The final set of stories comes from university leaders in Australia, Sweden and the UK. The first is from Mark Hoffman, who is Deputy Vice-Chancellor Academic (DVCA) at the University of Newcastle, Australia, having commenced this role at the beginning of 2020. He is responsible for the University’s education programmes, which have a unique flavour being a comprehensive university set up to support its region. He is leading a strategy to create Life Ready Graduates, which includes ensuring that every student has a significant work placement in the region before graduation, regardless of discipline, and that the student body is ‘healthy and well’ with a focus on both mental health and nutrition and general wellbeing.

Previously, he was Dean of Engineering at the University of New South Wales (NSW) 2015–2020, during which time he created a cross-disciplinary design school and three comprehensive maker spaces, and the number of students grew by 50%. Mark is a leading materials scientist and engineer, specialising in the structural integrity of materials including composites, structural ceramics and biological materials. In addition to heading the School of Materials Science and Engineering (2007–2012), he has widely published with over 250 peer-reviewed papers, and over 30 higher degree research students have completed their studies under his supervision.

In recent years, he has provided independent advice to the NSW Government on construction matters including the Opal and Mascot Towers, and is currently Chair of the Cladding Product Safety Panel.

Professor Hoffman is a member of the Excellence Commission for the German Science Foundation and recently Convenor of the Engineering Panel for the 2020 Hong Kong Research Assessment Exercise. He is a Board Member and Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, and previously of the International Congress on Fracture.

The second account is from Sylvia Schwaag Serger, the former deputy Vice-Chancellor at Lund University, Sweden. Sylvia grew up in a suburb of Augsburg in Bavaria in the 1970s and 1980s with a father from Northern Germany and a mother from Hawaii (of Chinese origin). After studying economics, French literature, international relations and art history in the USA and Italy, she considered doing a PhD in archaeology but worried about being able to combine having a family with being on remote archaeological digs. She eventually settled on a PhD in economic history at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Focusing on European monetary cooperation in the 1950s allowed her to combine her interests in economic policymaking and European integration, and she spent many happy weeks and months studying policy documents in the national archives of France, Germany and the UK.

In the past 20 years, her professional and academic focus has been on research and innovation policy in Europe and China. Among other things, she has run a think tank, served as Swedish Science Counsellor in Beijing and been Executive Director for International Strategy at the Swedish Government Agency for Innovation (Vinnova). A thread throughout her career has been a keen interest in understanding, explaining and contributing to policymaking in different national and supranational contexts.

In some ways, Sylvia’s professional and social life has been shaped by being an outsider in different cultures and contexts, something she has found to be both stimulating and draining. As a child in Germany, she was constantly asked where she ‘really’ came from, because she was half-Asian. Having emigrated to her husband’s home country in the mid-1990s, she was one of the first foreigners and ‘academics’ (i.e. person with a PhD degree) to work at the Swedish Ministry of Enterprise. When she returned to academia full-time in 2018 to assume the role of Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Lund University, she dealt with accusations of not being a ‘real academic’ and of having been ‘planted’ by the government to undermine the autonomy of the university.

Sylvia finds that being an outsider has become easier with age and with a rewarding and stimulating career to look back on. However, coming to terms with the feeling of not belonging to a single country, profession or trade is always present. The feeling has been heightened by COVID and strongly national(ist) responses by different countries in the face of a truly global crisis.

The third story comes from Ed Byrne, who recently retired as President and Principal of King’s College London (KCL). Ed’s grandfather was a coal miner and was illiterate and both his parents left school in their teenage years. However, his father graduated from Durham University as a medical doctor because of the opportunities that opened up to him as a returned serviceman after the Second World War. Ed migrated to Australia as a teenager and went on to become a medical doctor, specialising in neurology. As he said in his recent book, with the former Secretary of State for Education and Skills, Charles Clarke, ‘the hereditary aspect of education and a growing passion for research drew me like a magnet to the university world.’Footnote 1 He subsequently developed his career as a neurologist and medical researcher before going on to vice-chancellor positions in Australia at Monash and in the UK at KCL. Ed is committed to the view that effective universities, fully engaged with society around them, are not only valuable but an essential part of a successful human journey in the decades ahead and that although universities do much, they must do a lot more.

The final leader’s story comes from Brigid Heywood, who is Vice-Chancellor at the University of New England, Australia. Brigid arrived in Armidale, New South Wales from Tasmania to take up the role of 14th Vice-Chancellor of the University of New England in late July 2019 having just enjoyed a short break at some of her bucket list destinations, Patagonia, Chile and Rapu Nui. Little did she know that her deep love of travel and exploration was to be severely curtailed in the months to come.

Brigid had previously been Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) at the University of Tasmania, Australia, and prior to that Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) and then Provost at Massey University in New Zealand. As a new New Zealander, Brigid wrestled with the multi-consonant beauty of te reo māori and gained a deep appreciation of respectful biculturalism through the lived experience of actioning the instruments of engagement defined by the Treaty of Waitangi. At the mihi whakatau which celebrated her arrival, Brigid reflected that she was from an island (England) and ‘of’ an island (she holds Irish citizenship), and was about to become a citizen of another island nation. Important golden threads which she confirms do influence her life choices.

Brigid will say she was also fortunate to be given the opportunity by those who recognised her potential and nurtured it so generously. After a fairly conventional early academic career track, she was appointed to the Chair of Inorganic Chemistry at Keele University when just 32. From that position she grew her own research group and over the next decade enjoyed the many faces of success through scientific discovery. Brigid’s core interest is the process of biomineralisation—the growth of crystals through biologically controlled processes. This required the marrying of her skills as a scuba diver (the majority of biominerals are to be recovered from marine flora and fauna) with the expertise of a solid-state analytical chemist. As a materials scientist, she was asking questions which were relevant to drug discovery and product development, smart materials, clinical medicine and the exploration of the origins of life. Now working in a university she also learned about the dynamics of academia, and the power of institutions to influence and empower their communities. In this regard, one of the most transformative experience was her appointment as Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research) at The Open University (UK) from Keele, where she had been promoted to a similar role.

What followed was much travel, exposure to many new languages and interesting new cultural experiences, including learning to eat with an appropriate measure of enthusiasm a range of multi-legged, multi-winged insects and to exercise caution when offered small chipped glasses full of colourless liquid as part of a social welcome. Brigid often reflects on how she gained an understanding of the real differences between teaching and learning and education, the real significance of women in the equation for community regeneration after famine, flood and warfare, and the power of universities to make a difference through education when they connect with and serve their communities. So beware, when you do invite her to dinner, she is deeply passionate about this. With no little energy, Brigid describes how her eyes (and indeed her heart) were lifted up from the narrow focus of her beloved electron microscopes and the analytical machinery used to control molecular processes, to the amazing opportunity which the power of education has to change lives and empower communities.

Mark Hoffman’s COVID Story

Mark is Deputy Vice-Chancellor Academic (DVCA) at the University of Newcastle, Australia.

What a way to start a new job! On 5 March 2020, I joined the University of Newcastle as the new Deputy Vice-Chancellor Academic (DVCA). Exactly one week later the state of New South Wales (NSW) went into lockdown and all the university’s students were sent home to reduce the spread of COVID.

The role of DVCA has in its description an expectation to ‘transform academic and educational endeavours’ by ensuring ‘the foundation of quality assurance, strong student outcomes and the university’s commitment to equity and access is maintained’. So, within two weeks of starting, all of the plans and vision I had developed in preparing for the role needed to pivot into completely unknown territory at a mid-sized regional Australian university.

The University of Newcastle has a special relationship with its community. It is the only university in its region which covers both a city with population of nearly 600,000 plus a regional area covering over 400,000 km2. The community and the university have an exceptionally close relationship, with each valuing the other, and university staff possess a deep understanding of the importance of the education and research it provides to the regional community. This has resulted in one of the most innovative universities in the country, and one with exceptional pride. A source of this pride is the unique student profile which includes pathways programmes for domestic students who progress on to represent over a quarter of graduates.

The greatest personal challenge brought on me by COVID was to build relationships with new colleagues. The most important features of university leadership are to know and be known by the community, and to understand the dynamics of the organisation, especially for a person new to the university and the region. At the same time, I also needed to get on top of a completely new education delivery agenda.

I was blessed to come into a university with an incredible commitment to its students, with a sincere and deep belief that the education being provided to students is life changing. Before COVID, one can fairly say that the university’s staff had a very personal engagement with students and had not embraced education technology like many others; the transformation which occurred over the coming weeks was truly remarkable. The commitment to move delivery and interaction with students to a ‘study from home’ mode was absolute. Furthermore, the students appreciated the effort and demonstrated a generous level of patience when things did not work perfectly, and supported staff. A pulse check survey of students in June (three months after students stopped coming to campus) produced a remarkably positive response from students, contrary to the worries of some staff colleagues.

There were also some outstanding examples of the university stepping in to help the community, and the community stepping in to assist the university. Early in the pandemic, there was a real fear that the nation’s hospitals would be short of ventilator machines to cope with an influx of patients. A local mining services electrical company contacted the university to ask if we could assist them in converting their production to address this shortage. What transpired was a fast and furious collaboration with engineers and medical researchers to design, prototype and then build a ventilator machine together with the company, which has since moved into production—and the company is now moving its R&D onto campus. The urgency and a common goal achieved levels of cross-disciplinary and local industry collaboration unseen previously. This was enabled by a close interaction with a broad university and local business community; everyone knew where to go and the speed was COVID unique. The endeavour received the 2020 Australian Financial Review (AFR) Innovation Award for Industry Engagement.

Conversely, the community stepped in to help students. As the country locked down, the hospitality and accommodation industries were hit very hard. This was especially challenging for international students, many of whom relied on part-time work in these industries and were not eligible for social security support. The university created a COVID Hardship Support Fund to provide emergency support for students who were unable to access government support, especially international students. A philanthropic campaign was launched to seek support from alumni and the local community. The fund received incredible support with more donors and more new donors than any other fundraising effort in the university’s history. This support transformed the lives of those students at a time when they were most vulnerable and provided a new link between the local community and the university.

The cohort of students which saw the largest growth during the pandemic was into the Enabling Pathways programmes. These are designed to attract people who wish to attend university but feel they are not fully prepared. Students range from those who recently did not complete high school, to single mothers in their early twenties, to those who took a vocational education path and now wish to enter university. This cohort foresaw that, as the economy transitioned out of the pandemic, Australia would need to source far more skills locally rather than through skilled immigration, and hence a university education would provide more opportunities. In just six months, enrolments grew by nearly 25%.

There is also no hiding the fact that the Australian university sector has been especially hard hit financially by COVID due to the concurrent closure of the nation’s borders. This has meant that international students have not been able to access classes and many were predicted to drift away from the sector. Most universities nationally responded swiftly to reduce costs fearing big falls in international tuition revenue. While current students have generally been willing to continue study remotely and pay tuition (often heavily discounted), the number of new students enrolling has dropped dramatically at many universities and with it a very large portion of universities’ revenue stream. It is estimated that approximately 30,000 jobs have been lost in the sector as a result.

The University of Newcastle has not been exempted from this phenomenon. It has been especially challenging to see the same staff who stepped up to support students, their community and each other, to then lose their jobs due to accompanying financial impacts of COVID. Colleagues have found this especially unfair and students have engaged to ask exactly the same questions as to how this could happen. This loss of employment is hard in a one-university town so inextricably linked into the community such as Newcastle.

The impacts of COVID on the University of Newcastle have been profound. First and foremost, it showed that disruption and adversity brought communities and people together. This was evidenced across many Australian universities, but most clearly in places such as Newcastle, where there is a strong regional community which understands the concept of mutual support. As often happens in such times, there was also a big step forward in the level of technology usage, especially education support, and development, such as medical devices. The events of the past 18 months have also highlighted the low level of understanding and regard of the national government for universities. The sector was uniquely singled out as not eligible for income support, while schemes such as funding to provide short courses received significant undersubscription from students who really didn’t see the value in the way they were structured at government request. This occurred at the same time as government was relying very heavily upon expert advice from university research to manage the pandemic, while failing to reflect the connection in policy development.

There is no doubt that the pandemic has caused a fundamental shift in the relationship between the university and community, both internal and external stakeholders. Students already expect a high level of flexibility in how they learn, having grown used to logging on and viewing recorded lectures and other online exercises and content. An on-campus experience is sought, but on flexible terms that are not yet fully understood. This has raised the profile of the student experience to ensure that students remain engaged. However, the sought-after experience is yet to be defined by both university leaders and students. There is also a far greater community understanding of the place of leadership by experts. People have seen how the use of expert advice by governments has resulted in a well-designed policy to protect the community, and any problems, in the public’s eyes, attributable to political decisions. If nothing else comes from the pandemic, a paradigm shift to community and government willingness to listen to expert advice, often emanating from universities, will place Australia and the world in a much stronger position.

Sylvia Schwaag Serger’s COVID Story

Sylvia was the former Deputy Vice-Chancellor at Lund University, Sweden.

In 2018, I returned to academia after 20 years in policymaking to assume the position of Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Lund (LU). My main areas of responsibility were undergraduate education and internationalisation, but I also spent considerable time working with external engagement, given my experience and networks in industry and the public sector. As chairperson of the education board at the university, I focused primarily on strengthening cross-disciplinary and cross-faculty undergraduate education (in the spirit of the liberal arts education) which I believe is essential for preparing students to handle the complex problems our society is facing. During my tenure, we established one of the world’s first graduate schools on Agenda 2030 and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which spans PhD students from all of LU’s faculties (including fine and performing arts). We also launched an introductory term for incoming undergraduate students, where they are introduced to different academic disciplines, before they choose which programme or field of study to specialise in.

When COVID hit, the Vice-Chancellor’s and my concern quickly became how to ensure we had a functioning chain of command at the university. We decided to keep our university open during the pandemic—severely restricting the size of gatherings and moving most teaching online but keeping dorms, libraries, offices and study places open—so we agreed to try to take turns coming to the office. We thought it was important to show a continued leadership presence while limiting the risk of both of us falling ill at the same time. We have a large international student body and many foreign students were very concerned and critical of the ‘lax’ way they perceived Sweden was handling the pandemic. Many also became stranded in Sweden as borders closed. As someone who immigrated to Sweden many years ago, and given my responsibility for education, I have a lot of empathy with the fact that foreign students were bewildered and concerned about being far away from home and in an unfamiliar context. I recorded video messages for the students to explain both the Swedish and LU’s handling of the pandemic.

Like many other universities around the world, in March 2020, we moved to online teaching overnight. The transition went surprisingly smoothly, partially—I would argue—because students, teachers and administrators understood that if we wanted to continue with the term, there was no alternative. In Sweden, restrictions have not been as severe as in many other countries. Whereas other countries imposed strict restrictions on travel, gatherings and closed schools, stores and restaurants, the Swedish government issued guidelines and recommendations on social distancing, staying home when experiencing any symptoms, washing hands and avoiding large crowds. Schools, restaurants, gyms and universities have remained open through most of the pandemic (at least so far). Our university never closed: so far, we have kept libraries, buildings and study spaces open throughout the pandemic, but we have strictly limited the number of people that can gather. Even before we moved to online teaching, we established a crisis group, which met once a week to discuss and propose relevant measures to be taken in response to new developments or new government guidelines. The Swedish government has operated mainly through guidelines and recommendations, rather than decree and mandatory measures—this means that universities (which in Sweden are government agencies) have had to interpret and apply guidelines to their own contexts and circumstances. We have well-functioning consultation mechanisms with the other universities in Sweden and with the ministry of education, which has allowed us to discuss, compare and to some extent, synchronise measures.

Our medical students have been recruited to work in the hospitals and clinics to ease the immense strain that COVID has put on the healthcare sector. We also introduced a hardship fund for international students who ran into financial difficulties, for example because they couldn’t travel home. Throughout the pandemic, we have made it a priority to welcome foreign students and to send our students on international exchanges, where and when we deemed it responsible and safe to do so. We have actually seen an increase in the number of international students applying to our programmes. For the Fall of 2020, we admitted more students than we have places for, since we anticipated that a significant proportion would not come. As a result, a slightly higher number of incoming international students actually arrived on our campus in August than the previous year.

In addition to these immediate and short-term responses to the pandemic, we used the opportunity provided by the crisis and by a significant increase in student applications to introduce new courses and course combinations, and thus to advance the strategic renewal of education and curricula we had been working on for two years. In particular, we launched an introductory term for first-year undergraduate students which allows them to attend lectures from different academic faculties and disciplines. The aim is to expose students to different ways of thinking and to provide students who have not yet decided what they want to study with an option where they can test different subjects.

Our student unions and associations are a vital part of the experience and cultural life at Lund. They also assume a lot of social responsibilities for the students and their wellbeing. The unions and associations were particularly hard hit by the pandemic, when most events and activities—which provide an important revenue stream—were cancelled. We provided extra financial support to them, both to support them in transitioning to online events and activities, and also to be able to maintain a critical level of operations until the pandemic subsides.

Like other universities, we are very concerned about the emotional and psychological toll the pandemic is taking on our students and staff. We are bolstering our student support services and have carried out a number of surveys to assess the mental health of students and staff as well as their support needs.

One of the more positive consequences of the pandemic is that we have innovated the way we hold our PhD defences. These are now predominantly held online, which has enabled more people (including those far away) to attend than before.

The pandemic also taught us that change is possible and a crisis can provide an important (necessary?) impetus for change in an otherwise rather conservative, inward-looking institution; crisis can promote institutional agility without necessarily undermining accountability or collegiate decision-making. To ensure that this happens it needs to harness people’s greater willingness to reach decisions more quickly and to find the necessary common ground for agreeing on how to move forward. Crisis mobilises a strong sense of responsibility in people, as well as a desire to pitch in and help out. This solidarity and willingness to contribute can be mobilised in many constructive ways. At the same time, it is a challenge to carefully manage people’s expectations of the institution and what they can do as individuals (in their capacity as students or staff), so as not to create disappointment and frustration. People react differently to the uncertainty and insecurity triggered by a crisis. Some expect detailed, immediate and uniform guidelines for how to act (‘should I come to work?’, ‘how many people can I meet?’, ‘should all buildings be closed?’). Others prefer a degree of discretion and flexibility to be able to handle and navigate an uncertain and unstable situation. A challenge for leadership is to manage the scale of needs for stability, predictability and uniformity on the one hand and flexibility, individuality and trust on the other.

The crisis has shone a light on many things that were ‘out of whack’ long before the pandemic hit. These include our means of production, transportation and consumption, most of which are not environmentally or socially sustainable. They also include the role of universities in twenty-first-century societies. In particular, this relates to how universities engage with society, how we manage expectations and how we maintain our legitimacy and independence as central curators of knowledge in our respective societies. COVID provides an opportunity to rethink and renew our engagement with society. This includes lifelong learning, preparing students for a complex and rapidly changing world, working with industry and civic society in new ways to co-create solutions that will allow us to combine social, economic and environmental sustainability (Agenda 2030), and improving our ability to recognise and utilise knowledge and skills acquired outside academia.

Ed Byrne’s COVID Story

Ed Byrne was formerly President and Principal at King’s College London, UK.

Much has been written about university leadership in recent times, reflecting both an increasing complexity within the tertiary education world and deep uncertainties among many stakeholders about the quality and direction of leadership even before the COVID crisis impacted with such dramatic suddenness. Suffice it to say that two world views that at times seemed irreconcilable were clashing, and university presidents were often in a world where half the stakeholders thought their performance was rather poor despite their university doing well in tables and metrics, even the much-vaunted Times Higher Education (THE) World University rankings.

A traditional academic view held by many outside academia as well is that university leadership is about creating an environment and a culture where intellectual excellence flourishes, manifested by outstanding education and research. Many would add broad community engagement to this. Indeed, when university budgets came almost exclusively directly from government to less-complex institutions this was most of a vice-chancellor’s job. Of course, in an output sense it still is.

The alternate view, which also has some validity, is that now that many universities have become massive entrepreneurial businesses competing for student income and research funding in both national and international markets, broader skill sets are needed in university leadership. The larger institutions employ 10,000 or more staff and have budgets of several billion US dollars. They need state-of-the-art management processes across the board. This brings a need for a skill set well beyond the academic in university leadership, with management skills of a high order arguably as important as traditional academic leadership. This change does not sit well with many in the traditional academy, who worry that core academic values have been diminished by unbridled managerialism.

Of course, both outstanding academic leadership and competent general management are not only possible but essential. In the UK, two further pre-COVID factors complicated vice-chancellors’ lives. Even in an entrepreneurial world, university budgets are razor thin. High-quality education and research are expensive and it is really hard to generate enough funds from the core business to cover all the additional investment needed to sustain world-class universities. Benevolence helps and major initiative funding for specific projects from outside bodies helps but the cupboard is often bare. This is enhanced by new major demands such as the heavy financial imposition of the UK pension scheme on employers. A second difficulty for university leadership is the general perception by many in government that universities are not only left-wing bastions but that they tolerate poorly the expression of viewpoints outside a rather narrow ideological band. This has some truth but is exaggerated.

Encompassing all of the above is a feeling by some in government and the Civil Service that universities have simply become too big for their boots and need to be reined in. The clearest manifestation of this in the UK is the establishment of the Office for Students, which has greatly reduced autonomy and provided a vehicle for direct ministerial control and intervention of a type not seen before. One might ask, were these changes introduced because of poor sectoral performance in the UK? Manifestly not so as, related to investment and size of the country, the sector is arguably the strongest in the world and had already shown a capacity for ongoing internal reform. It appears to have been driven by a power grab at one level but, to be fair, perceived concerns by some of possible malalignment of performance to national need. The strength of the sector has been absolutely confirmed by the response to COVID which I will come to shortly. Too much red tape may prove problematic in the years ahead without clear gains resulting.

Universities’ uniform opposition to Brexit can now be seen as politically unfortunate as it exacerbated estrangement from the conservative side of politics at a time of political ascendency, and universities are now reaping the consequences. It can be argued that a realignment of the relationship between universities and the state was inevitable even before COVID. All of this made vice-chancellors’ jobs more demanding than in living memory at a time when their institutions were more important than ever.

Then came COVID. The speed of evolution of events was stunning. The collapse of the health system in Northern Italy to lockdown in the UK took only weeks. Universities showed massive resilience in moving staff and students online, moving much of the workforce to working from home all enabled by prior investment in robust information systems and commitment to maintaining high-quality education. In research, they repurposed much of their capacity around key urgent national and international needs imposed savagely by the pandemic. This involved leadership at all levels and a real team approach. Both staff and student body worked together in an inspirational way. Tensions were exacerbated certainly in the leadership team by real anxiety about the scale of the impending financial crisis with concerns that core business might stop for prolonged periods. At least so far, this has not transpired but one consequence was to highlight the sector’s financial dependence on government.

The cries for help were loud and the much-vaunted financial autonomy of the sector somewhat muted. As a vice-chancellor, 12 hours or more of Team meetings a day for months on end were certainly demanding and led to a degree of computer fatigue. Awareness that many staff were in the same situation was always in the back of my mind.

As time went on and successive waves of COVID appeared, both the senior team and university community generally became increasingly exhausted. Yet people continued to do more than cope. The sector has so much to be proud of, and I suspect this will go some way to restoring respect between universities and the nation. It has been affirmed that much of a great nation’s intellectual firepower is within university communities and that in times of crisis this can be rapidly harnessed effectively to meet emerging needs.

I finished some seven years as President of King’s College London (KCL) as mass vaccinations were being rolled out and light was appearing at the end of a long tunnel. My main emotions were relief, pride and concern. Relief that we had coped so well in our core business, that we had continued to educate our students effectively and shown enormous resilience at a time of absolute crisis. Pride in the work of our community, staff and students both, to make this happen and to continue essential research, much of it directly COVID related. Concern for a community that was simply exhausted yet still performing at a high level.

Soon we will be in the post-crisis endemic COVID world. Much will change permanently in universities as in the wider world. Charles Clarke and I predicted much of this in a recent book. Change on a massive scale was already in the wings pre-COVID but will now accelerate more rapidly. Integration of state-of-the-art educational information systems into standard pedagogy, an enabled much more bespoke approach to individual learning, moving away from rigid term structures, the final demise of the large lecture, a new home/office work balance and closer alignment of research firepower with national and global needs stand out. Strengthening of service and community agendas and the much-delayed final fall of many ivory towers. Rebuilding of relationships between universities and the general population, with university contribution not only better understood widely but of greater intrinsic value. Universities not only talking the talk but doing the right things in respecting their own communities in their internal cultures. Governments trusting universities as they used to do to make their fullest contributions without need for excessive regulation or ministerial intervention (but that horse may have bolted). Universities, including in the Commonwealth, where I chair the Association of Commonwealth Universities, playing a greater role in bridge-building at a time of rampant nationalism. The list goes on. I am more convinced than ever of the key role universities must play in making our world work better. My final reflection is the huge privilege I have had in working in the university world as a teacher and researcher and in two great universities as a vice-chancellor. It is a complex and at times frustrating world but at its heart, it is committed to KCL’s motto, ‘making the world a better place’.

Brigid Heywood’s COVID Stories

Brigid is Vice-Chancellor at the University of New England, Australia.

For Australia, the COVID pandemic prompted an isolationist control model at both national and local levels, with various layers of governmental co-ordination, social lockdown, travel constraints and the closure of non-essential business and industry. The initial aim was to dampen the spread velocity of the disease, so allowing vital health systems to scale up their preparedness. This gave way to an approach aimed at supressing the disease when and wherever it appeared. The large and usually vibrant metropolitan cities have thus fallen silent a number of times across 2020 and 2021 whilst in contrast rural regions have maintained a watchful defence since the nationwide lockdown in early 2020.

Of the many sectors affected by the pandemic, Australian universities have struggled but proven their resilience in the face of global business disruption. It is estimated that the sector lost $1.8 billion AUD of revenue in 2020 and shed 17,000 jobs as it responded to the shift in international student engagement and the wider impacts of the pandemic. Equally, as time passes it is clear that the disruption has prompted innovation and alternative ways of working within the sector which are likely to persist.

As the only entity with both scale and reach across regional New South Wales (NSW), the University of New England’s (UNE) responses to the pandemic have been purpose-driven, with high impact potential. Our support ranged from simple care parcels for stranded students through to a novel virtual hospital. We maintained an extensive capital projects programme and privileged where possible local contractors to assist with community resilience when the major industry, tourism, was shut down. We sponsored a mix of virtual social engagements for all ages as a layered means of supporting community wellbeing. Such range reinforces UNE’s existing role as a university deeply connected to the region and highlighted our ways of working for the region’s members (transient and permanent), including contributions that can be translated into national-level initiatives. It is also important to note that UNE also gained much from being ‘present’ when needed.

UNE was the first tertiary education institution in Australia outside of a metropolitan area to be chartered. And, as Australia’s oldest regional university, UNE remains committed to addressing need through education and engagement with business and the community. For the past 60-plus years, this mission has been realised in a variety of ways with a particular focus on the needs of regional, remote and rural communities in NSW and Australia at large.

UNE operates from a large rural campus headquarters on the rural outskirts of Armidale in regional NSW, from where it reaches out across Australia. The campus was founded on land gifted for the purpose of higher education, and is built around a stunning example of nineteenth-century heritage architecture, Boolaminbah, created on commission by John Horbury Hunt. As the leading provider of distance education in Australia with 83% of our students engaged in online education, UNE supports all enrolled students from its distinctive rural campus base of conventional academic buildings, social platforms and agricultural complexes. This includes Australia’s premier Smart Farm, a medical school and a centre of educational opportunity for indigenous students, Oorala. The Armidale campus also houses a series of residential colleges which serve both academic, pastoral and community functions, including a multi-purpose sports complex and a large social centre. UNE employs over 3000 staff and generates 43% of the GDP for the New England region in the North West of NSW, and is the largest corporate employer across this region.

UNE supports a study centre complex at Paramatta in Sydney (UNE Metro) and a network of academic study and outreach centres in Tamworth, Moree and Taree, creating a pan-regional education network across NSW which now serves over 25,000 students including more than 700 higher research degree candidates. In addition, UNE is a lead partner in the Country University Centres (CUCs) which captures another 1000-plus remote, regionally based students. Some 6% of UNE’s institutional intake each year comprises international students largely drawn from South East Asia and mainly pursuing education and research in medicine, primary healthcare, agribusiness and secondary and primary education training and development.

The majority of UNE students routinely study in hyflex (hybrid flexible) mode, blending their study options to suit personal needs; the majority of these being mature students (aged 30-plus) who combine work and family responsibilities with study. The remainder are younger learners (aged 17–24) drawn from remote, rural and regional NSW, many of whom choose to be residential students on the Armidale campus. The university now hosts the fourth largest contingent of Aboriginal student candidates in higher education, and 73% of UNE students identify as female.

Thus, UNE supports a distinctive cohort of students from a wide catchment seeking access to higher education to improve and advance their personal and professional life-course choices. The ‘tyranny of distance’ is alleviated in this mix by the use of technology, flexibility in delivery mode and the extensive deployment of both synchronous and asynchronous offerings. The combination of these methods and demography of the student body create a unique basis for UNE’s educational model. The evolving UNE Future Fit modelFootnote 2 ensures ease of access and enables personalised learning, including in workplace settings, whilst a comprehensive curriculum and extensive specialist facilities ensure equity of opportunity to all students. World-class research initiatives are focused on applications and impact, with extensive research facilities supporting attainment through scholarship, innovation and commercialisation in broad fields alongside our foci for research excellence.

As the third decade of the twenty-first century dawned, UNE was part of the wider community starting its recovery from one of the longest droughts in recent history compounded by some three months of being in crisis management mode. UNE was caught up in Australia’s worst bush fire season, which laid waste to thousands of acres of land around the region. In response, UNE hosted some 7000 volunteer firefighters, providing them with accommodation and catering on a daily basis as they rotated in and out of active duty. Some of our student accommodation blocks were also maintained as emergency respite facilities for those rendered homeless as the fires ravaged small towns and rural hamlets around us.

When news of a potential SARS-like pneumonic epidemic first emerged from China, initial thoughts focused on staff and student researchers overseas on field trips and at conferences and also on inbound international students who might be delayed for trimester 1, 2020. There was no sense of the challenges yet to come. Less than a month later the emerging global crisis was gathering momentum and by late February Australia’s Federal Government and state authorities had published emergency public health notices with the now familiar functional constraints and lockdown restrictions of our new reality. The virulence of the new SARS-CoV-2 virus is something we have all come to know albeit through many differing lenses.

The pandemic triggered UNE’s well-established emergency management systems, with the senior officers adapting procedures and methods designed for other circumstances of exigency and business interruption. A daily hour-long teleconference with the whole senior executive shortened the lines of communication and enabled rapid responses to be considered, sense-checked and communicated quickly. In terms of business processes, emergency academic quality assurance mechanisms were managed through a rapid response operating model of the standing committee of the Academic Board. Support for researchers and research obligations, the duty of care for research animals and farm livestock, and the review of in-progress ethics approvals were all directed through a Research Response Team. The University Council met weekly to receive formal updates and to monitor the response actions and their financial impact, which was significant.

All offshore international students who were unable to travel were offered fully online packages and some 80% of enrolled candidates elected to study within this remote support envelope and have progressed successfully. Consequently, UNE was one of only two NSW tertiary institutions to report growth in international student revenue in 2020. Domestic residential students were advised to return to a place of safety if available. UNE adjusted all provision so that academic courses might progress under as near-to-normal conditions as possible using our online portal and processes.

Given our large online and distance education provision compared to other universities, it was perhaps an easier task for UNE to absorb and adapt to the new online requirements. Our success here is evidenced by the recent national student survey results which have placed UNE first in the Higher Education Sector for the 15th consecutive year when assessed for the quality of our student experience (Good Universities Guide Survey). UNE’s most significant internal adjustment was the shift to online remotely proctored exams. An existing educational pilot programme was transformed into provision for all students with over 50,000 examinees being proctored online during 2020. The rapid and innovative development of digital science classroom artefacts and demonstrations also enabled UNE to maintain its science education delivery across all programmes with minimal impact on laboratory experiences. Many of these were co-shared with other institutions and have since been promoted as exemplars of good practice by the Australian Quality Assurance Agency.

Through the pandemic UNE continued to provide residential accommodation for over 1000 students—a mix of regionally located domestic students with no alternate provision and international students unable to travel home. Our duty of care extended to food parcels, accommodation offered free of charge and financial hardship grants when casual employment was unavailable, noting here that Australian government financial support did not extend to students. NSW universities as a whole have provided substantial additional resources to international students during the most difficult phases of the pandemic and have continued to adopt a humanitarian approach.

As per national directions, all non-essential UNE staff were required to work from home and the whole institution was operated with a minimum of personnel physically on each campus site. Those required to be on site worked in teams alternating week on/off rotas—predominantly staff responsible for the 24-hour online student support services, and those managing the care of animals. UNE was able to keep the nursery Yarm Gwanga open throughout lockdown so that essential workers in the community could be assured that their children were in a safe environment as they serviced frontline needs.

The UNE Sports Complex, all community recreational sites including our cinema, and all physical, in-person outreach activities were (and are) closed during those periods where the combination of physical limitations and COVID mandates imposed operational restrictions. Such closures were largely responsible for a major loss (21%) of operational revenue across FY2020, with the reduction in accommodation income and the loss of revenue from other commercial operations (catering, livestock sales, etc.) all adding further pressures.

The quantum of revenue loss to the universities sector nationally has been widely reported, especially driven by the downturn of international student enrolments. Notwithstanding other financial vagaries at UNE, the loss of international student income was a relatively minor part of the UNE problem given our low dependence on this type of revenue (6% of student cohort), and the fact that the majority of enrolled students maintained or shifted their registration to online study. UNE has observed a decline in some domestic student numbers across the period; research has exposed these trends as being linked to decision anxiety, and related social and mental health pressures where additional carer responsibilities proved too burdensome. Given the significant percentage of women normally enrolled at UNE, the higher proportion of self-identified male students seeking deferrals illustrates the complex psychosocial issues emerging out of the COVID experience.

Meeting and honouring UNE’s role and responsibility as a leading corporate agency and employer in a regional community has seen some distinctive responses to the COVID crisis. Armidale (NSW) has a population of 25,000 and the local community hospital only provides limited ICU medical care. Patients requiring high-level emergency support are transported to one of the major metro hospitals some hours distance. As part of a regionally focused COVID response, UNE launched the first regional virtual hospital in Australia. The New England Virtual Hospital Network (NEViHN)Footnote 3 was taken from blueprint to operational facility in less than six weeks in March 2020. It was designed as an innovative, digitally enabled network supporting the delivery of education and in-place healthcare, and longer term a sustainable regional, rural and remote medicine and health workforce. Once activated, it provided 290 remote monitoring units connected through a state-of-the-art observational ‘flight deck’ based at UNE’s Tablelands Medical facility in Armidale. Each digitally connected biometric monitoring unit allows patients with a range of clinical conditions to be monitored and cared for in their home environment, with family and local support rather than being removed to a metro hospital.

For the duration of the COVID pandemic, the facility was designed to reduce the care load on the community and support a community centred response to the management of infection spread. The benefit here is twofold: in addition to a remotely operated local health solution reducing contact spread within the local community, travel exchanges of personnel between metro and regional areas were minimised, so helping to reduce potential for long-distance disease transmission. The UNE virtual hospital forms part of a new education facility training regionally based medical personnel and healthcare professionals. This revolutionary step-change in healthcare design is part of the university’s wider repose to healthcare and medical education in remote, rural and regional communities where there is growing concern that inequities in health outcomes challenge the metro-inspired healthcare paradigms. These metro-based models of practice largely define current models of care delivery in Australia. By contrast, were UNE’s virtual hospital approach to be adopted in metro settings, it would mitigate potential contact spread of COVID and future pandemics in metro-based hospitals, care homes and quarantine hotels.

The NEViHN is linked to another community initiative launched with the support of UNE during COVID; the Spinifex NetworkFootnote 4 stands out in its desire to support and develop those interested in applied research to support the rural health sector. Looking at the impact COVID has had on communities as a whole, the network has seen support for digital and e-health continue to grow. The now nationwide network provides support for medical practitioners and researchers who are passionate about rural and regional health outcomes. Professor Christine Jorm, the Director of NSW Regional Health Partners, says, ‘what makes the Spinifex Network different is that it is outcome focused, ensuring that the focus remains on how can we make people in rural communities healthier, and how can we make the communities themselves healthier.’

Another major regional engagement that UNE sponsors and supports is the Discovery Voyager programme; an award-winning fiesta of interactive science outreach activities designed to support children, parents and teachers in rural and remote NSW.Footnote 5 Maintaining these programmes during COVID was a task of no little challenge with the majority of both public and private schools across the state moving to remote learning and online provision at very short notice. Leaving the Voyager caravan parked at Armidale, the team offered a range of new science experiences through digitally mediated workshops and amplified the online support to align with curriculum-focused activities offered state-wide. UNE Discovery provided valuable resources to the regional secondary education system at a time of critical need thus reducing the adaptive burden on teachers and parents.

UNE also became the go-to provider of a range of socio-cultural activities to be offered across the region and designed to provide respite from mental health and wellbeing issues. For a relatively small institution UNE bears a disproportionately large responsibility for regional support. With sports events cancelled and our community cinema closed, UNE teamed up with other partners to create and stimulate engagement opportunities. For example, working in partnership with New England Regional Arts Museum (NERAM),Footnote 6 UNE replaced its normal range of place-based community activities with sponsored virtual events and competitions to alleviate COVID stress and malaise,Footnote 7 ranging from artFootnote 8 to music, photographyFootnote 9 and the use of the written word.Footnote 10 These events replaced the usual offering of creative workshops, musical events and theatrical occasions which normally fill the social calendar on campus, and engaged over 40,000 multi-generational regional participants. Increasingly, UNE was promoted not just as a provider of community support but as the key agency underpinning regional resilience. Ronald Barnett once described this as an exemplification of the ‘ecological university’.

A further key element of UNE’s pandemic support to our region was mediated through the UNE-sponsored Smart Regions Incubator (SRI). With the benefit of an alliance with NBN Co, the SRI responded to the pandemic by redesigning a foundation entrepreneurship programme, Step2Grow, and placing it in a virtual classroom for community participants interested in business start-ups.Footnote 11 This very successful programme was targeted at participants aged 12–25 years old to explore their entrepreneurial interests through a novel shared-learning model. This shared-learning environment has also benefitted the business mentors based at UNE, who, as local and successful business owners, have themselves never operated under pandemic restrictions.

There are other examples of UNE working with Armidale’s minority migrant and refugee communities through our English Language Education Unit and other education-led initiatives to drive adaptation and integration at a time when all normal processes were put on hold. Sympathetic linkages to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders were also key part of our response—the challenge being to provide support to the On Country programme at a time of crisis and adapt our delivery to be even more culturally appropriate. For many, one of the standout moments for 2020 was the delivery of the Frank Archibald Lecture, an annual event of special significance, using one of our virtual theatres with the guest speaker located in Sydney and local community members from across NENW facilitating the event. Thus, we ensured that important community tethers were respected and preserved.

And, during the height of early-stage lockdowns and remote working, UNE initiated the widest possible virtual consultation with community at local, regional, national and international levels using a range of engagement technologies and protocols. We secured formal feedback from over 3000 different parties including our staff, students, alumni, community groups and stakeholders as we crafted a new decadal plan, Future Fit. Unanimously, the advice was for UNE to persist with our founding mission, to address need in regional Australia through education and engagement.