Vice-Chancellors in trouble

[atrium]

I work for a uni and we got an email to say our VC has been suspended while allegations are investigated. I googled to see if there was an external announcement yet. There isn't, but I was interested to see many other recent headlines in my search results about VCs being suspended from other unis. It seems to be remarkably common. I wonder why? 🤷‍♀️

VC is still suspended, if that's what you mean. No news on the investigation yet.

The PVC Finance is back at work.

PVC finance off to pastures new.

Hello. So PVC finance has gone and going where? Or saw the writing on the wall! When was that announced and what about the VC?

Email was marked confidential.

No news on VC.

So do you think it was voluntary or mutual and when will it go public . I wonder how that leaves everything. I will ask my boss when I see him if he knows.

It's now on the intranet, not marked as confidential. She's got a new job at another uni so sounds voluntary to me.

Wow. Which uni?

A uni with more money. 🙂 I expect it will be announced externally in due course She's serving her 3 month notice period, so not leaving imminently.

Any idea what uni? What’s the reaction do you think?

It was in the internal announcement, with congratulations, so I expect it will be published externally before too long.

@Switch2023where/what type of organisation do you work in?

Hi. Just seen your message. I work in a consultancy company which specialises in the education sector. My boss is always looking for difficult situations which might need the services such as restructuring hence this interest. He’s very well connected and knows quite a bit about the people involved but seems to be ongoing for ages. He’s working on another difficult situation right now.

If that is his role (and presumably, to some degree, yours too) then it should be no surprise that the VC investigation is taking time. It's clear that there are multiple allegations from multiple people relating to actions over multiple years, so it will take time for all the evidence to be carefully considered.

In the meantime, people who are close enough to it to see the writing on the wall will inevitably try to distance themselves by moving on pdq.

Gosh, the very last thing we need is a consultant coming in to restructure us!

A lot of £££ consultancy and 3rd party supplier expertise has already been bought in by the VC & PVC Fin&Ops. Some of it has been positive, some of it hasn't. As noted in up thread, it is a unique university that doesn't fit off-the-shelf models and anyone who barges in with an attitude that they know better than existing staff soon ends up realising they don't. The business model does need to be reshaped, but that can't be done quickly. The latest strategy looks good, and the DVC is rightly being more cautious/realistic about timelines than the PVC ever was. Yet I still see promises in newsletters about certain things being delivered by certain dates that everyone working on them knows won't be met. That's because the leadership hire contractors and middle leaders who will only tell them what they want to hear, and they don't understand the detail. Contractors make assumptions about the availability of internal resources that turn out to be not available because the resources are already over-utilised for several other high priority things.

Hi. Thanks for that. My boss is currently very busy involved with another institution but he had mentioned that the chairman was discussing with him. Sounds like the internal people might not know. Keeping it to himself I guess.

Bloody parasites. And let’s not forget the headhunters either. We’ve just had a dramatic clear out of several of the university senior management team, all deeply unsuitable appointments made in the last couple of years via the same firm.

Far too many university senior managers either with no real knowledge of HE, or no proper experience of actually being an academic. Or often, both.

Yes, some stuff is transferable but I've witnessed some terrible decision making by people who just don't get the basics of teaching or research.

I read this with great interest, as I used to work for her in another organisation. I lasted six months and had to leave because the bullying was off the scale. I have heard similar from other people who have worked with her. I'm just amazed it took so long for this to catch up with her.

UoL doesn't really have many academics though, does it, unless you mean SAS? Apart from SAS, it mainly employs professional services staff who coordinate distance learning and other services for its member institutions.That gives it a bit of an identity crisis.The VC clearly enjoyed basking in the reflected academic glory of the SAS academics, meeting Princess Anne (Chancellor) and travelling the world to meet education leaders of the many countries that use UoL services. But the day job involved running a business with some unhappy customers who weren't shy about contacting her through social media. That rattled her, and when she couldn't fix things quickly she got angry.

It's a unique organisation, which has evolved organically to meet the needs of its members. A couple of years ago, the VC brought in the leader of North American university that specialises in distance learning to speak to staff at the Town Hall meeting. He talked about his business model. She was clearly inspired by him - I wish I could remember the name of the uni. But if she was going to replicate it she would have needed to ditch SAS (because he said its too difficult to combine services for distance learning and research), pay staff a lot more (he made it clear he recruited the best and treated them well, which no doubt also meant he had a robust objective-setting and performance review process that would incur the wrath of the UoL unions), and completely rebuild the technology stack. The latest strategy does at least aim to rebuild the technology stack, but it will take a long time to do it properly. The VC wanted everything done on unrealistic timescales.

Oh, looks like the departed PVC Finance/Ops new appointment has now been cancelled: https://www.cam.ac.uk/notices/news/senior-leadership-positions-at-the-university

just seen your message. That’s a shock isn’t it? Is she staying put then. No one else mentioned.

No, she worked out her notice and a successor has been appointed.

Wow, I mean if Cambridge just withdrew her job offer after she’d handed notice in that’s pretty awful for her! Makes you wonder what on earth has gone on.

Yes, although they did say it wasn't a reflection on the candidate.

There's no news regarding the VC's suspension yet. The minutes of the May meeting where she was suspended are now online but the detail is redacted. They do mention a notice from the OfS under general ongoing condition of registration F3 (Provision of Information to the OfS), but that may be unrelated.

https://www.london.ac.uk/about/governance/board-trustees/minutes-board-trustees-meetings