After Aberdeen University revealed it would have to reduce spending and shed staff, its principal and vice-chancellor Professor Sir Ian Diamond explains why the savings are necessary.
For over 500 years the University of Aberdeen has come to symbolise the ambition, curiosity, international outlook, and the many great people who have come out of the north-east and made their mark on the world in so many ways – whether MRI scanning, insulin, women’s health, code-breaking or other fields of human endeavour.
The university is part of the “cultural DNA” of this region, and proud to be so. We are also within the top 200 universities across the world – and today that is no mean feat.
We bring leading academics, researchers, and the brightest students from across the world to experience everything that this wonderful part of Scotland has to offer.
We have grown substantially in recent years, building on traditional strengths and developing new ones. At the same time we have worked hard to be financially strong, able to react to challenges and to grasp opportunities.
And we’ve created wonderful new facilities to benefit not only our students but all our communities. These include the Sir Duncan Rice Library, Suttie medical school, and the magnificent Aberdeen Sports Village. All are fantastic success stories, and brilliant partnerships with organisations who share this vision for our city and region.
We are at the point now when we need to decide our way forward, and determine how we can achieve our ambitions for the university in a climate which we know is challenging on many fronts.
Opportunities beckon, here and overseas. To ignore them means losing our place against the many ambitious universities across the world who are making huge investments in growing their profile and attractiveness to students.
Our new strategic plan sets out a bold and ambitious vision to grow our position as one of the world’s leading universities.
To achieve our vision – and continue to have the necessary financial stability in a challenging funding environment – we need to find the recurrent saving which will enable us to make necessary investments in infrastructure, in student experience and in academic endeavours, and give us the flexibility to react to challenges that we are bound to face in the next few years, and opportunities we can take advantage of.
At present our staff costs are considerably higher than the average for UK universities, and they will grow further next year when the university must contribute more to the National Insurance payments and pension arrangements for staff. This is the reason for introducing the opportunity for staff who wish to take advantage of voluntary severance or early retirement.
As we go through this programme, the experience our students have here with us at Aberdeen is of utmost priority, and we will meet with our student representatives regularly to discuss concerns they may have.
Looking ahead, I truly believe that this will make us a stronger university, better able to compete on the world stage.
The value of an Aberdeen degree will be strengthened still further for our students and alumni, and for the benefit of the communities and economy of the north-east.
