“A remarkable opportunity to build something truly world-class”

City University London’s new Chief Operating Officer, Henrietta Royle, talks about moving from the commercial sector to Higher Education.

Q. What was your background before joining the Higher Education (HE) Sector?
A. I have over 20 years’ experience in the City – before joining City University London, I worked in international corporate finance for NM Rothschild and BZW, and was then appointed as the Deputy Chief Executive of British Invisibles (now ISFL).

Q. What attracted you to HE after a successful career in the City?
A. Originally the opportunity at Cass Business School. It was clear that Cass was an undiscovered gem. It had great products, but didn’t have the sort of profile it should have had and didn’t run itself in a business-like way, despite being a business school. The challenge was to move towards being a world-class, top-tier school and provide the efficient and professional services that a really good business would have. I am fascinated by management, so to practice it in one of the leading management schools has been a great experience.

Q. What are the biggest differences between the commercial sector and HE?
A. I come from an investment banking background, where there is no tolerance for under-performing. My perception is that performance management is in an earlier stage in HE, compared to the commercial sector. I intend to drive performance management across the university so its value is recognised.
HE has a tendency to be producer-led, rather than customer-service-led. There needs to be a change to focus more on the people to whom the service is provided, for example students.
On the academic side, the most noticeable difference is that academics don’t necessarily respond to the same stimuli as people in the private sector. They are interested in money, but are equally interested in other things and on occasion are prepared to sacrifice pay at the margin to get those other things. This means that they have to be managed and influenced in a very different way to non-academic staff.

Q. What were your key successes at Cass?
A. During my five years at Cass, I introduced a private-sector, customer-service culture and a drive for much higher visibility in the City and media. This saw an increase in turnover of more than 70 per cent enhancing its reputation and profile.
We developed an internal IT support team that was well trained, understood what we were trying to achieve as a school and equipped them to meet the needs of their clients – their colleagues.
Key to our success was recognising the importance of PR. External influence and visibility is absolutely vital so we appointed a director of marketing and communications who helped deliver our offering. We appointed an HR Director who drove quality, empowerment, understanding and ownership into our staff, delivering an efficient workforce.
We achieved Investors in People accreditation within six months of application. We made our careers service an important differentiator in order to help students into the careers they want, plus we took alumni relations seriously.

Q. What do you hope to achieve at City?
A. There’s plenty to build on at City University and some great people with which to do it. I will help drive a private-sector and business-like attitude throughout the University, working closely with the vice chancellor and deputy vice chancellors, to make sure that all of our schools and services perform superbly, and are highly competitive. I also want us to rise up the university league tables, reflecting the success of our fresh approach.
This is a remarkable opportunity to build something truly world-class. City’s location and connections with the City of London means that the University is uniquely placed to become a world-leading institution.

Q. Do you think that the way Higher Education institutes (HEIs) are run is changing to fit a commercial model? Are there any examples?
A. I think that HEIs in the UK are starting to understand that they need to run in a more commercial way. However, HEIs will never, and can never, run as purely commercial bodies. The nature of universities means there will always be some activity that cannot be profitable, which is done for other reasons such as academic development.
One example is research. While research sometimes brings in revenue, it is never going to be profitable in all areas, although it will always have other rewards.
The challenge for universities is to find the right balance between profitable activity and non-profitable activity. In some cases around 40 per cent of the cost of the revenue generators, in this case the academics, funds non-revenue generating activity, and this puts considerable strain on the finances. Many, like City University, now have knowledge-transfer departments specifically to help academics and the university spot opportunities and commercialise research.

Q. What do you think are the key things universities should be focusing on now to maximise revenue?
A. In a world where fees are capped and the supposedly compensating subsidy often doesn’t cover the gap between the fees and costs of teaching, universities need to work really hard to fill the gap from higher fee-paying overseas students
and fundraising.
The UK does reasonably well vis-à-vis overseas students, but we could do better and this is a key strategic issue for City University. The University has a target of 50:50 UK:non-UK students.
Quite apart from the financial benefit that this brings, the broader view is that in a globablised world, UK students need to be exposed to, and compete with, the best of the rest of the world at an early stage.
Fundraising is also going to be important. If the university wants to be able to attract the best brains no matter their financial status, it needs funding for scholarships for poorer students and new, better quality buildings.