Diversity of mission?

During a strategic planning exercise in Dublin City University a couple of years ago, I did a presentation in which I set out a number of mission statements from a variety of universities. Some of the universities were old – ancient, indeed – some were new, some were teaching-intensive, some research intensive, some were in major cities, some served sparsely population regions. I produced the mission statements, and in a separate order, the names of the universities; I then asked those present to see whether they could correctly link the universities to their missions. And of course they couldn’t – these statements were entirely interchangeable. They all said they wanted their institution to be as good as you could imagine in teaching, research, community engagement and innovation; or some such stuff. Some were able to say this quite snappily, some needed several paragraphs and long words. But really they all said the same thing.

What does this suggest? It could suggest, as one person argued at my presentation, that nobody should bother with such stuff anyway; mission statements are put together without much imagination, and probably as an after-thought to strategic planning, rather than as a foundation for it. Or it could suggest that, despite all claims to the contrary, in the end all universities have a very similar mission, and the differentiating factor is not what they do, but how good they are at doing it. That would be bad news for my present institution, Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, as we have built up our profile based on the assertion that we are different. But what do we mean when we say that? How different are any of us, really?

Until now the key differentiator between universities, when all is said and done, has been money. When you have more resources, you can do different things. I suspect that many of us believe that if we had Harvard University’s reserves we’d be doing what Harvard does. But then again, some of us also increasingly think that, in today’s society, we need much greater diversity in higher education, not born out of necessity but based on genuine strategic intent. This probably sounds obvious enough to many, but in reality it isn’t. Diversity of mission to date hasn’t necessarily been based on strategic choice but on the recognition of inevitability. Those universities that stress their local role and teaching credentials are, I suspect, often doing so because they don’t have the resources to claim anything else with credibility. There’s nothing altogether wrong with that, because strategy is often in part about recognising what is achievable and then making that work for you. But there is an underlying hint that focusing on a local population and a teaching agenda is for the less well endowed and more modest institutions, and that therefore this agenda is in some ways not as good.

However, higher education now needs to find excellence in different contexts. We need to get away from the idea that, taking the UK as an example, Russell Group universities represent a ‘better’ and more excellent model of higher education. We need to have universities that aim to be world leaders, which includes leadership in research, but based on different strategic models. Some of this may be found in subject specialisation – the prioritisation of a smaller number of key areas – or in forms of teaching and learning innovation, or in support for economic development in a region (including perhaps a mission to address disadvantage), or in particular kinds of partnerships. But universities should not really be satisfied with a strategic model that is based on inferiority: we won’t have the resources to develop a global reputation, so we’ll concentrate on something more modest.

I have just tried to have a more up-to-date look at university mission statements, and interestingly many of those I looked at last time no longer publish one. But if they did, I hope that we might see the signs of a genuine commitment to diversity that is based on something more positive than being resigned to what is realistic, something that suggests that universities want to be excellent in their own way and have the confidence to believe in what they are doing, so that they would still do it even if they became very rich. In our fantasies, we shouldn’t all want to be Harvard.

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Our mission is – well, what?

During the recent strategic planning exercise in Dublin City University, I did a presentation in which I set out a number of mission statements from a variety of universities. Some of the universities were old – ancient, indeed – some were new, some were teaching-intensive, some research intensive, some were in major cities, some served sparsely population regions. I produced the mission statements, and in a separate order, the names of the universities; I then asked those present to see whether they could correctly link the universities to their missions. And of course they couldn’t – these statements were entirely interchangeable. They all said they wanted their institution to be as good as you could imagine in teaching, research, community engagement and innovation; or some such stuff. Some were able to say this quite snappily, some needed several paragraphs and long words.

What does this suggest? It could suggest, as one person suggested at my presentation, that nobody should bother with such stuff anyway; mission statements are put together without much imagination, and probably as an after-thought to strategic planning, rather than as a foundation for it. Or it could suggest that, despite all claims to the contrary, in the end all universities have a very similar mission, and the differentiating factor is not what they do, but how good they are at doing it. That would be bad news for DCU, as we have built up our profile based on the assertion that we are different. But if you ask DCU people what that difference consists of, the answer often is that we innovate and introduce things before others do – that we lead the way in pursuing change. That is of course good, but it doesn’t make us different; it means we do the same things, just earlier.

In the case of DCU, there are in fact some clear differences, and our strategic plan will develop that thinking a little more in an explicit way. But all this does raise the question whether the assertion that a university sector should contain some diversity is actually well founded. Is it really true that, let’s say in the UK, Cambridge University is different from the University of Lincoln in any way that cannot be explained by age, resources and influence? In other words, in the ideal world of each, would they be doing something radically different from each other?

Universities often repeat the mantra of diversity, but do we really know what that should require of us? And if we did discover a real basis for differentiation, would all of those seeking a different mission enjoy the respect of those who stick with a more traditional agenda? These are important questions which, I believe, university strategic planners do not properly examine, and to which I suspect they do not have an answer. It is a topic to which I shall return in due course, perhaps when we have published our plan.