Nancy Rothwell: ‘In the end they stopped offering me pay rises’

Having announced her departure a full 16 months before retiring, Dame Nancy Rothwell has had plenty of time to get used to the idea that she will soon no longer be the vice-chancellor of the University of Manchester.

Yet despite a farewell tour that has seen her bestowed with tributes including an honorary degree from neighbouring Manchester Metropolitan University and a portrait unveiling at the Whitworth Art Gallery (she chose a photograph instead of the traditional painting to “be a bit different”), Dame Nancy admitted that she was not quite ready to let go.

“Come A levels, they know they are going to have to tell me how recruitment went,” she said. “I will be sitting there waiting to find out. I’ll be itching to know how things go when the new students arrive.

“I’ve been spending a lot of time with Duncan [Ivison, her successor from the University of Sydney, who starts in August], and I said, ‘You do know you are going to have to tell me what’s happening?’ and he said, ‘Oh yeah, I know.’”

Listing the many roles she will retain within the university and the wider community despite no longer being vice-chancellor, it would be easy to conclude that Dame Nancy, a physiologist who will become an emeritus professor at Manchester after stepping down, is not actually retiring at all.

Nor has she switched off from the travails of the cash-strapped sector as it prepared to make its case to a new government.

Having started in post in July 2010 – a few months into the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government – she ends her tenure a month after the Tories’ 14-year grip on power was brutally removed, so does she see big changes afoot?

“I think the new government faces many of the same issues as the previous government did,” Dame Nancy said.

“The economy is doing better, but nevertheless there are a lot of pressures. I don’t think we are going to have a nirvana, but the messages I have had suggest that the new government is aware of the issues in some universities.

“I think they will seek to avoid catastrophic events such as universities that may not be financially viable. How they will do that, it is not clear; but I suspect they are developing plans.”

Her university, she said, was in “reasonable shape”, given the circumstances. “It would be foolish of me ever to say we have plenty of cash because we never have enough to do what we want to do, but we are not in a position that clearly some in the sector are in, which is really difficult.”

She put this down to having expanded international student numbers several years before others did, which meant that, while some institutions had been banking on increased recruitment, Manchester’s numbers have long been steady.

“We are at the present time slightly below our targets, not that far,” she said. “The big concern is that we heard last year a number of universities thought they had filled their places but then found out quite late that they hadn’t because of no-shows. So we are certainly not complacent at all. We are in a strong position, but one that certainly has more risk than I have seen previously.”

The present-day University of Manchester is the product of a rare coming-together of institutions when, in 2004, the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology joined forces with the Victoria University of Manchester. Dame Nancy said more mergers could play a role in ensuring financial sustainability but would have to be handled carefully.

“We were right next to each other and highly complementary: similar in terms of the students we were taking and the sort of research we were doing,” she said of the Manchester merger.

“It is much, much more difficult for universities that are very different with very different aspirations. And in some parts of the country there is only one university, and the local economy is extremely dependent on them. In the big cities, I would say, mergers are much more likely.”

Instead, Dame Nancy said a more “federated model” could be possible in future, particularly in subject areas where student applications have declined and cooperation between universities could see different parts of a course delivered by different universities so that “not every university has to teach everything”.

Manchester’s five universities, as well as its large further education and school sectors, have traditionally enjoyed closer collaboration than institutions in most areas.

This, said Dame Nancy, stands the city in good stead to benefit from the new Labour government’s likely focus on skills, which may include devolving power and funding to regional authorities to decide on their own local economy’s needs.

Politicians of all stripes have long sought to make Manchester central to their plans, and the city has been made the cornerstone of projects such as “levelling up” and former chancellor George Osborne’s “northern powerhouse”.

Mr Osborne was given an honorary professorship by Manchester because of the contribution he made to the city while in government, an accolade unlikely to be coming the way of any of the current crop of departing political leaders.

“I haven’t seen other politicians recently doing anything like that much for our city,” said Dame Nancy.

Instead, strong local leadership and cooperation have been hallmarks of the city’s recent regeneration, according to Dame Nancy, giving the example of the local airport, which, she said, had consulted with the university on what direct flights it should establish, leading to new links to Shanghai and Beijing.

She has also forged close links to the city’s famed football clubs, serving as a member of the Old Trafford regeneration task force, established by the new co-owner of Manchester United, Sir Jim Ratcliffe, and securing investment from Abu Dhabi, whose royal family owns Manchester City.

“They have put a lot of money into the university and the wider region,” she said of the club’s much-maligned owners.

“When they first bought the club, it was controversial, but I was at a match recently – and I’m not a regular football supporter and I try to stay neutral – but I was sitting in the director’s area and there was a very large banner unfurled that said ‘Manchester loves [club owner] Sheik Mansour’. They are really thought very highly of now.”

Links with industry have also proved key to Dame Nancy’s leadership. From 2005 until 2015, she served as non-executive director of drugs giant AstraZeneca, and she said this was akin to going on the Harvard leadership programme for what it taught her about how to manage organisations.

“There is a huge weight of responsibility in being a director of a FTSE top 30 company, and as a board member you get involved in absolutely everything,” she said.

“I became much more adept at things like finances – or understanding the complexities of tax law – than I think I ever would have been if I had remained just as an academic.”

One of the sector’s longest-serving leaders, Dame Nancy was also the only female vice-chancellor in the Russell Group when she started. Now there are eight, with many of the world’s top universities run by women for the first time.

“It has been a dramatic change, all for the better – but we are still a minority, of course. And it is difficult,” she said. “It is rarely a nine-to-five job, and there are a lot of pressures. Most universities still have a gender pay gap, which we watch very closely. But if anything, there is a bigger gap in ethnicity. That is more significant.”

Overall, the gap between the highest-paid and the lowest-paid at Manchester has remained smaller than at most institutions, in part because of Dame Nancy’s insistence that her salary be kept at the lower end of those within the Russell Group.

“I have been offered pay rises, but I didn’t feel it was appropriate to take it. I earn a good salary,” she said, and her pay has remained at £260,399 for seven years in a row.

“They have stopped asking me now. The remuneration committee just says: ‘Is it the same as last year and the year before?’ And I just say, ‘Yes.’”

tom.williams@timeshighereducation.com

Staying power: Dame Nancy Rothwell’s CV

• Joined the Victoria University of Manchester in 1987 and was made a professor of physiology in 1994
• In 1998 delivered the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
• Was vice-president for research from 2004 to 2007, then deputy president and deputy vice-chancellor from 2007 to 2010
• Became president and vice-chancellor in July 2010, the first woman to lead the University of Manchester or either of its two predecessor institutions
• In 2009 she was the founding president of the Royal Society of Biology
• Chaired the Russell Group from 2020 to 2023
• Was a non-executive director of AstraZeneca from 2005 until 2015
• Other roles include being deputy lieutenant for Greater Manchester, and a member of the UK Investment Council, the Northern Powerhouse Partnership board, the UK Biobank board and the Innovation Greater Manchester board.