In the future, Northumbria will be known as a research-rich, business-focussed, professional university with a global reputation for academic quality. We will be a new type of excellent university, an inspiration to the North East, a beacon alongside the Classical university that is Durham and the Medical university that is Newcastle.
Vision 2025 captures the real opportunity that the University has to transform itself, bringing benefits for students, staff and other stakeholders. Bringing together academic quality and professional, real-world focus in a distinctive offering, students will benefit from leading-edge teaching and research, a globalised student experience and outstanding graduate employment prospects. Staff will be part of an organisation that prioritises academic excellence and professionalism and that invests in its people, its academics and its professional support services.
Vision 2025 brings change: this change is an opportunity, but it is also a necessity. We are entering a vastly challenging environment with greater competitive and regulatory pressures, sector diversification, more rapid change and an uncertain economic outlook. In this environment we cannot continue as we are if we wish to compete on the basis of academic quality – and on quality our future, indeed survival, depends.
It is for that reason that Vision 2025 is radical. If we want to shape our own future over the next decade and beyond, attracting the best staff and the best students, then we must take this opportunity. We will do this by strengthening our academic base, seizing the potential of technology and new organisational structures, building a modern and ambitious culture, and by ensuring we are financially sustainable and can invest in our mission and operations. This means increasing the proportion of our income that we invest in the academic front line, bringing it up to the level of our competitors higher in the league tables.
We will create a distinctive appeal based on academic excellence and a professional, business and real-world focus, located in the UK’s best cities for students, Newcastle and London, and globally. Our focus – that is, our core activities – will be research, the student experience, international activity and partnerships. Our driving principles in taking forward Vision 2025 will be quality, demand-focus and diversity.
The combination of academic excellence and our commercial awareness and demand-focussed, outward-facing character creates a distinctive appeal for all of our stakeholders. For students it will be mean being well-placed for a graduate job. For employers it will mean access to excellent graduates. For our research and enterprise customers it will mean ready access to new knowledge. For our staff it will mean academic excellence with a purpose.
In 2025 Northumbria will be a multi-faculty university with strength, breadth and size. We will be recognised internationally for the quality of our research, for our postgraduate education and graduates, and as providers of an outstanding student experience. We will have strong national and international presence, while continuing to play a leading role in the North East, contributing to its business and economy and its culture and success as a civil society.
Delivering Vision 2025
This Vision is challenging, but it is achievable first and foremost because of the outstanding skills, experience, talents and energy of our staff and students. We have already made substantial progress on some of its main aspects – such as increasing the number of research active staff, attracting higher quality students, and reducing our student-staff ratio.
We are already competing with – and out-performing on some key indicators such as student satisfaction and degree completion – universities that occupy higher places in the league tables. But to go further our staff need to be supported by the right systems and by the right organisation, and we are working hard to put these in place.
We need better systems and processes to make our management of the organisation more effective and efficient, reducing bureaucracy and ensuring the resources released are redirected to the front line. And we need to make much better and more extensive use of technology. We will move away from paper based systems, and ensure a “one University” approach to core processes like recruitment and procurement. Making these changes will give us the greatest chance of success.
