The Annual Senior Management Retreat September 2018 Vice- - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Welcome to

The Annual Senior Management Retreat

September 2018

Vice-Chancellor’s Report

Professor Alec Cameron

Agenda

1. Context – the UK HE sector 1. How is Aston performing?

• Our key metrics
• Performance highlights

2. Our strategy

• Its implementation
• What we need to do to succeed

Higher Education and Political Environment

Sector seeing constant change

• New regulatory environment – Office for Students
• Tuition Fees and research funding – uncertainty
• Review into post-18 funding
• Brexit
• Increased competition for fewer students
• Market segmentation and ‘over supply’ – RG, mid tariff,

low tariff

How is Aston performing?

Our key metrics

• We are still ahead of the sector on student satisfaction but we are

slipping back (despite the improved performance this year of EAS)

• We are still ahead of the sector for graduate level employment but

we are being caught up – We are behind our competitors for the percentage of postgraduates/further study

• As our input measures such as SSR have been improving slowly,

unless we improve outcomes we will fall once more in the UK and global rankings

8 Year NSS Overall Satisfaction Data

(Source: National Student Survey) 86 84 90 89 90 89 88 85 83 84 85 86 86 86 84 83

80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 % Agree/Satisfied NSS Year Aston Score Sector Mean

10 Year Graduate Prospects Data and Rank

(Source: Complete University Guide) 78.1 75.2 74.8 75.7 78.1 73.0 76.6 78.8 82.3 79.4 68.6 66.1 63.7 63.6 64.1 64.6 66.3 68.8 71.4 73.0

60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 Graduate Prospects % Complete University Guide Year

Graduate Prospects % 2010-2019

Aston Score Sector Mean

17 22 16 17 15 31 28 25 18 37

1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 Aston Graduate Prospects Rank Complete University Guide Year

Aston Graduate Prospect Rank 2010-2019

10 Year Student/Staff Ratio Data and Rank

(Source: Complete University Guide) 16.6 18.1 17.1 17.0 16.2 16.2 16.0 19.0 20.9 20.1 17.4 17.6 17.6 17.7 18.2 17.4 16.8 16.0 16.0 15.9

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 Student/Staff Ratio Complete University Guide Year

Student/Staff Ratio 2010-2019

Aston Score Sector Mean

47 63 48 48 34 45 50 108 124 125

1 6 11 16 21 26 31 36 41 46 51 56 61 66 71 76 81 86 91 96 101 106 111 116 121 126 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 Student/Staff Ratio Rank Complete University Guide Year

Aston SSR Rank 2010-2019

Aston’s 10 Year League Table Positions

13 17 25 34 27 27 32 30 49 45 19 36 34 27 30 22 33 29 51 43 35 32 41 29 34 30 33 46

1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 31 34 37 40 43 46 49 52 55 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 Overall University Rank University Guide Years Complete University Guide Guardian Times/Sunday Times

Financial performance

• Improving financial resilience:

– £10.8M operating surplus in 2017/18 (6.6% of revenue)

• Growing income:

– £152.3M (up 9.3% in 2 years)

• Increased investment in staff:

– Pay costs are £85.7M (60.3% of revenue, cf 57.9% in 2015/16) – 94 new academic staff recruited this year. – 32 more in recruitment ‘pipeline’

Student Numbers 2017/18

UG 11,979 PG 3,665 TOTAL 15,644

• The UK Undergraduate market is shrinking.
• Whilst we will be very close to meeting our 2018/19 UG recruitment

target (of 2919) and our student number target of 15,723, we need to diversify faster into PG and DA.

Our student numbers are stable in a tough market

Comparators and competitors

• We compare ourselves with similar medium tariff institutions – such

as Brunel, Keele, Leicester, Bradford. We will be better than them.

• We compete directly with these institutions but also with Coventry,

BCU and UoB for student recruitment. That is our marketplace.

• We do not benchmark or compare ourselves with Russell Group

institutions (and neither do our beneficiaries).

10 Year Entry Tariff Data per Selected Competitor Institutions (Source: Complete University Guide)

365 364 370 379 396 378 368 353 342 270 275 268 277 306 317 312 321 329 319 315 325 342 356 351 351 349 345 319 302 310 335 350 380 358 350 340 360 374 399 407 411 400 386 390 374

250 270 290 310 330 350 370 390 410 430 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 Entry Tariff Complete University Guide Year Aston Bradford Brunel Keele Leicester

Aston: 136 Bradford: 131 Brunel: 131 Keele: 128 Leicester: 136

+£22.5m £30m

Total research awards 2017/18 Ambition for 2023

Second best total ever for research awards

Research highlights

• An extremely strong year for KTPs

– 6 worth £1.3 million since April alone

• We are diversifying funding sources from a reliance on the EU

– Two large EPSRC grants have been awarded to EAS Photonics worth £1.4 million: led by Professor Edik Rafailov and by Professor Nick Doran. – Dr Alan Goddard of LHS has been awarded £650,000 from BBSRC. – Aston has successfully partnered within Midlands Innovation for funding on the £5 million Connecting Capability fund and the ICURe research commercialisation bid

Aston Medical School now launched

• First cohort of 60 students (40 International, 20 Home)

starting in a few weeks

• For 2019, 40% of the 100 government-funded places will be

reserved for students from low-income backgrounds

Our beneficiary led strategy makes us distinctive

• Increased focused on employer

relationships

• A greater focus on region
• A refined product offering
• A joined-up research offering
• Diversification of revenue

streams

Our Commitment is to deliver the strategy

• We will invest more in people and systems to reach our strategic goals faster
• We will prioritise investment in activities aligned to our beneficiaries – our

students, business and the professions, our region and society

• We will focus to achieve measurable outcomes – graduate employability,

business engagement, regional economic growth and social inclusion

• This means greater support for Careers + Placements, IT systems, our

business offer, and for international recruitment

• We will continue to recruit more academic staff
• We will develop a staff value proposition that reflects a high-performance,

customer-centred culture

The Degree Apprenticeship trajectory

• Along with International, the biggest opportunity we have to

diversify our product mix speedily and amplify our links to business.

• New programmes in development across all Schools:
• ABS Executive Apprenticeship MBA already has 70

recruits.

• LSS Police Apprenticeship and LHS Nurse Practitioner

will be launched shortly

• Aiming for 750 students on Degree Apprenticeships in

2018/19 (currently 390 in 2017/18)

Muscat

• Academic partnership launched with

Oman’s newest higher education institution Aston in China

• Establishment of a partnership with NEFU in

Harbin

• Academic presence in country
• Ramped-up marketing and agent activity

Recruitment

• Partnering QS to improve conversions
• Focus on priority markets
• New scholarship and articulation strategies
• UG international numbers up
• PG focus going forwards

International activity

A new Estates strategy has been developed which will see:

• STEM disciplines (EAS, LHS, AMS) centred in the Main Building
• ABS/LSS co-located in a new building
• Demolition of the North and South Wings
• Main Building Ground Floor to be devoted to student facing

services including Careers + Placements

• Executive move to ABS
• New Students’ Union building will be ready for spring 2019
• Greater investment in IT infrastructure and the Library
• A planned investment of £250 million over ten years

New Estates and IT strategies to improve our student experience

We must recognise and strengthen our market position

• We are a mid size, mid tariff (BBB – CCC) civic university with a

strong commitment to Birmingham and the West Midlands.

• This is a strength and we need to do everything we can to maximise
• ur advantage in this market

– Over 50% of our students are now from the West Midlands – Most of our KTPs and industrial partners are based in the region, which is a dynamic economy – Our placement partners are here – Birmingham is a diverse, international city which welcomes students and citizens from around the globe and is a springboard to the world

To be successful we must deliver our strategy

• Do more of what we are good at, and stop doing what we are less

good at

• Diversify revenue faster and be market-led

– Demonstrate greater relevance to business and regional partners; succeed with degree apprenticeships – Grow our international enrolments

• Develop our culture to be more nimble and operate at greater pace

– Work together, across institutional ”silos” – Adhere to our values

• Professional and ambitious
• Innovative and collaborative
• Ethical and inclusive

Any Questions?

League tables in detail

• Best UK ranking is 43rd in Guardian (up 8 places), where we are

Ranked 20th for ‘Career Prospects’, 23rd for ‘value added’ and 25th for continuation rates (Guardian 2019 University Guide).

• Ranked the 44th Most International University in the world and

17th in the UK (2018 THE International Outlook table).

• 10 subjects ranked inside the top 400 in the World

(QS World University Rankings by Subject 2018).

• Ranked Top 200 Globally (176) for Employer Reputation (up 31

places)

Beating the sector for student satisfaction

• In the 2018 NSS, Overall Satisfaction dropped to 84.15% - by School

results were ABS 89.65%, LHS 84.08%, EAS 81.05%, LSS 78.0%.

• We are 0.6% above the sector average, which also fell. Other than EAS all

Schools saw a decline.

• Overall, Universities that saw strike action dropped by -1.9%, those that

did not dropped by -0.2%. Our decline was -3.8%

• We remain ahead of Manchester, Surrey, Sussex, Brunel, Leicester but

below UoB, Coventry, Loughborough, Keele