Mairi Watson’s early career in the prison service, where there is “lots of change under way all the time, every day”, could well prove useful as she embarks on her latest role.

“Readiness for change is the best skill that you can develop in your teams,” Watson, Glasgow Caledonian University’s (GCU) newly appointed vice-chancellor, told ߣߣ��Ƶ.

Having moved from the position of deputy vice-chancellor at the University of Hertfordshire, she joins GCU at a time of upheaval for both the cash-strapped university sector and Scotland as a whole, with parliamentary elections coming up that, regardless of the result, will see a third of MSPs step down.��

Having started her new job in February, Watson has had to make quick decisions about GCU’s future. Most notably, the institution recently announced that it will be cutting roughly 100 jobs – joining the scores of other Scottish universities currently shedding staff.��

ߣߣ��Ƶ

Despite the university recording an underlying operating surplus of £12 million in 2024-25, Watson said the change was necessary because of a recent fall in international student numbers.��

“Our international recruitment was strong and solid until the tail end of last academic year when…we had a UKVI [UK Visas and Immigration] action plan, like many universities have at the moment,” she said, adding that “anyone that has a UKVI visit at the moment ends up with an action plan”.��

ߣߣ��Ƶ

“But it did set us some significant challenges, which drove conservative decision-making around international recruitment and therefore our international recruitment declined by design,” she continued. “I had to make the difficult decision in my first few weeks in post to press ahead with a proposed series of redundancies.”

Despite the challenges facing international student recruitment, Watson said she has “enormous confidence that we can and we should build back international student recruitment responsibly”.��

That is not to say it will be easy, particularly given incoming rule changes that will see universities required to adhere to stricter than ever immigration compliance metrics. “They are challenging metrics, but they’re the metrics we’ve got, and I appreciate that the government doesn’t have much wiggle room given their political pressures,” she said.

Having moved from an English institution to a Scottish one, Watson also has a relatively unusual insight into the common challenges facing universities both north and south of the border, despite the different funding models that exist across the UK.��

She joined GCU shortly after Scottish politicians agreed to cross-party talks on higher education funding, with a review coordinated by Universities Scotland ongoing. The Scottish National Party – which is predicted to win May’s election – has said everything is on the table during these talks, except the totemic issue of tuition fees.��

Although some vice-chancellors in Scotland have suggested that asking local students to contribute towards the cost of university could be the only way out of the current financial hole universities find themselves in, Watson said she sits “uncomfortably on the fence” about the topic.

ߣߣ��Ƶ

Watson has seen “the impact of a fee-paying system on our undergraduates in England”, including a “lifetime of debt”. As discussions continue, she will not “be in the corner advocating for a student loan system like the one we have in England”, she said. “But we need to take the opportunity to look at the whole system to see where the distribution of funds could be more equitable for our students.” 

Although Watson welcomed the review, she also suggested that university leaders needed to be realistic about what could come out of the talks. “Public money is in short supply,” she said. “I think we should temper our hopes about how much change there will be in the core funding to universities.”

ߣߣ��Ƶ

Regardless, there are “really significant behavioural changes that need to happen in universities to be able to deliver education at the cost that we can deliver it, not at the cost it was 15 years ago” she said.

Like many vice-chancellors, Watson is interested in improving collaboration across the sector. “I've moved from the English sector where competition and collaboration moves in a different way to…the Scottish sector,” she said, with the capped funding system bringing “significant opportunities for collaboration that are harder in the English sector”, where there is more competition for students.

Even though many English universities are looking at opportunities to share services, Watson said she believed “the more exciting stuff” was at the other end of the spectrum, including teaching and research.

As one of three new vice-chancellors in Glasgow, Watson said she had already sat down with her counterparts at the universities of Glasgow and Strathclyde, as well as the principals of the city’s arts institutions, to discuss these opportunities.��

“We can see that we’ve got a moment with all of the changes in Scottish politics...and because we don’t have competitive portfolios – we do quite different things [at] each of the three universities – so we’ve begun to talk…about how we might identify some key areas of collaboration.

“We do need to think very carefully about everything we do in universities,” she continued. As a university leader, “you need a mindset that is always looking to do things differently and better” and to “lean in to the opportunities that you have to transform on a daily basis, not just on a big scale”.��

ߣߣ��Ƶ

“We need to bring ourselves right up to date and do the hard transformational work.”

helen.packer@timeshighereducation.com