UK Universities and Executive Officers : the Changing Role of Pro - Vice - Chancellors Final Report

This report presents an overview of the principal findings from a research project funded by the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education (Leadership Foundation). Its central theme is how the role of pro-vice-chancellor (PVC) is being configured within the contemporary UK university. The bulk of the field research – across 13 selected UK institutions – was conducted during 2005-06 and focused on the descriptions provided by PVCs and their senior colleagues of how they perceive and interpret their roles. We wanted to understand how they got into their posts, what development and experiences they drew on, and how they placed their particular roles not just in the context of their particular job descriptions and responsibilities but within a wider conception of the institution and higher education more generally. Interviewing PVCs was a fascinating experience. It gave us a privileged insight into how the world of universities looks from the vantage points of those whose responsibility is (usually) for something that equates to more than the sum of the parts, that is to say: the institution itself. But we are also aware that the portrait that emerges is inevitably partial, in several respects. First, it is a snapshot composed of the personal views and responses of those who happened to be in post at the times of our visits. Second, such is the diversity of the mass, verging on universal, system of higher education that there will inevitably be people, and even whole institutions, where it may be feasible to say " But it's not like that here ". Third, we are conscious that our investigation of senior leadership is also partial in that it canvassed the opinions of the leaders, but not the led. In an ideal world we would have sought to balance the two, but resources and time are limited. To mitigate these limitations we did two things. First, we incorporated into the methodology a sense of the historical trajectory of the management model in higher education. Going back to 1960 and using data published by the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU) we sought to provide a statistical portrait of the evolution of the pro-vice-chancellorship for six sample years. Linked to this we also examined, in outline at least, what we have termed the restless history of higher education management, in some cases contrasting what we believe did happen in relation to the PVC with what some no doubt …