What do we need to do?
Strategic aims
Where we are already strong, we need to take action to maintain that strength, and where we are not strong we need to take urgent action to improve. Our eleven Strategic Aims cover the whole breadth of our activity and ensure that we have a mechanism for setting and monitoring focussed and realistic plans across all these areas. Our eleven Strategic Aims cover:
- Growth & Development;
- Research;
- Learning and Teaching;
- Student Experience;
- Equality and Diversity;
- Business and Community;
- Finance;
- Infrastructure;
- Human Resources;
- Communications, Alumni and Stakeholders;
- Management and Administration.
Full details of our Strategic Aims. The detailed objectives and targets associated with each Aim will be set out in our Corporate Plan and updated annually through our planning process.
We need to make progress in achieving all our aims, but we also need to recognise that certain aspects of the strategy are especially critical to our long-term success. We may develop our innovative learning and teaching or broach new research areas, but these improvements will not be sustainable unless we tackle the key strategic areas of growth, finance, estates and partnerships. Only if we can put in place these four keystones of long term viability, will we be able to sustain our performance against the full range of Strategic Aims.
Growth
We can only achieve the investment we need by increasing our income, although a rigorous approach to our cost base will also be an essential part of generating financial surpluses. Growing student numbers, both home and overseas, will be the main source of our additional income as it is for almost all universities, but we must also increase our income from research and other activities. Most institutions have succeeded in increasing their income over the last few years. What is more difficult is to increase income without increasing costs. This will require us in some cases to redeploy existing resources from areas where growth is not possible to other areas where we can achieve growth.
It will be difficult to secure additional HEFCE-funded numbers for home/EU undergraduates. Both alone and in collaboration with local partners we can and will make bids for additional student numbers, and over time we hope to secure significant additional home/EU funded numbers through this route. Overseas numbers and home/EU postgraduates paying higher fees (where the HEFCE funding element is very small) will also be important areas for growth. In addition, we will need to examine the scope for additional Learning and Skills Council (LSC) funded growth.
We already rely on overseas students for a significant part of our income, and there are risks associated with this. In developing our overseas student recruitment further, we will need to be careful not to expose ourselves unduly to these risks by concentrating recruitment in a single country or subject area. Nevertheless, the strength of our international reputation and the quality and innovation of our offer lead us to believe that we can continue to improve our overseas recruitment.
The market for both home/EU and overseas students is becoming more competitive. English-language HE provision in countries such as Australia is increasingly attractive to international students, and the trend away from the USA in the aftermath of 9/11 now seems to be ending. Amongst home students, the introduction of variable fees will merely cement existing trends for students to be more demanding of institutions, and more prone to take action if their expectations are not met. Growth in student numbers of any kind will therefore be predicated not just on maintaining the high quality of our learning and teaching, but also on maximising the value of the whole student experience for students at all levels and from all backgrounds. We have set out strategic aims in these areas in this Strategy, and will set ourselves demanding targets through our Corporate Plan to ensure that growth is not achieved at the expense of quality.
As we grow we will maintain the current mix of disciplines which gives Goldsmiths its unique character, but the balance between them will inevitably change. We are currently considering proposals to develop a new department working with partners to build on our existing work in arts and creative enterprise management and will make a decision on this early in 2007.
We cannot do much to increase our RAE-related income between now and 2009, when the financial impact of RAE 2008 will be felt. Increased resources for research must come primarily from bidding for and winning significant numbers of research grants and contracts.
Income from activities other than teaching and research will always be secondary. We have sometimes experienced difficulty in filling our residential accommodation, and so far we have not succeeded in developing a vigorous and sustained conference trade. Our knowledge transfer activities are focussed on creative and social enterprises, so that the financial rewards which might be expected in disciplines like medicine or engineering are not, realistically, available. All of these areas have scope for growth and combined they should be able to make a significant contribution to our resources for investment. They may well give us opportunities to unlock resources by working in partnership with others. Nevertheless, the bulk of our additional income will have to come from the growth of our core academic activities. Only if these are successful can the Strategy succeed. We are exploring the potential for major collaborative partnerships internationally as well as within the UK, and these could represent a significant enlargement of our academic activities.
Finance
Merely increasing our income will not of itself make our future sustainable in the long term. We need to ensure that as we grow, we address the issues that have led to past underinvestment. The Funding Council recommends that institutions should aim for a surplus of 3-5% of turnover each year. At Goldsmiths, this would represent around £2 million available each year for investment in capital projects and new initiatives and for building general reserves. In practice, however, some institutions realise surpluses much higher than this – and not only in science-focussed universities. Last year (2003-04), the LSE had a surplus of 7%, about £9 million. If we want to do more than just maintain our position, if we want to strengthen our status as the leading UK institution of our kind, we must generate above-average surpluses so that we can invest in state of the art facilities, and so that academic developments are not held up by lack of appropriate resources to invest.
One of the most significant reasons why we have failed to secure sufficient surpluses in the past has been the proportion of our total expenditure which is allocated to staff costs. The quality and commitment of our staff are vital to everything Goldsmiths achieves, but if too much of our expenditure is allocated directly to staff costs, we cannot make the investments to give our staff the support they need. In 2005-06, 62.4% of our expenditure was spent on salary costs, one of the highest proportions in the 1994 Group. This is not a result of our discipline mix – the two institutions spending more on staff than us are Reading and Birkbeck, whilst the three lowest spending (proportionately) are Warwick, Surrey and the LSE. Analysis undertaken at the LSE demonstrates that since 1996-97, total pay inflation in the HE sector has been 34.7%, without taking account of the most recent pay settlement. In the same period, despite the increased contribution from students themselves, funding per home/EU student has remained essentially static. As things stand, then, we need substantial growth every year merely to keep paying our staff, and the higher our expenditure on staff, the more quickly we need to grow just to stand still. The 2006 pay settlement exacerbates this problem for the period to 2009. When we fail to grow quickly enough, as we have failed in recent years, the results are easy to see in scrimped budgets for equipment, ICT and estate maintenance, which leave staff unable to work to their full potential.
If we want future growth to deliver new resources for investment, then it must be delivered with the minimum possible increase in staff costs. This will mean that over time the proportion of our expenditure on staff should decrease, even though the absolute expenditure may continue to rise. Achieving this may be difficult as the RAE approaches, but at the very minimum we must not permit the proportion of our revenue spent on staff to rise. This will require strict control of the establishment, but it will also require us to be innovative in finding more effective ways of working. The goal we are seeking is to ensure that in future both our staff and our students have the resources they need to work effectively.
The most recent pay settlement was more than we could afford, and meeting it will mean that we miss our KPI targets in these areas by a significant margin. We are committed to paying our staff fair and competitive wages, but corrective action will have to be taken. We have already begun to identify and implement this action through our revised financial strategy.
Whilst staff costs are our main area of expenditure, we also know that savings can be made elsewhere in the cost base. We are undertaking work to identify opportunities for enhanced efficiency.
Estate
By 2010, we aim to have an estate which is significantly fit for purpose, and offers facilities at the leading edge of contemporary standards in its provision for learning, teaching and research. We will also need to accommodate the substantial growth in student numbers which we plan to achieve over the same period. We will achieve this by a mixture of new buildings and refurbishment of existing buildings, and by managing our teaching spaces more effectively.
Our immediate priorities are the improvement of the Whitehead Building and construction of a new Media Building. Funding for these projects has already been secured through HEFCE and SRIF capital grants. We are also examining the options for improving the Richard Hoggart Building.
More efficient management of our estate, especially teaching spaces, will also be critical if we are to accommodate the growth we need. At present, academic departments timetable their own activities and control room bookings for their own spaces, whilst the Estates and Services Department controls room bookings (but not timetabling) for central spaces. With fifteen timetabling operations and sixteen room booking functions operating simultaneously in the same College, it is hardly surprising either that inefficiency and confusion are sometimes the result, or that the proportion of our teaching space used is low.
Our estate also includes substantial research facilities, office and residential accommodation; all of these present important challenges. We need to ensure that we offer the right kind and amount of residential accommodation to our students, reflecting current standards for health, safety and comfort. Growing student numbers and changing patterns of student demand make forecasting complex in this area. A detailed review of our estates strategy will be included in the Corporate Plan.
Partnerships
We need to work closely with our local partners, especially our partners in the HE sector. We are developing a particularly close relationship with the other local institutions which specialise in creative subjects and the performing arts – Trinity Laban, Ravensbourne College of Design & Communication, and Rose Bruford College.
The Thames Gateway Development is expected to lead to the creation of 150,000 jobs and 200,000 homes in the next ten years. Many of these jobs will be in the burgeoning creative sectors and many of these residents will want opportunities to pursue higher education close to their homes. Not all of these learners will necessarily want to access higher education by traditional routes, however. We need to make a stronger contribution to the broad thrust of this development by enhancing the support we offer to creative enterprises and local HE progression. The London Development Agency is a key partner in this, and we are working with them and Creative London for instance through the Deptford/Greenwich Creative Hub announced in January 2006. This project allows us to contribute to the further development of London’s creative industries through entrepreneur training, business support, incubation and networking. This will make a major contribution both to the economy of our local area and to the opportunities available to our alumni. The Thames Gateway is also the focus for a Lifelong Learning Network.
We will also make a significant contribution to the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, including through our participation in the Olympic Cultural Festival. We can make a unique contribution to London 2012’s vision for an Olympic cultural and educational programme that will connect with the wider world. This programme will also celebrate the renaissance of east London, made possible by the Olympic Games.
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