With the appointment of Professor Duncan Ivison to the University of Manchester, the University sees its first change in leadership since 2010. Ivison’s arrival lands during the University’s bicentenary year, as well the University starting its planning for the next 10 years. We sat down with the new President and Vice-Chancellor of the University and got to know him, his thoughts on prominent university topics, and his goals for his tenure.
Starting nice and friendly, we asked Ivison if he had any favourite spots in Manchester, given that he’s new to the city. Ivison was quick to compliment the natural scenery of the “amazing walk[s] along the Mersey” and “fun parts of the city” like Ancoats.
Ivison isn’t a newcomer to Manchester. Having been a student at LSE for his PhD – “I used to come to Manchester in the early 90’s […] I lived in a shared house with a bunch of Mancunians who would bring me back on the weekends”. Reminiscing on how it was still a “pretty rough” city in his youth, he reflected on how “Manchester has grown” with there being “so much development […] the city has really changed and grown” but said that he found joy in the fact the “architecture, food, culture, the music scene is still here”.
Ivison has been taking the buses to work each day to connect with the local community as he hasn’t “had time to find a bike yet”, quipping “so any recommendations from your readers would be much appreciated”. He feels like buses have become his “vice-presidential surgery” and states that “it’s been a great way to get to know the city”. Crediting Burnham with a cheeky “unabashed plug for the Bee Network”, he let us know that “we’re [his family] big fans of the Bee Network”.
Ivison credits Andy Burnham with the “unique […] way the civic institutions in the city are so connected. The universities, Greater Manchester’s regional authority, city government, football clubs, the cultural institutions […] There’s nowhere in the world where the university is so embedded in this really rich collaborative culture”.
Ivison acknowledged that the current system for University funding was “not financially stable” and “unsustainable”. Yet he quickly shot down Newcastle University Christopher Day’s (chair of the Russell Group) suggestion of a fee hike up to £13,000 per annum: “I don’t think it follows that the tuition fees should go from £9,250 to £13,000 […] it would be very hard to justify that in the current cost of living crisis”.
We felt his approach seemed more rational and well thought out, focusing on ensuring universities are kept running without the financial burden going to students’ “I think ultimately the tuition fee does have to be linked to inflation because it’s just not sustainable for it not to be, over time”. He expressed his focus on ensuring that any increases to tuition fees for students were coupled with improvements to the level of maintenance grants and loans given to students.
During the interview, Ivison gave a very clear 3-pronged approach to the issue of fees. Whilst Ivison acknowledges a fee rise is necessary, he also believes the narrowing of the grounds for maintenance grants “ultimately right now is stopping students from going to uni”. Acknowledging that Manchester is a “pretty expensive place” to live for students and with the lack of money accessible to students, Ivison continued on to state that any rise in fees has “got to be accompanied by an adjustment, the maintenance has to go up”.
But unlike some of his counterparts, he acknowledged the role of government and the pressure these changes could put on students. “The UK has the lowest proportion of funding provided by the government into its higher education system than any other country in the OECD,” Ivison informs us, with increasing enthusiasm for the issue as we continue on. Believing universities to be at the “heart” of UK economic growth, “the government also has to genuinely decide what it is capable of investing to get the higher education system [what] it needs”.
“Right off the bat, it’s a real credit to the Students’ Union and Nancy and her team that I think Manchester had the most generous cost of living payment scheme in the country, right?”.
Switching between subtle reflections on the negative aspects of Rothwell’s tenure whilst also going to lengths to credit her for work like the “generous cost of living scheme” (with additional credit given to the SU) seemed to be a difficult balancing act that Ivison weathered well.
With the cost of living crisis seeing no end in sight and the continuing strain on students, we would be remiss if we didn’t question how he planned to tackle this problem. “Big things that contribute to the cost of living challenge are things like accommodation, transport, the cost of living in Manchester” were all acknowledged as issues in response. He talked of what “we need to do in terms of creating [or the] ability to have programs that help students, particularly students who have greater needs than others”, before telling us “we need to make sure we’re getting the support right for them. But look, there is no magic, easy solution to it”.
Throughout our chat, Ivison repeatedly references the student execs and his various projects with Lexie Baynes (the current Union Affairs officer for the Students’ Union) that he has planned. “You’re being represented there, and she’s [Baynes] certainly making the student voice loud and clear”. Ivison also acknowledges that he and his team are “very aware of that kind of issue [cost of living]”. He mentions “working with the city on transport” whilst continuing to develop accommodation plans for the future.
Predicting our next question, he remains casual as he brings up the Fallowfield redevelopment, leading on with “We’re going to probably disagree about what affordable means”, yet repeating his continual focus on listening to the students where previous Vice-Chancellors have perhaps shied away.
Throughout our chat, there were multiple exclamations of “I listen” and mentions of the “importance of good questions”. Ivison seemed overly keen to make us aware that he wanted to hear from the students and discuss important issues, but will all this listening actually make a change?
Moving the conversation to accommodation, Ivison was surprisingly straightforward. We asked if the new halls being constructed as part of the Fallowfield redevelopment have a target of meeting the hall’s affordability criteria created by the National Union of Students (NUS). Ivison said “I don’t think we’re gonna get as close to the NUS norm as you’d like us to, […] But having said that, we are completely committed to making as much of the new development as affordable as we possibly can”.
However, he promised that the University would continue to listen to student voices on the topic, and said that the University would be open and transparent as the process continues. He noted that the scale of investment is large, and he claimed that the project would become one of the biggest residence redevelopment projects in the country.
Ivison, evidently in an attempt to get to know us better, asked us whether we lived in Fallowfield, and went on to describe how “it’s quite unique to have a kind of almost mini city you know, four or five kilometres, whatever, from the main campus”.
Ivison acknowledged that the quality of our current halls are very poor. He said that he’s visited numerous universities across the North West and England, and he thinks that “we’ve fallen behind with providing students with, I think, accommodation that they deserve”.
In Ivison’s defence, he does not sit on any of the relevant boards related to the Fallowfield redevelopment project. Yet mentioning the financial needs of commercial partners and the open acknowledgement of the “subpar” state of accommodation left a bad taste in our mouths, despite the honesty which we did appreciate. Emphasising the grand scale of redevelopment whilst referencing the University’s supposed commitment to affordability made financial promises seem rather hollow when they have become one of the biggest issues on campus.
Ivison seemed relaxed and at ease in the Mancunion office: leaning back in his chair, legs casually crossed and maintaining friendly eye contact. He maintained this throughout, even when we asked some of our more challenging questions.
When asked about protests, specifically encampments or occupations, and his planned tact for handling these sensitive events, he was quick to say that “right off the bat, the right to protest, the right to express yourself through various forms of direct action, whether that’s occupation or encampments is a really important principle”. Ivison, with a background in the humanities and political morality, was quick to emphasise the necessity of the right to protest on campus. He did, however, caveat that this is “assuming that those who are engaging [in] those activities are also respecting the rights of others to study or get on with their day”.
As Deputy Vice-Chancellor for the University of Sydney, Ivison faced “similar challenges in Sydney”, and so already has a clear vision of how he wants to “tackle” those “issues”. “I think the issue of how we engage and how we talk about those issues is something I’d like to tackle, perhaps in a new way” with a reference to engaging students earlier “and more consistently […] about these issues [along] with the senior leadership at the University”.
When pushed on further transparency between university officials and students, Ivison recalled interviews he conducted the previous day with students: “What I’m hearing is students want to understand the rationale for the decisions that university might make […] or they might want to know more about our thinking about certain controversial issues”. Expanding further that those “makes perfect sense” and that he was “very happy to figure out how we do that [explaining decisions to the community] over the course of this year”.
“So I guess one difference maybe from what’s happened in the past is being willing to create space and environment in which we can have these conversations openly”. His response to occupations felt like an attempt to straddle the line between appeasing concerned student protestors whilst setting boundaries and not encouraging further action. It is an insight into the struggle Ivison will face at the beginning of his tenure to balance the negative reputation the office holds among students, after Rothwell’s tenure, with the responsibilities of leadership. He even quipped “I’d like to do [things] a bit differently than perhaps was done in the past”.
Plugging his “series of open meetings” he mentioned an ‘ask me anything’ session he had hopes for along with an as yet undated “open debate lecture […] on ‘is anti-Zionism, anti-semitism?'”.
“Ask me anything” was something he frequently referred to, clearly meant to encourage supposedly open dialogue, something which was sorely missed during previous Vice-Chancellor’s tenures. Further expanding on his want for the university to be a place where “we can have these hard conversations in a respectful, informed way” and moving away from the precedent of “sending out press releases”, instead focusing on “engaging with the student community”. He again reiterates that same point (though frequently hedged with softening language) that he wants “to do more of, that perhaps maybe wasn’t done as much in the past”.
As he continued to explain his approach we needled him further on the topical issue of freedom of speech on campuses, and how his background in political philosophy might inform his future decision-making.
His comments on the freedom of speech on campus made it clear he was interested in both academic and real-world debates.
“You shouldn’t come to university expecting not to be upset” we were told, when questioned on freedom of speech both in and out of the lecture hall, “You don’t have a right not to feel uncomfortable”.
Ivison emphasised that campuses have always been a place for dissenting ideas and lively discourse. To dampen this would damage the essence of universities as a tool for new ideas, he ends on.
Leaving this segment of the interview with the comment that whilst he would not want to call direct action illegitimate, “sometimes the most radical thing you can do is sit and listen to another human being”.
Wanting to end the conversation on a more positive note, we moved the conversation to the University as a whole and Ivison’s goals for the long-term. We asked him about Manchester’s slight stumble in the league tables, something which still factors into student thinking when applying to universities. Ivison felt that league tables are still important, but emphasised that “they shouldn’t define who you are” as an institution. However, he recognised that Manchester remains a highly ranked institution, particularly with the university doing well in sustainability rankings. Manchester as a whole still does remarkably well on most metrics, and is something he will remain proud of, but strive to continually improve.
