Patrick Woods

Deputy Vice-Chancellor and

Vice-President (Resources), The University

of Technology, Sydney

> Products, pricing, price elasticity, efficiencies, target markets, clients, assets utilisation, mission statements, KPI’s, debt ratios, capital markets, credit ratings, PROFIT?

> All have crept into the Higher Education Sector in recent years and are being driven by government policy and simple necessity

> …so are we not corporations… so what does that mean… Is this a bad thing?

UNIVERSITIES ARE BASICALLY LARGE

CORPORATIONS THAT STRUGGLE WITH

OVER GOVERNING, OVER REGULATION

AND CULTURAL CHALLENGES

> Who am I?

> Why am I talking about this topic?

> Clear strategy

> Known stakeholders – owner/bank/shareholder

> Known / Limited product set

> Known / Limited market

> Known costs, pricing margins

> Relative ease of performance management

– Hire / fire

– High levels of accountability

> Easy to house

CORPORATIONS

UNIVERSITIES

> Complex strategies

> Multiple shareholders

> Very wide product set

> Very broad customer base

> Poorly understood costs and margins

> Creation of I.P., spin off companies

> Academic staff have multiple roles and are highly competitive

– Teaching

– Research

– Administration

> Hard to performance manage

> A culture based on distrust first and therefore regulate

> Buildings are complex and last generations

> Academic freedom

The Result?

> The result is a very nebulous world that is “challenging” to manage in a corporate model... that is, however, what government policy is driving us towards.

> A University is, however, simply a large corporation with a slightly different mission than most corporations. No matter how much we like to say “but we are different” we are only different because we want to be and we have been allowed to be. We are now being forced to be more similar to a corporations.

> Many versions of the wording, but our missions are to basically to ensure good learning outcomes, undertake effective/impactful research to inform what is taught and also support humanity/commerce.

We Compete!!

Like it or not we compete:

> On reputation

> On product

> On location

> On perception

> On price

> On rankings

> Domestically and Internationally

> Etc…

Think about…

> We only have so much money to do this...just

as any corporation does.

> As such we need to use it wisely and in a well

managed and governed environment.

> Revenues – How much do we get from the

government now? Not much

> Expenses – 50-60% are staff, how well can

they be actually managed and not just

tracked.

Think about…

> Assets – How well used... we target low percentages and don’t even hit those.

> We build offices that are not used!

> We don’t measure to the level that a corporation measures

> We have managers that don’t want to manage in both the academic and professional areas.

> Now the government says we will have deregulated pricing in a regulated environment... how does that work?

> Regardless of the approach of government, there is nothing wrong with acting and managing in a more corporate manner.

Over time…

We need to:

> Have a clearer sense of purpose and understand our market positioning and how we compete

> We need to translate that into a rolling long term finance / business plan (minimum 10 years)

> We need to have a much better way of structuring our work force to deliver the outcomes that are expected

> We need to better understand our cost of delivery (especially with on-line learning changing our industry and research losing funding)

> We need to have better managers embedded in that structure

> We need to be able to predict , and manage, that work force

> We need to be able to more fully utilise our assets (buildings, equipment).

> We need to begin with trust and hold people accountable

> ...and we have to do all of this in an industry

sector that is going through more change than

any of the 8 industries that I have been in over

the past 38 years...

> ...do we have the structures, skills and

systems to allow us to cope?

WELCOME TO

THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE AROUND