Update from the Vice-Chancellor

Dear colleagues,

As we begin a new academic year, I wanted to write to you about the opportunities we face together as a University.

It has now been five years since I came to The University of Sheffield as Vice-Chancellor. It was a great honour to take up the baton of leading a University that has an international reputation for quality in its research, matched with a broad intake of bright students who thrive in an environment of outstanding teaching and dedicated student support.

What I did not know – and what none of us knew – was how the Higher Education environment would change in those five years. We knew our world was globalising and that new economies were rising, but the financial crisis had not yet happened. The challenge of funding increased participation in universities was known, although we had never heard of the Browne Review.

But there were things I did quickly discover. I learned about the talent and the determination of staff here in Sheffield. Our work, and our desire to make a hands-on difference, made governments and international companies take note of something special in Sheffield. I saw inspiring scholarship that changes lives. I saw ambitious developments across the faculties and between disciplines. I saw a passionate commitment to make our student experience really outstanding.

When uncertainty came, I also saw the way we respond and how we rally around our values and determine to innovate. And I have seen what all of this means to those who benefit from the work we do – our partners, those whose lives are changed by our research, and our graduates.

In the year ahead, it is already clear that we will face both further opportunity and challenge. We will not have the luxury of plain sailing or predictable weather in which to do our wonderful work. We will need ingenuity, energy, innovation and stamina. Yet we have every reason to be ambitious and confident, and we should accept nothing less from ourselves.

As Vice-Chancellor, I therefore begin this year by asking each of you to work with me, and with one another, to rise to those challenges and to be ambitious and determined, sometimes in spite of our context. I believe we need to maintain the confidence to achieve our best, and that with effort and focus this is absolutely possible.

This academic year, our home undergraduate students face higher fees than ever before, and it marks a new era in many ways. There has been a drop in students applying to universities overall, and a substantial reduction of those achieving the highest grades at A level.

I am sure that many of you will have heard about the issues faced during this year’s admissions round, and I want to thank those who have been at the forefront of our response for keeping the whole process going. The full picture is still emerging, and the University's executive is undertaking a detailed analysis of the causes of this year's difficulties and what steps we must take together to address areas that are within our own control. While this year's reductions do not shake our financial sustainability, we are in no way complacent about the implications for our planning and the need to be clear that the most talented students understand what we have to offer.

I will be speaking to Heads of Departments and Faculties about this further over the coming weeks, and Professor Paul White will work closely with all staff involved in admissions to clarify the picture and to help plan for future changes.

Whatever the causes, we must look together in the most careful and serious of ways about how we represent the University to prospective students in future and what we need to do to develop as an institution. We cannot rest on our laurels, but must continue to aspire to be the best. We need to make the strongest appeal to those talented students who can make the most of the Sheffield experience and who are crucial to our ambitions as an international university.

The process we started with Project 2012, to make sure our student experience is the very best it can be, has to continue with vigour and resolve. We must move beyond this to think to the years ahead, planning as a University collectively and individually how we can achieve our full potential. This is a shared task, and we should be ever bolder in this important work.

Most of all, we need to focus on our strengths and keep our eyes on our aims. This University was founded by idealists whose determination fuelled them in overcoming the odds to found an outstanding institution. Such idealism operates in the real world – it was not easy for them and is not for us.

Our ambition is to be a place of talent at the very highest level, and to use that knowledge to change the world still drives us to overcome negative voices and to achieve our potential. For us to be able to do more of the things we want for the world. For us to be less vulnerable to the actions of others. For us to drive the national and international agendas where relevant and possible. And as a preparation and positioning for opportunities we can't yet anticipate

After all I have seen these last five years, I have complete confidence in the University's ability to make the progress it will need to make in the year ahead. My confidence comes from our greatest strength – talented, hard-working, inspirational people.

This week we welcome students, full of the possibilities that always come with a new intake of young people at this University. News of ground-breaking research using stem cells to seek a cure for deafness has been reported around the world, and we will shortly host our first ever Festival of the Mind, bringing to our city over 65 examples of collaborative research.

Being part of this University is both a privilege and a challenge. Our shared task will require determination and ambition, talent and innovation, stamina and the desire to do our personal and collective best. It is my firm belief that there is no other route to attainment at the highest level. I have confidence that we want nothing less for our work, and that ambitious vision allied with honesty about what it takes to achieve it are the essential ingredients to building a world-class University worthy of that name.

Professor Keith Burnett
Vice-Chancellor