Julia Goodfellow says British universities appoint their own chancellors and council members, which is different from the Hong Kong system where the chief executive automatically becomes chancellor
SHIRLEY.ZHAO@SCMP.COM
UPDATED : Monday, 25 April, 2016, 8:00am
University of Kent vice-chancellor Julia Goodfellow says British institutions appoint their own chancellors. Photo: Dickson Lee
Britain does not follow the Hong Kong model where the chief executive automatically becomes chancellor of the eight publicly funded institutions, according to the vice-chancellor of the University of Kent.
Hong Kong’s leader also has the power to appoint a proportion of governing council members, ranging from 12 to 76 per cent. The system has come in for criticism for potentially opening the door to political influence.
The vice-chancellor, Julia Goodfellow, said UK universities appointed chancellors on their own and the title was only ceremonial.
But Goodfellow, who is also president of advocacy group Universities UK, said no one governance system could fit all universities around the world.
“Hong Kong universities are incredibly strong institutions,” said Goodfellow in an interview with the Post during a visit to Hong Kong. “If you look at universities around the world, there is an enormous variety of governance models. So I think it’s very hard to say what governance model leads to successful universities.”
She said universities in Britain reviewed their governance systems every five years and chose their own chancellors and council members.
Goodfellow, while saying she did not know enough about the situation in Hong Kong to offer comments, said chancellors in the UK had no real power.
“The chancellor role has no say in the running of the university,” she said.
“It is completely separate. And it’s about shaking hands at degree ceremonies. So between the chancellor and myself, we shake 4,000 hands in one week,” she said with a laugh.
She said in her university, the current chancellor,Gavin Esler, a Kent alumnus and a senior political commentator on the BBC, was selected by a search committee led by the chairman of the university’s governing body. The committee included staff and student representatives, and consulted stakeholders for candidate suggestions, she said.
When it came to council member selection, said Goodfellow, existing members often asked among themselves about potential candidates. The council had a mixture of student, staff and public representatives, and members from the public often outnumbered those from inside the university, she said.
During the latest selection, she said, the university advertised in a national newspaper and received 70 applications. The university eventually chose three.
“We look at a variety of skills that we need and try to make sure we have representatives of those skills in our council,” she said.
“We will be looking for people who have connections with the university ... We always need people who have accounting and auditing skills, financial skills and communication skills ... plus people with human resource experience and people with building experience: we do a lot of building work.”
The latest governance review by a member of Hong Kong’s University Grants Committee published late last month recommended that the committee review the issue every five years and that universities should draw up their own skills templates for council members.
http://m.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/education-community/article/1938222/hong-kong-model-appointing-chancellor-not
