lifestyle - he loves drums and music as well as data - and we uncover a little known fact about his enduring data legacy in relation to the origins of the naming of higher education subject codes.
(With apologies for some background noise in the first part of this recording.)