S05 - E05 Andy Long

Trust isn’t a soft skill; it’s the system that makes ambitious work possible. Nick sits down with Northumbria University’s Vice-Chancellor and Chief Executive, Andy Long, to unpack how an engineer’s mindset, a people-first approach, and a calm decision style can scale both research excellence and social mobility without losing humanity.

We start with the formative years: an academic career in composite materials, the coalitions built through conferences, and the moment the UK’s composites community asked Andy to lead a national programme—not because he was the loudest voice, but because he was the most trusted. That experience forged a leadership philosophy centred on appointing great people, co-creating a clear vision, and stepping back so experts can deliver. 

From there, we explore the personal stakes of being first in the family to attend university and why widening participation isn’t a slogan at Northumbria; it’s a regional mission. 

Andy opens up about imposter syndrome and the practical habits that keep leaders grounded: prepare well, admit what you don’t know, and don’t try to be the expert on everything. 

He maps the transfer of engineering habits into executive decisions—test, measure, change one variable at a time, act with incomplete data—and shows how those principles guided Northumbria through pandemic pivots and complex operational choices. When an inherited overseas campus no longer fit, the team closed it with compassion and clarity, treating the decision as proof the institution can take risk, learn fast, and exit responsibly.

Looking ahead, we confront funding headwinds, fee freezes, volatile international flows, and the need to prove value to a sceptical political climate. The response is concrete: experiential learning for every undergraduate, from the student law office to the business clinic, building confidence, networks, and outcomes. 

The 2030 ambition is clear and measurable—equal graduate success across backgrounds, higher for all—backed by an on-campus presence, hybrid communication that reaches thousands, and a culture with real “change muscle.”

If you care about leadership that feels human, access that changes lives, and strategy that delivers results you can measure, this conversation offers a playbook you can use tomorrow. Subscribe, share with a colleague, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway so we can keep the conversation moving.

Let us know what you think of this episode - drop us a message and connect via LinkedIn.

Chapters

• 0:00 Opening with Andy’s origin story
• 3:07 Trust as a leadership philosophy
• 6:17 First-generation journey and education’s impact
• 9:27 Widening participation in the North East
• 13:17 Human leadership at scale
• 16:07 Imposter Syndrome and owning the unknown
• 19:27 Engineering mindset in executive decision-making
• 23:07 Experimentation, risk, and closing an overseas site
• 26:27 Building a culture of ambition and change
• 29:47 Communicating clearly in a hybrid world
• 33:07 Staying connected to staff and students
• 36:27 Funding headwinds and proving value
• 39:27 Mission, confidence, and future skills
• 42:27 Experiential learning and real-world outcomes
• 45:07 Closing reflections and thanks

Transcript

Nick MacKenzie: 0:08

Welcome to the latest episode of Ed Influence. I'm Nick MacKenzie from Browne Jacobson, and today I'm delighted to be joined by Andy Long, Vice Chancellor and Chief Executive of Northumbria University. Thank you, Andy, for joining me today. I wanted to start by inviting you to tell me a story from your life that would give me a picture of who you are.

Andy Long: 0:31

Yeah, thanks. I guess the story I've got is from my work, which hopefully counts as part of my life, and it's from my work as an academic rather than when I moved into a kind of senior university leadership role. So it's connected to my research, which is on composite materials. I won't go into too much detail, but people often refer to a material called carbon fibre, which isn't really carbon fibre, it's carbon fibres combined with polymers, but that that's too complicated, right? And it's the sort of material that's used for aircraft, high performance cars, wind turbines, uh ships, sports equipment, etc. And so my PhD was in this area, and you know, when I became an academic, I kind of worked on this. And uh I, from early in my career, started going to conferences, and because I was seeing a lot of those conferences, I'd be asked to join the organizing committees. And I'm, you know, I'm a joiner, I do join things, like to support them, like to see them succeed. And at the same time, I was building up my grants portfolio, bidding for larger and larger grants, quite successfully, and getting funding to support my research and to fund other researchers. And those were sort of growing in size, and I was working with more and more partners, um, including from industry and from other universities, and lots of those were the people I was meeting at those conferences, so that that kind of networking was paying off, I guess. And then about 15, 16 years into all of this, uh, an opportunity arose from the main government research councils to bid for um five-year-long programs in engineering for consortia working in different areas, but whatever area it was, you needed to have all the best people, all the best institutions in that area working together rather than competing with each other. So we got all of the best people in my area together, and I knew all of them because I'd, you know, been to all these conferences, been to all these meetings, met them all, been on committees with them, and uh they asked me to lead the activity on behalf of the research area, on behalf of the the sort of composites community. And you know, I'd like to think that's because they looked at me and thought, well, he's the best academic in the room, he's done all the best research. Um but I don't think it was that. I think the main reason why they asked me was because I was the person that they all trusted the most. And I guess over time I've realized how important that is to me, how important trust is in my own leadership. And you know, in in this case, that led to eight uh, I suppose, golden years in my research career of leading this activity, getting a renewal of the funding along the way, and eventually I had to hand it over to somebody else when I became uh deputy VC at Nottingham University. And that was one of the hardest things I've had to do actually because it felt kind of like my life's work. I'd built up all these connections, they all trusted me as well, and I needed to hand it over because I just couldn't do the two things at the same time. It wouldn't have been fair to either role. And I suppose the other thing about that is um to lead something like that, I needed to accept that I'd be leading something where I didn't understand all of the details of all the work that it does. I couldn't have led all the different projects under this centre myself. So what I needed to do was find people that could, find people from other institutions, find companies that they could work with as well. So I had to identify those leaders, had to kind of set direction, set a vision together with them for what it was we wanted to achieve, and then trust them to get on with it. And that really, I suppose, informed my own philosophy to leadership. You know, you appoint good people, you provide them with direction, and then you trust them and support them to get on with it.

Nick MacKenzie: 4:27

Thank you. Yeah, trust seemed to come across quite quite big through that story. What what did you learn about that that you you draw on these days on building trust? Letting go. You particularly you talk about letting go or something that you were particularly uh committed to.

Andy Long: 4:47

Yeah, I think that's it. I think you you have to and it is a kind of it's about delegation, isn't it, really? And it's it's the sort of thing that I think most senior leaders struggle to learn. And some never some people never manage it and therefore can never move into those kind of senior leadership roles. You know, in that research example, there'd be lots of people who wouldn't have done what I did. Maybe they couldn't, or maybe they wouldn't. Maybe they just prefer to only be leading the thing they fully understand themselves. Maybe they can't bring themselves to kind of lead that bigger thing. And there's that, you know, there's absolutely no shame in that. Those people can be incredibly successful at what they do. Um I expect most, you know, Nobel Prize winners fall into that sort of category. They're completely focused and they get something amazing done. So I I guess I learned that I could trust people, you know, I could uh achieve more or achieve more that would satisfy me by building a community and trusting them to get on with things. And I guess I also learned that I can celebrate their success as uh you know, the success of the whole thing based on their successes, at least as much as I would want to celebrate any personal successes of my own. And I take a lot of pleasure in that.

Nick MacKenzie: 6:06

Changing back slightly. I I believe you're the first generation of your family to go to university. How has education transformed your life?

Andy Long: 6:19

The first in my generation, so you know, I went to a re regular comprehensive school and and sixth form college. I had two older brothers, they didn't go to university. You know, one of them certainly got the A levels to go, the other one could have done, but he perhaps wasn't as focused at s at school as as you know he could have been. I'm sure he had the ability. And and for that matter, my dad was um he worked for the post office in West Yorkshire, but fixing cables under the road, you know, for telephone, the telephone exchange, and went to night school and got qualifications and then moved to London to work for what was called the British Computer Centre in the 1950s, so early days of computing, and then eventually was going around the country and around the world advising universities and organizations on what computer systems to buy on behalf of the government. But he never went to university because it wasn't a thing that was possible in his world. You know, he clearly was intellectually able. Frankly, he would have made a great academic as well, I think, you know, as I reflect on it now. So I I I I guess what I'm saying is it was it was almost natural to be the first in your family at that point in time, you know, in in the sort of mid to late 80s. It's much less common now, and therefore the people who are first in their family face much bigger challenges, I think, than I did. Um, but I uh what what it I I it certainly influenced my thinking about the power of education, about the need to support people from any and all backgrounds. You know, when I went to university, there were lots of people who weren't first in their family to go to university. There were lots of people who had a very different educational background to me. You might call them advantages, uh, but they had different, you know, they had different experiences to me, and I I valued mixing with those people. And I guess it was a bit of a latent um desire for me. Uh, you know, I I would always have been interested in supporting people wherever they were from to take the opportunity to go to university. But certainly when I came to Northumbria, it was also the ethos of the institution. Uh so I guess that that is one of the things that, you know, gives me particular satisfaction about this university, that it offers opportunities to people, perhaps people who wouldn't have those opportunities if we weren't here to offer them. So it gives me a lot of pleasure, it also gives me a real sense of responsibility. So yeah, I I you know I I I I would say um education has been transformational for me, and obviously I therefore want that opportunity to be available to other people.

Nick MacKenzie: 9:02

And building on the the work of Northumbria, what what what are some of the things, examples you could give me that you you do to keep widering participation a real real live priority for you and your leadership team?

Andy Long: 9:19

So I I guess there's a few things, uh I suppose a bit of context. Um around about 40% of our students come from areas with low rates of participation in higher education. Um now it's no coincidence that the Northeast also has the lowest rate of participation in the country in higher education. Um so you know that gives us a particular responsibility, uh and the other regional universities to try and do something about that. But Northumbria gets more students from the northeast than any other university in the country. One in four of our one in four of young people in the northeast who go to university come to Northumbria. And for the same reason, one in four people in graduate jobs in the Northeast are our graduates. So, you know, that is a way in which we we're both contributing towards that widening participation social mobility agenda, because lots of those people are still first in their family to go to university, and we're really to quote our strategy powering the regional economy because so many of our graduates are uh are are in the region, working in the region and contributing to its success. Um what do we do to achieve that? You know, we do an awful lot of outreach with schools, we work with 40 local schools closely in what we call our annual All-Stars program. We bring those students from those schools onto our campus, we send people from the university, including our students, out to those schools to talk to them about the opportunities we have here. We run jointly with Newcastle University two into university centres in parts of the region with very low rates of participation in higher education. What those centres do is bring in people from local schools and they talk to them about career opportunities, academic development as well, but importantly, they kind of you know myth bust about university, make it feel like something that is actually for the likes of them, for people from their background. And that those centres are very successful in raising the rates of participation in higher education. And then we have some really close partnerships with some schools where we're looking to provide a almost a seamless journey through from the school into university. So, one example I'd give you is the Bede Academy in Blythe. Uh, and it's a fantastic school in the middle of a you know a quite a deprived area, I would say. And what we have done with them is helped them establish a T-level in health. Um, and by help, I mean we we've helped to develop the curriculum, we've helped by training their staff, some of their staff so they can deliver elements of it. We've helped them to secure equipment for their students, and we give them access to some of our facilities as well. And obviously, the hope for us is that some of those students will study their T level in health and then come and study healthcare subjects at the university. But it's a great thing in general, you know. If they don't come here, they might go elsewhere or they might go directly into careers that wouldn't have been open to them otherwise. And I I think that's a great example of how we're working in partnership with a really forward-thinking school to achieve something for our region.

Nick MacKenzie: 12:36

Sounds like a massive impact on the region and some great, great examples there. Switch in tact for a moment. So your vice-chancellor, chief executive of Northumbria University, it's a um perhaps no coincidence from your um your introduction, it's a leading uh research-intensive modern university. I I was just wondering how would you describe the the sort of human leadership responsibilities that you lean to in the day-to-day of your role.

Andy Long: 13:11

Yes, I mean, first of all, uh you know, it it is uh again, perhaps I'll I'll I'll use uh another cliche, it is a people business in the end. We've got about three and a half thousand staff. I mean, all together around the world, we've got about 37,000 students, about 25,000 of them in this city, another four and a half thousand in London, and then we've got people who study online and people at um 16 partnerships in 10 countries where we're delivering a Northumbria education. So, you know, one of the things I I do like to make sure that I I meet with my colleagues as often as possible. I like to make sure that uh I'm seen as being open and accessible. Um, if I'm not in a meeting where I need quiet, you know, like this one, my door is literally physically open all the time. So my senior colleagues know that if they need to, they can drop in and talk to me. If ever my door's open, that is an open invitation to come in and talk if you want to. And I think that's really important. You know, if anybody from the university contacts me about something and it's obvious that we should have a discussion about it, I would always invite them in to talk or go to see them in their environment and make sure I understand what it is they're concerned about. And I I that is partly, you know, uh because I'm just interested, frankly, I'm really interested in what happens on campus at university. And although that might sound like an odd thing, when I was thinking about moving into a vice-chancellor role and looking at opportunities that arose, one of the questions I would always ask is, you know, what are they looking for? And and when I unpacked that, what I meant was, are they looking for somebody who can lead the endeavour on campus, or are they more looking for, you know, the university's ambassador who may occasionally visit the campus? I was never interested in that latter approach. I would always want to be involved with what's happening here because I I, you know, I love universities, I love what academics and students do, and obviously I want to see as much of it as possible.

Nick MacKenzie: 15:12

Um leaders often project confidence whilst privately questioning themselves. What has imposter syndrome looked like for you, and how have you addressed it? You know, staying authentic but faced into it.

Andy Long: 15:31

Yeah, I I I personally think that most people have imposter syndrome at some point, even if they don't admit it. Um, I think honestly, if they don't, I I don't think I would really trust them. They're probably some kind of extreme narcissist or sociopath, you know, and are not to be trusted. Uh I won't give you examples of individuals who that might be in, you know, wider society, but I think we all know them. It's natural, you know, if you're stretching yourself, you're always going to find yourself in situations where you're uncomfortable, where you know, you know, maybe it it's the first time you've done something why why is it you should know how to do it? It's it's you know, it's it's not reasonable to expect that you would. Um I guess over time the way that I've navigated this is to make sure that I always prepare, make sure that I know as much as I can about the situation I'm going into, the task that I'm asked to do. I think there's been a period in my career where I would probably overdo that. And I, you know, I once had a coach who said to me, um, um, you it's clear that you're always trying to be the expert on in the room on every subject, and that's just not feasible. And doesn't match the philosophy that I described earlier. You know, if you're trying to do that, then you're probably going to end up trying to micromanage people. And it it probably comes from the sort of natural fear of being caught out. But the best way to deal with the fear of being caught out is to admit what you don't know rather than start digging a hole for yourself and bluffing, you know, admit what you don't know, and and for that matter, speak about imposter syndrome. Tell people that you have it sometimes. It almost kind of gives them permission to do so themselves. Um so you know, make sure that uh people know that this is a natural thing, and and if they hear it from the most senior of leaders, then then that I I I think that makes them feel much better about themselves. And I've had that reflected back to me. I I've said this in public on a number of occasions, and people have come up to me afterwards and said that you know they felt relieved that this would be the case, that you know, the senior leader in their organization feels imposter syndrome. It is a natural thing to do. Um, perhaps they thought they really were imposters, but they're not, it's just natural.

Nick MacKenzie: 17:49

Wanted to go back to something you said earlier, where you you talked about your background as uh in research and academics in uh competent composite materials, I think it was. Are there any habits of academic inquiry? I don't know, hypothesis testing, peer challenge, evidence standards that you've either consciously imported into executive decision making or or stumbled onto and found, oh, that's quite useful.

Andy Long: 18:23

I I guess there are. I guess the main thing that you get from being an engineer is a kind of logical approach to things. Um and it does have its limitations, which I'll I'll come on to. The main limitation, I suppose, I I can say now is that not everybody thinks that way. And you have to be able to deal with those people as well. You know, you can't require them to be like you. But my approach should always be to develop a plan, you know. I mean, at a sort of grander level, have a strategy, develop a plan to implement it and monitor implementation, and and then I'm happy, you know. If any challenge comes along out of the blue at the university and and it makes me nervous or anxious, uh, which it will, and often that will happen, um, all I need to know to relieve that anxiety is that we've got a plan and we're implementing it. You know, then I can sleep at night and we're fine. Obviously, I'm even happier when we've solved the problem, but once I know there's a plan and we're implementing it, then that's okay with me. I I guess another trait of an academic and certainly an engineer is that you know you you need to be happy to experiment. Uh, you need to conduct experiments that may succeed or fail and be happy with either outcome and know how to deal with it. I think there is a classic mistake that some people make, which certainly as an engineer I would try never to do, but I I'm sure I I'm not always successful. And that's not to change too many variables at once, because otherwise you'll never know about cause and effect, you'll never know what what you know what has worked and what has not. Um I'm not afraid to adapt to changing circumstances. I think that's also a kind of engineering trait. Um I like to see evidence and analysis where it's available. If I know there's evidence available and I don't have it, then I I, you know, would generally seek it. I would ask somebody to get it for me. Um, I love a good spreadsheet, a good graph, you know, I'm happy looking at data. But I I guess the the really important thing is that engineers make decisions based on limited information. And I think that is a really valuable thing as an academic leader, or probably as a leader in any kind of organization. You know, accepting that you're never sure if there's information, there's data, get it. But you're never going to know everything. And for that matter, there might not be time to get all the information you would ideally like. The decision needs making now. Uh, so I I you know I I I'm comfortable in working in that way. And I I I can give you an example at my previous university, Nottingham University, um, about three weeks before the COVID lockdown, I was asked to chair the Silver Group on the basis that the Vice Chancellor needed somebody who she thought was pretty decisive to do that, in case, heaven forbid, you know, anything happened in our country. And three weeks before the lockdown, that was still the question. We didn't know that it was going to happen. But anyway, of course it did. And therefore, I was chairing this group with people from across the university that had to decide how we're going to move teaching and assessment online, how are we going to establish an approach to working from home? How are we going to handle lockdowns in student accommodation? How are we going to assess the likely financial impact on the university and how we're going to deal with that? And then when you got through all of that, you immediately had to start thinking about how we're going to get everybody back, you know, how are we going to do that safely with social distancing and so on? How are we going to how we're going to make sure that we can reopen the university as soon as possible? All of those decisions at all times were time critical. You know, we had lockdown on the Friday, and by Monday we were delivering teaching online. You couldn't wait to make the decision. Therefore, information was always going to be limited. Information including going as far as is this actually going to work? And you just had to make sure it was as good as possible and you were as certain as you could be. In fact, I really found it energizing that we were able to make decisions about things in a much shorter timescale than you know, maybe we had in the past. And the other trait I had that was reflected back to me at the time was that I was always the calmest person in the room, the virtual room often. Which in that situation was really valuable because you know a lot of people really were not calm because it was a stressful time. I've recognized that other times it's not always the best thing, and sometimes people actually need you to show some emotion back to them. And you know, that is a lesson that I've learned. Um, my my natural approach is to be calm. Sometimes I almost deliberately have to show that I am concerned.

Nick MacKenzie: 23:13

Thank you. You used the the word a short while ago that happy to experiment, but not changing too many variables. I'm just wondering, because another way of putting that perhaps is is around the curiosity to wonder if you play and you experiment what might else might happen. Can you can you share perhaps a recent leadership decision, perhaps in general terms rather than specifics, where perhaps that desire to experiment or that curiosity sort of changed the question you were asking and therefore unlocked perhaps an outcome by your students or your staff?

Andy Long: 23:59

I'm not sure I can think of an example immediately. I don't I'd have to think about that. Um I can certainly give you an example of um it it's it's a little too uh yeah, I can give you an example of something that I suppose where we have, you know, been comfortable to say that we tried something, it didn't work, so let's move on. We had a uh an an overseas sort of campus presence. I have to say it's something I inherited, so it's not the best example I can give you of something, you know, I decided and then moved on. But when I came here, I was certainly really keen and that we should make this work and it would be really, you know, a great thing and and and a success for the university. And for various reasons, including changes to expectations and even requirements in the country we were working with, it became apparent that we weren't gonna meet the original targets in this case. And we'd employed staff in that country working for our university. And it became apparent that we weren't gonna be able to continue, and therefore, you know, their their futures were also at risk. And and we did take the decision, therefore, that we needed to close it down and we needed to do that in the right way, and the right way was to say students who already there can complete their programs, the staff are already there, can stay working at that campus until the end of that period, and we would try and find anybody that wanted to move to the UK a job at this campus. And I think we did find jobs for everybody who said that they wanted to move here, uh, which wasn't very many, I have to say, but you know, it was it was a genuine offer that we we intended to uphold. And and I think um there is a there's a way of looking at that, and it's an interesting conversation that we had with our governing body, because there's a way of looking at that that says, well, this was you know failure and we must never fail in this way again. But I was very keen that the conversation that we had was instead about how this should give us confidence as an organization to make further risky decisions to experiment, if you like, again in future, because we had shown that we were able to do that to determine when it was the right time to draw a line under it and then to close it down in you know a successful and compassionate way.

Nick MacKenzie: 26:23

That's really fascinating example. Perhaps building on that, on what you've learned or your plans for the future. I mean, you you've led large strategic programs, been involved in new campuses, I think, directly as well. What have you learned about building cultures where innovation is not necessarily safe, but feels more normal, um, perhaps more expected?

Andy Long: 26:54

At Northumbria, I have to say I inherited an institution where uh what uh as I described what it did before I came here, somebody that I know very well said to me, Well, it sounds like your university your new university's generated the change muscle, which I thought was a really good expression, that it's been through a lot of change and yet isn't afraid of further change. And it has it responds really well to ambition, ambition from the top, but then that is reflected back to you by the people at the university. You know, in developing our new strategy uh shortly after I arrived, we had a uh an engagement process with our staff where we talked to a thousand different members of staff as part of that process, you know, nearly a third of our workforce. And whether they were talking to me sort of face-to-face or whether I was kind of slightly eavesdropping on conversations around tables, all I ever heard was about ambition. It was always about, you know, we've achieved these great things, what's next? And there are definitely other organizations I can think of where they would have said, we're fine as we are, leave us alone, we're happy to stay at the level that we're at. So I I I guess my my answer is that I'm giving you is to a slightly different question in that regard, and that's you know, there is a culture at this institution that I have inherited that is really positive. And frankly, I wouldn't know how to create a culture that is quite so positive as that. I mean, it has happened over many, many years. People have seen ambition set, they've seen that they're able to achieve them, and then they've gradually gathered the confidence to go for the next big thing. And I suppose reflecting on what's happened in the time that I've been here, if I've done anything, it's to try and spread that confidence to people about not just that you know we can be bigger and better in future, um, but that there are things that this university can now do that maybe five or ten years ago people would have thought universities like this couldn't do. You know, we can bid for the biggest grants, we can partner with multinational um companies where you might have thought they would pick, let's say, one of the Russell Group universities or one of the most famous research-intensive universities around to partner with and that we can we can in our own areas of strength, we can compete with those people. So I so I suppose the only thing I've really tried to do is ensure that confidence is spread and that people follow, you know, take take what follows from that confidence, that they can therefore do these things that that previously they might have thought impossible.

Nick MacKenzie: 29:40

Um thinking about communication, Andy, it it you're it's a busy institution. I'm not sure how many thousands of staff students you've got, but that's quite complex in terms of to communicate key messages you want to share with the community. What are the things that you've learned about effectively communicating? I'm thinking, I suppose, particularly of since the pandemic that you mentioned earlier, that shoved a lot of things online, and that has changed some of the habits about communication. What are the some of the things that you find are effective that enables you as a leader to share the key messages?

Andy Long: 30:18

Yeah, one of the key points actually is about uh embracing online communication. Since I've arrived at Northumbria, and actually in my last most of my the the the my sort of latter days at Nottingham, uh we ex more extensively used online communication. And at Northumbria we hold all staff briefings that are always online, and we could have them in person, but if we had them in person, you know, the largest room we've got would hold 400 people. And when I have them online, we reach a thousand people and then Microsoft Teams won't let us let any more in. Um, so what we now do is have rooms that are connected to Microsoft Teams where people can gather together to watch and participate in those sessions, and we still reach a thousand people logging on. So there's clearly more than a thousand people who join every one of those meetings out of about three and a half thousand staff. So that is a really good way of reaching a wide cross-section of the university. And what I always try and do is give them an overview of what's happening in the university and in the wider sector, including what I learned from my interactions with politicians and you know other people in wider society, and then let them hear about something from one of my colleagues, something else that's going on in the university that they might be interested in. We always ask people to submit questions in advance if they want to. We let them um have those questions asked uh anonymously. We do know who's asked them, but but I won't read out their name. Um, and then we let people put their hands up in the meeting and ask questions, and and I'm always clear that you know, if anybody's got a question and we run out of time, we'll always answer it afterwards, and I I think that's really important. The downside of it, but it would be the downside in the in a big open meeting in person as well, is that a lot of people, you know, it's brave to ask a question in that big environment and of senior leaders in your organization. So you have to find other ways that people can can express their views. Uh, and we do things like you know, we do an annual staff survey where there's lots of opportunity for people to put their views forward, and certainly if I'm reading them, I won't know who said them. But I was all would always look at those things because you know I would always want to know what it is that people really think about what's going on. And we go through, you know, we've been through some challenging times. We've had to make cost savings, those have resulted in people leaving the institution, not so far through any compulsory processes, but nonetheless, it is, you know, difficult, perhaps traumatic for people to handle. We're doing some work around pensions at the moment that's difficult for people because a complicated subject, it's a change, you know, nobody likes change. It's changing something which is obviously very, very important to people, very important to people who work in higher education. You know, it's part of the deal that you continue to get a good pension. So I look, I'm always happy to hear feedback on those things and think about how it might influence what we do now or in the future. But it's not the same as saying that we'll just stop whatever difficult thing it is we're doing. We have to, in the end, be honest with people and say, look, we are gonna make a change, we intend to do it this way, and then be honest with them as well about what it is we're seeking their feedback on. So we don't go out and say, This is our idea, what do you think, when we've no intention of changing anything. You know, if that's the approach if if that's our approach, then we need to just tell people this is what we're gonna do and this is what's gonna happen. If there are areas where we are seeking opinion, just be really clear about which areas they are.

Nick MacKenzie: 34:02

And getting you you sorry, you said um at the beginning that you were quite clear that you wanted to be a leader of a of a campus rather than that public facing because you so you were close to the to the academics and to the students. What do you find works for you to help you stay connected to their experience, whether it's your academics, other staff or or students?

Andy Long: 34:31

Not naive, it's hard for me to do that. There isn't quite the smell of fresh paint when I go to parts of the university, but it it sometimes feels a bit like that. And I'm also kind of aware, I hope I'm not a scary person in any way, but the job is the job title can be to particularly to more junior staff, and it can, you know, inhibit their ability to say what it is they really feel they want to say. I guess you you just have to take time, you know, and and spend long enough with people that perhaps they can trust you. And that's hard because I've got a busy job and I've got three and a half thousand staff and you know 37,000 students, I can't possibly talk to them all. So I I I just have to look for opportunities to to get involved with things, you know. The students union invite me along to a lot of things. I try and go to those where I can. I uh I'm doing a round at the moment of meetings with each of our schools. It's often just the leadership team, but it could be with other people and our professional service departments as well, just to make sure that I'm I'm kind of keeping in touch with individuals, hearing from them personally. Yeah, a lot of pleasure out of attending you know graduation ceremonies where you do at least see the thousands of students coming through the university. Uh it's a small thing, but one of the changes that I made to the speech I make at the start of those ceremonies is I ask our schools for examples from their schools of what their students have done, what they've achieved, and just try and include try and include a couple of those in every ceremony uh so that you know the audience get an idea about what some of the people in the room have done, but frankly, equally, so do I. I I have just a bit more of an idea about you know some of the stories that sit behind the hundreds of people who are going to be walking across the stage and getting their degrees.

Nick MacKenzie: 36:25

Thinking outside the uh the campus boundaries, then what issues or trend are are you personally keeping an eye on, Andy, that perhaps isn't headlines headline news yet, but you think should be?

Andy Long: 36:42

Um I guess um the sort of period that higher education is going through now is really challenging. And um if we look back, you know, over most of my career, governments were generally supportive of higher education, and really importantly, they took a longer-term view. They kind of knew it was just a good thing, and it would help the country, it like it had helped them, it would help other people, it would help the country through its education, through its research, all of that would make a difference, worth supporting. Since 2012, we've had tuition fees, you know, challenging in some ways, but one thing it did was kind of at the time put higher education on a sure financial footing. But then those have been frozen for 11 of the last 13 years. Um and it seems to have come as a surprise to people that the universities are now in some financial difficulty. You know, it should be a surprise that they weren't until relatively recently. And the only reason why they weren't is because we could grow international student numbers and that you know helped to support universities to continue to grow, certainly grow in their income and grow in the scale of their activity. And once that has kind of started to go in the other direction, all of a sudden this structural problem with the way that universities are funded has been exposed. So I so I guess that's that's something that all higher education leaders know. But perhaps what they haven't thought so much about is how did their leadership teams, and in fact their governing bodies as well, how did they gain their experience of higher education and higher education leadership? Nearly all of it was through that benign time. So it shouldn't be surprising that those people find it difficult to lead in these much more challenging times. You know, they got all of their experience when the world was different, and suddenly, as in over the last few years, it's become very different. Now, the other way it's become very different is that the government approach to this, under the previous government uh uh uh towards the end of its time and under the current government has become much less benign, much more critical, much more politically motivated, much more linked to perceived public perception and opinion, not necessarily real opinion, I think, but but perhaps what what gets traction in the press or on social media. And I think the thing that higher education leaders need to accept is that that's just how it's been for the rest of society all along. That we've actually been privileged over this previous period, that the rules that apply to nearly everybody else didn't apply to us. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't complain when the government makes decisions that we don't like, but it does mean that we have to, for example, get much better at demonstrating our value so that we can either counter those arguments or they don't even arise in the first place, because you know we have made it clear how valuable we are to wider society. And and and I I think that's something that some university leaders are still missing.

Nick MacKenzie: 39:56

Thank you. Unfortunately, we're we're we're running short on time, so just a few final questions, Andy. What would you say is the mission that drives you.

Andy Long: 40:11

Please don't think this sounds too grandiose, but it is changing people's lives because that's what universities do. And and when I'm sitting on the stage at graduation seeing hundreds of people coming across the stage who who are graduating from my university, or when I'm hearing about some fantastic achievement in research, or you know, a new spin-out company that an academic is planning to form so that their research actually results in products or services that might, you know, benefit the wider world. I just take an enormous pride in that because I know that those are ways in which we're changing people's lives. And for every one of those graduates, you know, so many of them, going to university is the thing that was most likely to change their life. And I would like to think that this institution changes more lives in the North East than any other university in the country. And I just take enormous pride in that.

Nick MacKenzie: 41:09

Um final question then perhaps what quality do you see in young people you wish you had or had more of

Andy Long: 41:19

when I was their age I meet so many people who've got well it seems seems to me a lot more energy and a lot more confidence. And I include in that you know students from from all backgrounds you just meet people who I'm I'm just so often blown away by some of the 18 to 22 year olds I meet at the university. And I don't think they're all handpicked because of their level of confidence. You know I do think I I meet a decent enough cross section of our community. Yeah the confidence that they have um of course their their their challenges are going to be very different to the ones that I faced. I uh I've been totally unimaginative and you know gone to university done three different degrees including a PhD and then stayed at university for the rest of my career and I've only worked for two universities. Most of those people are probably going to work for several organisations over their lifetime and they're probably going to do several different jobs and the job that they do at the end of their career might well involve all kinds of things that neither they nor nobody else knows about now. And it's it's a good job they've got that confidence because they're going to need it to face those challenges.

Nick MacKenzie: 42:35

And on top of that confidence what are there things that you're doing as a university to to try and equip them with and and help them develop skills or help them in that as you say quite a different environment than the one that you grew up in.

Andy Long: 42:51

The main thing that we're doing I think is you know with our mission around social mobility we don't that doesn't stop at the point that you students enter the university. It always has to be about the outcomes for those students. Our strategic ambition by 2030 is that graduates from all backgrounds should have an equal chance of success that it should be higher for all of them than it is now and an equal chance of success. Now at the moment students from the least advantaged backgrounds are less likely to find their way into highly skilled work or further study after they graduate than those from the most advanced backgrounds here and at just about every other university in the country we want to eliminate that gap by 2030. And the main way we're doing that is by ensuring that every student has what we refer to as experiential learning you know learning by doing doing something related to the kind of job they might want to go into as part of their degree. So not as a sideline to do at the weekends but as an integrated part of their degree and a substantial part. And that doesn't matter whether they're doing engineering or architecture or nursing where you might think those things are implicit or whether they're doing English literature or history or physics or chemistry where perhaps it it might be less obvious. Every student every undergraduate student who actually started this year will have that in their program for the first time and we've already got brilliant examples that the university has been doing for many years which certainly inspired me to say that's what we need to offer to everybody. So the best examples I would point to would be our business clinic and our student law office. The student law office takes students as as groups working with a solicitor and then gets them to work on pro bono cases that arise from our wider community and I've spoken to students you know again first in their family to go to university don't know anybody working in the legal profession certainly don't have relatives who could get them placements in legal firms to gain experience those people have told me that this is a thing that gives them the confidence to pursue a legal career. Business clinic is the same kind of concept groups of students offering free consultancy to local companies but dealing with senior people in those companies again it hugely builds their confidence as to you know their ability to succeed in that kind of world thank you um so much Andy and thank you for joining me today.

Nick MacKenzie: 45:24

I've thoroughly enjoyed our discussion and I do hope our listeners have as well.