Mergers ‘not for the faint-hearted’, says Greenwich v-c

The past 12 months have been a blur for Jane Harrington, vice-chancellor of the University of Greenwich.

Greenwich and the University of Kent surprised the sector last September by announcing their intentions to merge into a “super-university” group structure known as the London and South East University Group (LASE). By August this year, the institutions had officially completed the process. 

There is now a new, unified board of governors and students’ union and the group is looking at a new trade union recognition agreement which would see it have just one staff union. Students will be able to use any of the facilities at either university.

Harrington, who has taken on the vice-chancellor and CEO role at the newly formed group, described the merger process as “exhilarating”, but said it was “not for the faint-hearted”.

“I’d describe it as incredibly hard work, and I do think having been the first group to do this we’ve had to really navigate a lot of the regulatory challenges, and I hope we've now paved the way, if others want to do it. But I feel very proud that we’ve managed to do it.”

The challenges were so great, she said, “you have moments where you think it’ll never happen”, with the universities being the first to embark on a merger process in the current financial crisis.

“There were a couple of times where the regulations seemed to be so intractable that we thought we’d never get through them. And there were moments where you couldn’t see the solution, but we always found it, and we always worked to find it. But it did take some real effort and energy to get there.”

In particular, she said, she “never anticipated what a big deal it would be to have the names ‘University of Greenwich’ and the ‘University of Kent’ under a university group”, adding that the regulatory challenges surrounding this took even the Office for Students and Department for Education by surprise. 

So does there need to be greater regulatory support for mergers? It depends on the context, Harrington said, “but almost certainly you would need to have some support to do this if you were in a particularly difficult position”. She said the government and OfS “will need over time to look at it if there’s going to be a lot more” mergers, because it would be “very difficult” for the leaders of distressed institutions to “carve out the time and space” to oversee a merger process on top of dealing with the day-to-day problems.

Since Kent and Greenwich announced their intentions to merge last year, King’s College London and Cranfield University have also announced plans to merge and many observers foresee others taking the plunge, with no relief in sight to the difficult financial place that many UK universities find themselves in.

Indeed, Harrington does not rule out more mergers into the LASE structure. While she stressed that “we want to make this work and make this a success first”, she added that the group was set up in a way that “potentially could have other universities”. 

Now that the merger is complete, “the lessons that will come out of what we’ve done, could be useful to start someone else’s thinking”, Harrington said, providing a “blueprint” that universities could adapt to suit their own circumstances.

One key piece of advice, Harrington said, was to think carefully about suitable merger partners. It is “absolutely critical” that the vice-chancellors and boards of governors of merging institutions ensure “their vision is aligned”, she said, and she attributed part of the success of the so-called Kentwich merger to Kent and Greenwich’s “20-year plus” history of cooperation.

Personal relations helped too; Harrington’s relationship of “trust” with Kent’s acting vice-chancellor, Georgina Randsley de Moura, made it much easier “to have what inevitably are difficult conversations”, she said. Establishing early on that Harrington would be the vice-chancellor of the merged institution also aided the process, as it “removed any ambiguity”.

Unions at Kent and Greenwich have previously pointed out there is still much uncertainty around staffing at the “super-university”, and Harrington said she was unable to rule out job cuts. Staff have, for the time being, retained the terms and conditions of their previous contracts, and she said the group will look to align working arrangements at both institutions “over a period of time”. However, staff at both universities will be able to keep their existing pensions: the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) at Kent and the Teachers’ Pension Scheme (TPS) at Greenwich.

Overall, Harrington is excited by and proud of the merger. She said the university group would have a greater ability to support young people in the region and equip the local workforce “because we now have an opportunity to look at it very strategically, with much greater scale and scope”.

“We stepped into what was a void, really. Nothing existed before this, and out of that has come a blueprint [that has] resulted in two universities coming together in a way that many people told us wasn’t possible,” she said.

“I believe we will now see some absolutely amazing things coming out of our group, and I couldn’t be prouder of my teams and the staff and the students who’ve helped make this happen.”

juliette.rowsell@timeshighereducation.com