Contents Page

Papers for the General Council Meeting on 10 June 2017

1 Formal communications from the University Court 2

2 Report of the Academic Standing Committee 2

3 Report of the Constitutional Standing Committee 3

4 Report of the Finance and Services Standing Committee 4

5 Report of the Public Affairs Standing Committee 5

6 Meetings of the Business Committee 6

Papers from the General Council Meeting on 18 February 2017

A Presentation on the Annual Report by the Principal 6

B Presentation of the Report of the Business Committee 18

General Council Meeting of 10 June 2017: Annex to Billet

Papers for the General Council Meeting on 10 June 2017

1 Formal communications from the University Court

The following Draft Resolutions have been received:

9/2017 Foundation of a Chair of Environmental Law10/2017 Foundation of Additional Chairs of Finance (2 chairs)11/2017 Foundation of a Chair of Infection Medicine12/2017 Foundation of a Chair of Interdisciplinary Science13/2017 Foundation of a Chair of Software Engineering14/2017 Foundation of a Chair of Quantum Technology Innovation15/2017 Alteration of the title of the Chair of Classroom Learning16/2017 Foundation of a Personal Chair of Jurisprudence17/2017 Foundation of a Sir Timothy O’Shea Chair of Veterinary Informatics and Data Science18/2017 Alteration of the title of the Chair of Learning, Analytics and Informatics19/2017 Foundation of a Chair of Material Design and Innovation20/2017 Foundation of a Chair of Isotope Geochemistry21/2017 Foundation of a Chair of Food and Environmental Security22/2017 Undergraduate Degree Programme Regulations23/2017 Postgraduate Degree Programme Regulations24/2017 Foundation of a Personal Chair of Anti-Racist and Multicultural Education25/2017 Foundation of a Personal Chair of Acoustics and Audio Signal Processing26/2017 Foundation of a Personal Chair of Early Modern History27/2017 Foundation of a Personal Chair of Food Marketing & Society28/2017 Foundation of a Personal Chair of Ethics and Epistemology29/2017 Foundation of a Personal Chair of Roman Law30/2017 Foundation of a Personal Chair of Social History31/2017 Foundation of a Personal Chair of Social Policy and Research Methods32/2017 Foundation of a Personal Chair of War and Peace33/2017 Foundation of a Personal Chair of Russian and Sociolinguistics34/2017 Foundation of a Personal Chair of Evolutionary Linguistics35/2017 Foundation of a Personal Chair of History of Art36/2017 Foundation of a Personal Chair of Economic and Social History37/2017 Foundation of a Personal Chair of Renal Physiology38/2017 Foundation of a Personal Chair of Veterinary Epidemiology39/2017 Foundation of a Personal Chair of Cellular and Systems Neuroscience40/2017 Foundation of a Personal Chair of Global Health and Development41/2017 Foundation of a Personal Chair of Tissue Engineering42/2017 Foundation of a Personal Chair of Quantitative Trait Genetics43/2017 Foundation of a Personal Chair of Immunology44/2017 Foundation of Personal Chair of Comparative Medicine45/2017 Foundation of a Personal Chair of Stem Cell and Cancer Biology46/2017 Foundation of a Personal Chair of Neurodegeneration47/2017 Foundation of a Personal Chair of Medicines Discovery48/2017 Foundation of a Personal Chair of Neonatal Medicine49/2017 Foundation of a Personal Chair of Molecular Imaging and Healthcare Technology50/2017 Foundation of a Personal Chair of Respiratory Medicine51/2017 Foundation of a Personal Chair of Biological Physics

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52/2017 Foundation of a Personal Chair of Wall-Crossing53/2017 Foundation of a Personal Chair of Theoretical Chemistry54/2017 Foundation of a Personal Chair of Particulate Materials Processing55/2017 Foundation of a Personal Chair of Synthesis and Chemical Biology56/2017 Foundation of a Personal Chair of Collider Physics57/2017 Foundation of a Personal Chair of Global Health Infection and Immunity58/2017 Foundation of a Personal Chair of Evolutionary Ecology59/2017 Foundation of a Personal Chair of Computational Biomechanics60/2017 Foundation of a Personal Chair of Computational Bioinformatics61/2017 Foundation of a Personal Chair of Nuclear Envelope Biology62/2017 Foundation of a Personal Chair of Polymer Chemistry63/2017 Foundation of a Personal Chair of NMR Spectroscopy64/2017 Foundation of a Personal Chair of Computational Neuroscience65/2017 Foundation of a Personal Chair of Theoretical High Energy Physics66/2017 Foundation of a Personal Chair of Climate and Low Carbon Innovation67/2017 Foundation of a Personal Chair of Business Analytics68/2017 Foundation of a Personal Chair of Aquaculture Genetics

2 Report of the Academic Standing Committee for the General Council meeting on 10 June 2017

Convener of the Academic Standing Committee: Professor Stephen Hillier

The Academic Standing Committee (ASC) aims to channel relevant educational issues through the General Council Business Committee (GCBC) and onwards to the University Court. Of the four key themes for the GCBC for Session 2016-2017, the priority for the ASC remains: “The Student Experience, and in particular, Teaching & Learning, to help ensure that levels of excellence and consistency are achieved across the University…”

The ASC has met twice so far this year, focusing on two aspects of University activity that strongly impact The Student Experience: internationalisation and academic staff development.

On 20 March 2017, Vice-Principal International Professor James Smith attended to provide an overview of the University’s Global Engagement Plan. Global objectives are presently grouped into three key areas: Community, Exchange and Partnerships. ASC heard how the University’s network of global offices was expanding to provide administrative support for international projects in priority geographic regions. VP Smith reported how ways in which the University offers education were continuing to evolve. In particular, there has been a growth in online distance learning and an increase in international applications, which, at 7%, is ahead of the national average. Creative ways to engage with online learners were necessary to ensure their fullest integration into the University, including summer schools to meet with tutors, ‘virtual’ graduations and a website tailored to specific needs. The ASC were impressed how much thought and effort was being put into enhancing The International Student Experience

ASC were pleased to receive a presentation on 11 May 2017 from Dr Jon Turner in his capacity as Director, Institute for Academic Development (IAD). The IAD remit is to provide direct support aimed at staff and students in teaching, learning and researcher development in the form of courses, workshops and a growing range of online resources. It also provides mentoring and advice for staff and students and supports networks and communities of practise around the

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University. The ASC agreed that the IAD’s work has considerable potential to further enhance The Student Experience through supporting excellence in teaching and learning across the University.

The ASC are greatly encouraged by the work going on in the international directorate and the IAD, and have fed back through GCBC and Court Assessors that it should continue to receive the University’s fullest support.

3 Report of the Constitutional Standing Committeefor the General Council meeting on 10 June 2017

Convener of the Constitutional Standing Committee: Professor David Munro

Under new convenership, the Constitutional Standing Committee has focused on two key issues during the 2016-17 session. Firstly, a review of the implications for the University of Edinburgh of the UK leaving the European Union following the referendum held on 23 June 2016. On 30th January the Committee held an open meeting, attended by 17 members of the General Council’s Business Committee, at which Tracey Slaven, the University’s Deputy Secretary for Strategic Planning, confirmed that the University’s work on scenario planning is a dynamic process which started prior to the referendum and will continue to respond to the situation as it evolves during the period of negotiating the terms of the UK exit from the EU. The process of scenario planning looks at the political impact on the University’s long-term financial position whilst also developing mitigation responses for both the immediate and medium-term. It was agreed that the Constitutional Standing Committee would endeavour to keep abreast of this developing situation and in this context committee members were made aware of The University and Europe news website (http://www.ed.ac.uk/news/eu) which contains updates on the latest statements and discussion on the subject as well as advice and support for staff and students.

The committee has also given consideration to the ongoing formal review of the Scottish Code for Good Higher Education Governance. A draft of the Revised Code was circulated to members of the Business Committee of the General Council and Professor Ann Smyth, a member of the Steering Group reviewing the Code, was invited to attend an open meeting of the committee on 8 June to discuss how the code has evolved into its present shape and how it may impact upon both the University of Edinburgh and the General Council.

4 Report of the Finance and Services Standing Committeefor the General Council meeting on 10 June 2017

Convener of the Finance and Services Standing Committee: Sir Philip Mawer

The Committee’s programme of meetings for the 2016-17 academic year is now well underway.

Each year the Committee receives a presentation from the Director of Finance on the University’s Annual Report and Accounts. On 8 February, the Committee received a presentation from Mr Phil McNaull on the Report and Accounts for the year ending 31 July 2016. These covered the last period of the University’s 2012-16 strategic plan.

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The 2016 Accounts represent a further step forward in the development of an integrated approach to reporting how the University has used all of its capital resources (not simply financial) and how its activities have impacted the external world as well as its own staff and students. The University continues to be in a strong financial position, although its operating surplus in 2016 was lower. A very significant investment programme is underway, funded by substantial borrowing taking advantage of relatively low rates of interest. Challenges and risks to the University’s continued progress were identified and discussed by the Committee, including the effects of ‘Brexit’ and of changes in Government funding policies. Nevertheless, the University is better placed than many to rise to these challenges.In support of the Business Committee’s key emphases for the 2016-17 session, the following two meetings of the Committee explore two of the four development themes identified in the University’s 2016 Strategic Plan. The first of these meetings, held on 27 March, focussed on Digital Transformation and Data Science. Professor Richard Kenway, Vice-Principal, High Performance Computing, introduced discussion with a fascinating, and in some respects disturbing account of the rapid pace of development in Big Data, Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, during which he highlighted not only the implications these would have for the University but also the wider economic, political and social opportunities and challenges, and the ethical dilemmas they would pose. As one of the five university partners in the Alan Turing Institute (the UK national centre for data science), Edinburgh is well-placed to benefit from, and to lead the development of thinking about the issues which exploitation of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence will entail for us all.

Discussion following Professor Kenway’s presentation focussed on the challenges and opportunities to society and to the University in understanding and handling the consequences of these developments. Among the opportunities to the University are closer partnerships with major organisations seeking to develop a safe and secure infrastructure for a data-rich world. The challenges include that of ensuring that the education given to today’s students equips them to understand and to use the different tools now rapidly becoming available, which will impact many different professions. The Committee was excited and stimulated by what Professor Kenway told them.

The next meeting, to be held on 22 May (just after the deadline for submission of this report) will enable the Committee to explore a further theme of the University’s current strategic plan, partnerships with industry. Dr George Baxter, Chief Executive Officer of Edinburgh Research and Innovation (ERI), will discuss with the Committee his plans for the development of ERI. I will report to the next meeting of the General Council on that discussion.

5 Report of the Public Affairs Standing Committeefor the General Council Meeting on 10 June 2017

Convener of the Public Affairs Standing Committee: Mr Matthew McPherson

When I served on the University's court, I challenged the view of the Vice Convener that two years was an adequate and appropriate amount of time to consider institutional change, by saying "At your age, two years may pass like a fortnight, but I'm only here for one!". Yet again, I had succeeded in offending almost everyone in the room. But little did I know that a year later I would serve on the General Council, and my four year term would come to a conclusion just as I felt as though I was getting started.

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It has been a great pleasure serving each of you as a member of the Business Committee. To be on such a committee, surrounded by inspirational and thoughtful friends and colleagues is a great honour, and it has given me as much as I hope I have given it. If you will allow me, I would like to make this final report an overview of our achievements since we came together.

My view of the Public Affairs Standing Committee (PASC) is that it exists to establish, defend and enhance the reputation and relevance of the General Council. In everything we have done, we looked carefully at almost all aspects of the University's work, and pushed for not only their ear, but for their considered action, on issues that we believe graduates care passionately.

There is no denying that a transition is taking place in the relationship formed between the University and the rapidly growing and diversifying graduate population. Where a financial relationship was the perceived principle behind the continued bond, over my time at the University it is clear that this has developed into something much more meaningful. PASC has been a driving force behind this positive change. Having met with the University on numerous occasions, PASC has encouraged and overseen the University's expansion on relationship development with the graduate body. It has encouraged the University's doors remaining firmly open for people long after they walk across that stage and get hit on the head by John Knox's breeches (for a reason I am yet to truly understand). This has included the summer's successful Alumni Weekend (along with several events throughout the year of which everyone is welcome), and vastly improved relevance in the communications graduates receive from this great institution.

PASC is not only informed on the goings on of the University but exists moreover to strive to hold the University to account on their action and at times inaction on matters that are important to students - past and present. This has led us to pushing for progress on matters including the Higher Education Scotland Bill; partnership working regarding internationalisation; the ongoing improvements of communication strands between the University and graduates; and most recently University transport, including the development of green travel and the free shuttle bus services.

PASC also holds responsibility for overseeing the programme of General Council events throughout the year. An extremely successful half-yearly meeting with one of the Principal's final Council appearances preceded an excellent talk by the Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament, Ken MacKintosh. Furthermore, this summer we look forward to our half-yearly meeting in June, where we will be venturing to Little France to learn more about the world-leading work of our medical scientists.

The General Council, like the University, will never complete its work. For as with all progress, it continues to throw up new challenges, but crucially, create new opportunities that will allow people from all over the world to flourish. I have every confidence that we will continue to work together to ensure that work can be done. Thank you for your support over the years, and for your continued support to this very precious institution.

6 Meetings of the Business Committee

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The Committee has met once since its last published Report, viz. 4 May 2017.

Papers from the General Council Meeting on 18 February 2017

A Presentation of the Annual Report of the Universityat the General Council Meeting on 18 February 2017

Principal and Vice-Chancellor: Professor Sir Timothy O’SheaPrincipal: Chancellor’s Assessor, Chair, Convener of the Business Committee, Members of the General Council, a tremendous pleasure to give you my 15th report as specified, as you all will be aware, in the 1858 Act, so I have no choice, but I’ve always enjoyed it. As the Convener of the Business Committee said, there is a really strong and harmonious relationship between our General Council and University management. This is not uniformly the case across Scotland. Even so, Scotland is a relatively small place; one can still see other dimensions, so we are in a very happy position there. I really value the guidance and counsel of the Business Committee, being very ably led, and I do want to add my thanks to Charles who did a really wonderful job when he was Convener. I also want to thank most profoundly the General Council Assessors on the University Court. We have a very high quality University Court, harmonious, productive and the General Council Assessors who serve on that do an absolutely outstanding job and I’m very appreciative. I also want to express my appreciation for the participation of senior General Council members in the ceremonial. For whatever cultural reasons I quite enjoy processing down the High street to St Giles for whatever service it might be. The service to St Andrews where all the Knights Thistle and the Herald come out in their gear is probably the most interesting and it doesn’t matter how awful the November weather, there may be a complete dearth of Vice-Principals, but there are always loyal members of the General Council processing in the drizzle with me.

The last thing, I want to say a little bit about where we are. This is a very interesting place. Our location here is known about. We have a history going back 800 years. One consequence of the most recent renovations is a very careful archaeological survey. So, pretty much exactly 800 years ago, the Dominicans, the Blackfriars, they had a collegiate house here and it was well respected. And if you know about the different Orders, these aren’t the greedy ones. They were not greedy or rich. They basically lived like a commune. There wasn’t anything much in the way of personal wealth. Very strong educational lines.. St. Albert..if you know about saints, he was a key academic figure who was a Dominican. At the time of the Reformation, obviously, it was closed down under very good order. People of the city liked the Dominicans, and they went off. And then because of this location, so very close to the University, we had both the Royal High School and the Royal Infirmary on here. And we have this beautiful early Georgian building at the front, and you can think about the ghost of Lister or the ghost of Walter Scott, all sorts of extraordinary names of people who were here.

Came into the hands of the University in the 20th century and gosh we made a terrible mess of it. There was an assortment, mostly of Georgian buildings and the insides were bodged up, it was quite a mess really. The last lot to be working in here was archaeology. And then it was renovated, with wonderful support from George David and his family, to become the Edinburgh Centre for

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Carbon Innovation and I think renovated most beautifully., And doing what we aim to do at the Quarter Mile, which is nasty modern 50s/60s/70s stuff on the inside and outside taken away and basically taken back to the original, beautiful Georgian building at the front. So being very careful of the stonework and inside being very careful. Basically this is a building, behind you was a courtyard and then behind that is the fancier Georgian building. And the space in between has been turned into a lovely atrium rather than a rabbit warren. And of the Georgian buildings in Britain this has the best energy efficiency, so very appropriate we should have the highest BREEAM rating because it’s the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon innovation.

The University has done some very nice modern buildings but it has also done some spectacular renovations. You will be amazed when you go into the McEwan Hall. At the McEwan Hall, we’re not the pioneers, the first folks who did this were the National Galleries. They went underneath into their basement that joined up the galleries on the mound and made a nice space. The second to do it was the museum in Chambers Street, realised they had a great big Victorian basement and turned that into a lovely space. And then it occurred to us that the floor plate in the McEwan Hall is actually bigger than the ground floor. And now that has been beautifully renovated, you’ll be able to enter it directly from Bristo Square. The upper gallery has been renovated, all the beautiful artwork has been renovated, and because we have obviously a great concern with access, one of the things in this building you will have noticed is perfect disabled access and the McEwan Hall will have disabled access with a proper lift installed, and I think you will be really pleased with how the McEwan Hall comes out.

And then we have the wonderful challenge opportunity of the last city centre hospital. So the Quartermile, that whole building, that is obviously an enormous challenge. It’s a very interesting building. The best thing it’s got is eight wards. Eight enormous, north facing wards where you’ve got north facing windows that were built with proper medical notions so lots of air and lots of light. Lots of windows on the east and west, small windows on the north, lots of ceiling space. Any one of those spaces would be a magnificent environment for innovation and entreprenurship. And we’ve got eight of them! In a beautiful Victorian building. So we’re doing some very nice things there.

I will now go into the regular part of my report. This is a beautiful document. It is my text and those of you who have heard me before, I basically go through it backwards. You don’t need to track me as I do it but the slides are basically me going through here backwards. So now everything I will comment on will be from that beautiful report. So let’s look at where we are. This is the student body by College. What do we notice? Well, one thing you might notice is, and it’s more now obviously, now it’s more than 38,000. In 2002 we had 21000 students, so we’ve been growing the student body at around 2000 students a year. The other thing you will notice is that the Arts, Humanities and Social Science is very big: 22,500 000 students. But for a medical school almost 6000 students is a lot. 6000 students doesn’t look like a lot because you are comparing it with the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Science, but 6000 students is a lot. So we are a very big university. We are one of the biggest in the UK. We’re not as big as Manchester. We teach more subjects than Manchester. We’re big and we’re very broad. We are a bit unusual for a research university and this has stayed consistent, if I’m honest this is a surprise. I’d imagined as we were developing the university we would start moving towards 50% postgraduate. But our undergraduate programme is immensely attractive, particularly to international students and so the undergraduate does represent two thirds of the student body. For major research universities that is unusual. If you look at somebody like MIT or LSE, LSE is something like ¾ postgraduate. We

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are a little bit unusual for a university in the world top 20 to be educating so many undergraduates. But that works very well. We have a respectable number of PhD students, more than 5000 but actually not enough. We need more of those particularly. In terms of domicile, I always talk about it as a third, One third. One third. But it’s not quite a third. The bit that is a third is Scotland, One third of our students come from Scotland. One third of our students come from outside the EU and then less than a third, really a quarter of our students come from England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

So that’s where we come from and I guess there’s always been a question, is Edinburgh a Scottish university or is it an international university? The answer is extremely simple: we’re both. It really doesn’t make sense to say is Edinburgh really Scottish or is it really international? I mean anything that has got 12,000 Scottish domiciled students in it is pretty jolly Scottish. And making contributions to Scotland. And as the student numbers have been growing the Scottish numbers have been growing but they’ve not been growing as fast as the international numbers. So the student numbers that have been growing the fastest are the non EU.

The second group that has been growing quite fast are the EU and the English, Welsh and Northern Irish and the Scottish numbers have been growing gently. Where did they come from? Well this ought not to surprise anyone of any age. So there is on that slide, what jumps out at me is, there is a country where the proportion of the student body has actually dropped over the last wee while. Any guesses which one it is? It’s the United States. When this building was operational as a hospital, 10% of our students came from the US. 10%. Now it’s down to 6% but 10% came from the US because we were, undoubtedly in the 18th century, we were the best university in the world, with the best medical school in the world and now we have to make do with being 17th or 19th. At the time of Principal Robertson we were the best, and if you were a US family with resources and you wanted your son to learn the law or to learn medicine or to be a Presbyterian minister or a philosopher this was the place you wanted them to go to. So we’re unusual. The only other university that is like this in the UK, is St Andrews. Most British universities the dominant foreign group is the People’s Republic of China, and as you can see we have got 2606, but St Andrews and ourselves are the two odd ones. We, of course, have the most US students of any British university and we have more US students than we have Chinese students. An interesting one.

And then an interesting one for the Chancellor’s Assessor is, we are immensely popular in Germany and the Germans particularly come to us for law, they love the Law School. And when you ask them, don’t you understand and they say no, no, it’s a bit like Continental, and anyway the international law is so strong. We are definitely a go to place for talent in law scholars from Germany. Canada, obviously, for historical reasons… and of course if you think about it, Canada is, compared to the US, over represented because of its population. Australia, Malaysia.. growing.. and this is an example of something where league tables help. If you’re Malaysian and you get into a world top 20 university you are paid for. Before we were in the World top 20 we did not have that many Malaysian students. And now we’re in of course. Malaysian families think it’s nice if the Malaysian government pay for its tuition. Healthy from France and Italy, and Hong Kong. Interestingly if you take Hong Kong and Singapore and you can’t see Taiwan there, but Taiwan is just tucked underneath Poland. Then if you’re looking at students whose first language is Mandarin or Cantonese we’re on about 3500 of those. So very popular there.

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A Country there that is obviously massively under-represented is India. When you reckon that India is about one fifth of the world’s population and India has a very underdeveloped higher education system. It would be...provided…how does one express this...there is something remotely representing rationality in our immigration laws…it would be extremely surprising if, 10 years from now the biggest group bigger than the US or China was India. Certainly if you look at the structure of India, the demographic, India has more young people, a rapidly rising middle class, they want high quality university education and India is a country where one of the available languages is English. Obviously we have an office in Beijing but clearly for the long term having an office in Mumbai is essential. So that’s an interesting pattern there. That’s the top 20.

In terms of the university as a whole 160 countries are represented in the student body of those that physically attend and those that use the massive open online MOOCS. We’ve reached two and a half million learners now with these massive open online courses. In 201 countries. There’s seven we haven’t got to: five are islands about the size of this room and the other two are North Korea and the Vatican. And not that many people live in the Vatican City which is probably the explanation, although they do have the internet. So that’s 20 of the 160 countries, the top 20. Look at our pattern of applications. Well, in the last round, it’s a ratio of a bit more than 10:1. These are competent applications, that is we are not saying to people you can’t come because you’re not going to get the grades, we’re saying to people you can’t come because there are other people with better grades than you who we’ve offered the place to. So nearly every one of those 62,000 has got the Highers or the ‘A’ levels or the international Baccalaureate score that will allow them to study. It’s good news for the administration here, for while it is a lot of work to process, it does mean that it is oversubscribed. The most oversubscribed: Veterinary Medicine is around 26:1. The vet school is the hardest thing in this university to get into and is dominated by girls who outperform boys in school examinations. 85% of veterinary undergraduates are female.

Second hardest is Law. We’re very popular for law. And the third is Human Medicine. Literature is very popular here; History, Philosophy, very high patterns of applications. Year on year there is a rise in the number of applications for the undergraduate programme. We have not had to consider shutting any of the 600 routes in the last fifteen years, including some like Sanskrit and Chemical engineering, which is very unusual for a British University. Most British universities is an ecology where they would close a subject like Arabic if no one comes to study it or mechanical engineering because it’s very expensive.

We are booming and appointing some quite specialised Chairs. Assistant Principal Harrison with Personal Chair of Financial Services, Marketing and Consumption and quite a while ago our school of Divinity went ecumenical and started appointing Catholics and Jews, so we now have Professor Cowan who is the Chair of Feminist and Queer Legal Studies. And so we have interesting patterns. We see ethnology philosophy very strong. Something I’m pleased to see is booming in the University is Classics. Professor Llewellyn-Jones, very distinguished, with a Personal Chair in Ancient Greek and Iranian Studies, we’re doing very well indeed in that domain. A consequence of this is the Leventis Foundation which has sponsored, in this University, a Chair in Byzantine studies, one of two in the UK. Likewise very strong in Islamic Studies. An Iraq Chair is an established funded chair. We appointed Professor Hameen-Antilla to the Iraq Chair of Arabic and Islamic Studies

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We have a nice pattern of Honorary Professors and I will be joining those, unpaid of course, in Moray House School of Education.

Chair titles tell you what we’re doing. Personal Chair in Medical Statistics tell us we’re doing a lot of work on epidemiology. Personal Chair of Tissue Repair and Regeneration, so we’ve got stem cell on the go. Equine clinical sciences….we’re very good at horse medicine. The Horse hospital is at Easter Bush and people fly their special stallions from the Middle East to Edinburgh to get special care they need.

We have some very good appointments: Gustav Born, Chair of Vascular Biology. We’ve taken charge of chickens! Professor Sparks Chair of Avian Biology and Co-Director of NARF (National Avian Research Facility). There are two large chicken facilities at Easter Bush. Site one for sick chickens: the SARS virus was identified here. Other end of site is the place for healthy chickens. How many chickens are there in the world? 50 billion. That is seven chickens for each person on the planet. When the world is eating animal protein it is almost certainly eating chicken. And we have the major facility, both in sick chickens and making chickens healthier and meatier. So it’s a very nice niche to have.

We have a lot of distinguished Honorary Professors. Looking at the list of Personal Chairs of Digital Communications and Signal processing and Computational Astrophysics. We are one of the dominant universities in world in Computer Science so it’s not too surprising to see Personal Chairs in things like Data Management on New Hardware. Very strong in Bio tech, so some interesting Chairs there.

Cyber security very important. It’s not possible to make your online bank account totally secure. Breaches in cyber security happen because people write their passwords down and leave them on their desk or someone rings up pretending to be new boss and asking for a password for the University system. The key issue is privacy. On the one hand everyone thinks that privacy is a good thing. Is it a good thing? Well if we have fierce privacy not only can we not address our 250K alumni with emails but can’t aggregate patient data. Because even if we anonymise things, it is possible, if you wanted to, usually to deconstruct it. So the privacy issue is a difficult one. So if you’re looking at patterns of need, whether social services or medical, you need to access it.

We have Professor Masterton, Chair in Future Infrastructure, which is a sophisticated type of Civil Engineering. I will be made an Honorary Professor in the School of Informatics, so I will be double badged, my name will appear twice.

In terms of international acclaim our Architectural students do brilliantly. They took first prize in San Juan. I opened a fabulous exhibition in Mumbai that had been created by thirty University of Edinburgh architecture students on placements who were redesigning parts of Mumbai. The part I found most interesting was the vulture haven. A problem that you have in Mumbai is, with increasing urbanisation the vulture population drops. If you’re a Parsi you need the vultures as part of your funeral processes. One student designed a way to get more vultures back into the centre of Mumbai, which showed an acute understanding of particular needs.

Hyperloop, this is such a fabulous thing! Just imagine yourself on the train. In terms of the physics it’s perfectly possible to get from Waverley to Kings Cross in fourteen minutes. So we have a group

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of thirty students who are working on this project. It would be very expensive, involving a lot of powerful magnets, but not impossible. For some of us, this would be a big plus to our lives.

Sir Adrian Bird keeps winning international prizes for his work on Epigenetics and shared the Shaw Prize. Richard Morris is an international mega star in Neuroscience and won the Brain Prize.

I would want to commend our students and motivate our staff by a very good system of Teaching Awards and here is a list of some of those. Sian Bayne, who is also Assistant Principal in Digital Education, is particularly strong. The different teaching awards really do have a powerful effect.

University awards: Dr Bancroft has an award for teaching, Louise Horsfall demonstrates great potential: having a Rising Star Award is a very nice thing to do.

We have recently appointed 250 Chancellor’s Fellows (which will be their first job after PhD). They arrive on an attractive contract designed to let them concentrate almost entirely on research, and over five years will end up on a regular lectureship. More than half of these Chancellor’s fellows fund themselves through international competitions via the EU.

Lovely work in Edinburgh College of Art, in terms of bringing the community in, from Maire Cox. We have some very inspirational things but Dr Gardiner establishing free veterinary services for the companion animals of homeless people is an inspired thing to do, something the vet students would like to contribute their free services to. It’s a brilliant idea and something we can all be very proud of.

This is a very sad slide for me. I’m immensely fond of Tam Dalyell, a close friend of the family. An absolutely wonderful Rector, very engaged in science, a tremendous supporter up to his death. I have the honour of speaking at his memorial service next week and talking about his work for the University.

Wonderful prize for Excellence in Engaging the Public with Science and Sethu Vijayakumar got the prize. He is the main reason we have the UK Centre for Robotics.

We’re doing very well, as we should, in the Honours. Cait MacPhee for Physics. Joanna Wardlaw... we have every type of scanner in the world out at Little France. Susan McVie’s work on youth transition is very important. As has mentioned Charlie Jeffery helping the whole of the UK understand politics. David Fergusson who is Chaplain to the Queen and does really great work, is getting an OBE. Pam Smith’s great on nursing. Really pleased for John Kitchen who has contributed to the university so much. And Sharon Hannah for her work on infrastructure out at Little France.

Very distinguished honorary graduates. I would pick out a couple for you. For me, obviously, as a half Irish person, an honour to greet Michael D Higgins, President of Ireland, who is a genuine academic, he really is a literary scholar, very inspirational when he joined us. Shah Rukh Khan. There was a lovely photo of him in the Playfair. If you know about Bollywood he’s a real star. Shah Rukh Khan did this wonderful thing. His ceremony was at the General Assembly Hall. He had his white bow tie, he had his gown. As well as a Bollywood Star he is a philanthropist so he’d done this great response and then he said to the audience which was entirely comprised of our Indian students “I suppose you’d like me to dance”? Of course the audience went wild. He threw the gown off, took off his bow tie, ladies in saris and Indian music appeared and he started dancing.

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The crowd went wild and tweeted to all relatives in India. There were700,000 tweets. The whole of India knows that Sha Rukh Khan came here to get an honorary degree at Edinburgh. Very powerful stuff.

Chris van der Kuyl, Minecraft entrepreneur. Very inspirational figure whose late father was a very distinguished member of staff at Moray House, so very strong personal connection.

The last person I would point to there is Dr Haruhisa Handa, someone who uses his wealth for philanthropy and for the arts. He is Japanese Ainu with a strong interest in China, Buddhism and singing. He gave an extremely emotional rendition of “Danny Boy” at his distinguished ceremony, so that stays in the mind.

I would draw your attention to Prince Albert of Monaco, who’s been very supportive. The relationship between the Monegasque royal family and the University goes back more than 100 years, goes back to expeditions. It’s been revived recently and extremely good indeed to have that connection.

And very nice that we were able to honour Sally Magnusson who offers so much free support. If you were to hire her it would cost a lot of money. She comperes and sings for the university all over the place. And the other person I would mention is Robert-Jan Smits. Robert has been very helpful to the University in terms of our relationship to Europe. I commented on EU funding. So what has happened since Brexit to our EU funding? Well this is the sort of language that would maybe make sense to you if you’re an economist. I’m a great believer that universities can often be countercyclical, if that makes sense. So the instruction I gave on June 23rd…we did various things, we sent a very positive letter to all incoming EU undergraduates and they all came. We sent positive messages to EU staff, about a third of our academic staff come from the EU. And I said to EU colleagues “everybody’s going to be very miserable about EU funding, put in more grant applications.” So our EU money which was at the high base has gone up by 40% since the announcement of Brexit. But obviously it’s quite important to have friends and Robert Jan-Smit is a key friend.

So we’re a big thing if we were a company: £908 million. About a third of the activity is research grants. There is a thing called the dual funding model in the UK and the notion is you get a pound from the government for research support and then you match it with another pound from competitive grants. In our University we get a pound from the Scottish government and we match it with four pounds. So the reason that we are so healthy is that we have a tremendous multiplier, very successful at getting research grants about 2.5 times the average, and very successful at creating companies. We are a substantial organisation. In money terms we’re below Oxford and Cambridge, who are smaller in terms of students and staff but who have a very nice Press.

Review of the year: very nice James Tait Black Book Prize, always goes well. Loved the Kelpies. The impact study for Biggar Economics is good because Biggar Economics is the one the Scottish Government use and trust. There was the important commemoration of the nurses. It’s very interesting the overall breadth of stem cell research, applying regenerative medicine to blood, so that gives a handle on leukaemia.

We are working very hard to support students who are seeking asylum. We have currently got five Scottish domiciled Syrian asylum seekers who were given financial support to staying here. Colin

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Lucas the former Vice-Chancellor of University of Oxford and some others are engaged in what they call the People University. And what this is, is an international organisation to help refugees get into University, they help around 6000. I’m keen on that.

We had a lovely visit from Oliver Stone and we have £26million in the new Centre for Tissue Repair. And we just do very well in Europe: Edinburgh took 20% of the UK whole for this year’s Erasmus and International Credit Mobility initiative.

Very important work in geosciences on storing gas. Good to celebrate Dolly the Sheep. I met her the day before she met her taxidermist. The other sheep didn’t like her, she was a very vain sheep, probably all that attention.

Valkyrie, which comes from NASA, a fabulous robot, great fun.

Project Elpis: two students who are looking at the current refugee crisis and realised that one of the problems these poor people fleeing their country had was communications. Funnily enough a key thing was keeping your mobile phone charged so you could keep in contact. So they developed a solar powered mobile phone charging units where the clients are people who are fleeing, crossing borders.

We’ve done some important work on menstrual hygiene. Important work in refugee camps and I think the altruistic motivations of our students and the staff do come through very nicely.

We’ve done a very large study on Parkinson’s disease. We have the oldest nursing department in Europe. Originally nurse education was kept out of universities, and traditionally the notion that a nurse might be a graduate was seen as a nonsensical thing. The odd well educated woman who had a degree might become a nurse for reasons of personal motivation but you didn’t need to be a graduate to become a nurse. So we were the first university to get into nurse education. We have the highest ranked nursing education by far in the UK and that’s because its research led. But they had a reunion going back to the first cohort 60 years ago which was really inspiring and our wonderful Chancellor was involved in that.

I really liked this one, except we were too slow. Abesh and Varun, both Masters students at Edinburgh College of Art, addressed the issue of 3d audio. One of the big wins in ECA is that we hoped that they would establish links with informatics. We saw the importance of computing. And that really has happened in all sorts of ways. They created this company with a very good name – Two Big Ears – and we were just about to put a bit of money into it when Facebook came and bought the whole thing, just like that. So very successful for them and very inspiring for the other students and we need to be a little bit faster, because the moment you heard about this project you could see it was absolutely super.

Deborah Fry has been doing very important work on child protection. Very pleased. I told you last year we were going to set up a fifth global academy in Agriculture and Food Security. We recruited Geoff Simm from the Scottish Rural University College to lead it. It’s getting into a very good shape and it’s very clear to us that in the developing world there would be massive interest in that and that’s going very well.

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Another example of student altruism: a befriending scheme for adults with learning difficulties, Best Buddies. This is demanding stuff that they’re doing. When one says befriending we may be talking about an only child whose parent has aids. We may be talking about somebody who, they themselves is in a wheelchair, or challenged by multiple epileptic fits. So when you sign up for a befriending scheme you are really signing up for something which is quite likely to be demanding, in the actual experience. It’s not an easy, let’s go to the cinema together and I’ll buy you some popcorn. This is quite demanding really and inspirational that the students do this.

You will be aware of the issues around antimicrobial resistance and we are doing very well with Dr Bachmann on the diagnostics for that.

So let me conclude. Your University is booming, it really is. We are coping with Brexit. Brexit is not our biggest challenge. Our biggest challenge is the Home Office. Obviously, Brexit relates to that challenge, but for us we need mobility. We need the best students from round the world to feel that if they get a place with us they will get a visa. We need the best staff around the world to say that if they accepted a job in the University of Edinburgh, they and their family will get visas, and treated respectfully when they arrive at Heathrow. That is why we say to everybody joining us, never use Heathrow, and instead fly to Edinburgh. I am quite serious, better to go to Amsterdam or Paris. If you are coming into the UK, first time on a visa, better to go to Paris, Amsterdam, or Frankfurt and fly from there to Edinburgh. In addition, of course one of my colleagues can be there at the end of a telephone line.

Obviously, Brexit is a challenge in terms of mobility in relation to the EU, which is very important for us, as the numbers have shown you. The EU is not more important than the rest of the international world. You can conceptualise the EU as being about a third of our international world, so it is important. Important for staff, students and research money. However, we are, for example, increasingly getting our serious research funding from the United States. Here’s an interesting thing. We, at the moment, and obviously I lead this and I spend a lot of time particularly engaging with the deputy First Minister, and engaging with Shirley-Ann Somerville, we have got productive and cordial relations with the Scottish Government. We’ve had argy bargees but they’ve very kindly ring fenced research funding. They have ring fenced teaching funding so that has meant that at a time when the Scottish budget hasn’t been easy we’ve had stability in the two main funding streams they give us. Therefore, I have to say we’re getting on well with the Scottish government.

We’ve got an immense diversity of students, staff and activities. I think that’s a great strength of the university. Sometimes amateur management folk say to me “oh, you should focus. You should have a unique special proposition. Is the University’s unique special proposition Human Medicine or is it Informatics or is it Classical studies?” and I say “No. No. No. We’re good at everything and we’re going to do lots of things.”

Research is world leading. Very strong company formation and, obviously, whatever we do with the Quarter Mile development, some of those big spaces will be related to company development. In addition, we’ve got five important Global Academies. And so, your University is doing very well. And I greatly appreciate your support. Thank you very much.

Chairman: Thank you Principal. That was absolutely marvellous. I thought of the Judge who once said to an Advocate “I’ve been listening to you all morning and I’m none the wiser”. The Advocate

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said “that may be so M’lud but at least you’re better informed”. I consider myself to be better informed as a result of that and I’m sure we all do. Not only are we better informed but we have all been entertained. There was a wonderful light touch to the presentation, we are indebted. In the absence of a hyper link we have to be careful about time to get us up to the Playfair library Hall, we can’t do it at the speed of sound. But there is still plenty of time for questions and I invite these from the floor. Again, please wait for a microphone. The microphone will be your hint that you have been selected.

Ritchie Walker: MA, BSc 1968. I’m a General Council Assessor on the University Court. That was super. I echo what the Chancellor’s Assessor has said. My questions really is whether you would like to make a comment of something that’s in the press from time to time from the Scottish government and that’s the whole vexed issue of Scottish areas of multiple deprivation and our attempt to recruit able and suitably qualified students to come to this university and others. And we know that the areas are not always immediately around Edinburgh, they’re probably in the West of Scotland. But it’s an issue you’ve had to deal with. I wonder if you’d like to comment on it please.

Principal: I’ve strongly made the point, and the Scottish civil servants and Ministers accept the points, so I’m a bit puzzled where we are. It is well understood that using post codes to determine social need is not effective. It really doesn’t help. You can have an area where, in statistical terms, it’s in the bottom 20%. You can go to that area and look at it and you may say, actually there are some very big houses here. There are people here that obviously belong in the top 5%. So this area is much more challenged. Or you may see there is uniformity of housing, there is a good secondary school and this really is not a strong candidate. So if you’re going to assess social need it has to be assessed on the basis of something like household income. There are various markers of need, for example, someone who is an orphan, who has grown up in a care home. A marker of need is someone who is in a household where the parents have never had employment or higher education. There are all sorts of markers. And in terms of our Scottish students, and we’re very concerned with widening participation, in the current intake 55% of our Scottish domiciled students have a marker of social need. So I’m entirely for the concept do we assess social need? Do we determine social need and then use that when we try to prioritise? I think that’s exactly right. Can we do it on postcodes? No. Because you immediately go and you discover that these areas are not homogenous, they are entirely heterogeneous. So, for example, there are islands in Scotland which are nowhere near SIMD20, and yet if you looked visually at some of the houses on the island you would say, well there are certainly people here who have social need but they have been swamped by the owners of the big houses who may not even be resident on the island. If you talk to some MSPs you understand that there are some anomalies. It is well understood that these measures are inadequate and we keep urging them to develop a more appropriate one. This requires more hard work and it requires an address on privacy. If you want to determine that people have social need it takes more than just looking at their postcode, you’ve got to be prepared to ask them are you in receipt of benefits? Please tell us. What is your household income? Are you, for example, paying any income tax or not? And somebody might say, don’t ask me if I pay tax because that’s an invasion of my privacy. It certainly can be done but it can’t be done with postcodes.

Peter De Vink, 1966, BComm. What a fantastic address and how fascinating. The thing that most struck me is, that a country like Norway that has got the same number of people as Scotland really, in relation to its number of students is very well represented and, as you point out, India’s

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not. Fantastic that Malaysia is paying for those students coming to you. Could you talk to Mr Modi? And persuade him to do something similar because it would be a great help to the nation of India to have a similar scheme?

Principal: Very, very good question Peter. First of all your observation with regard to Norway. The reason we have good Norwegian numbers is we have the nearest Vet School to Norway. If you are in Oslo and you ask where is the nearest vet School; it’s in Edinburgh. And we also have the nearest serious engineering school. Norway’s a wonderful place but none of their universities have developed in the way of this one. The difficulty that we have with India is, with all the jurisdictions, the one that has reacted most negatively to all the immigration controls is India. A little summary of the Indian point of view goes: we are part of the family. We were always told we are a part of the family and now you’re subjecting us to these ludicrous checks. If you’re in Beijing you don’t think that you have a historical relationship with the Houses of Parliament or with Edinburgh or something; we’re an exotic foreign place. If you’re in Delhi or Mumbai then London or Edinburgh are part of your world. Historically it’s part of your grandparents’ world. The Chinese put up with the nonsense the Home Office throws at them. The Indians just get insulted, they don’t like it at all. There’s no question, the most populous country in the world, English speaking, booming economy, we really want to relate to India. I’m afraid the government views are, we’ll sell things to India, we’ll have trade relations with India. From our point of view of course, we want movement of people.

David Houston: Phd, Mathematical Physics, 1976. Vice-Chancellor that was a fantastic address and as the Chairman says, very amusing indeed as well as informative. I fear that you may have to pay attention to your cordial relations with the Scottish government in terms of answering this question, but the position of free tuition fees for Scottish undergraduates leads to some limitations on the education of both Scottish and EU students at this university. So if one is trying to maximise access to higher education do you think the free tuition fee policy is a good or bad thing for Scotland?

Principal: I have a very strong commitment to access. I think particularly when you’re talking about the UG programme, where a proportion of those applying, it will be the first time that they or their family have engaged with university, I think a fee is an obstruction. If you look at the position in continental Europe, Scotland is normal in its tuition fee policy. The state funds a number of places so the limitation that we have, of course, is that we are giving out Scottish government funded places, they tell us how many they’re willing to pay for we can’t let in more than were given places for. So there’s a bit of a limitation there. On the other hand if you look at the terrible muddle they’ve got into in England with the loan system which has just turned into a mess really. The accumulated loans have lost about half their value, they’ve been sold on. The English system does not look attractive to me, I would have to say that. If you look at the consequence of the fee regime in England, the consequence has been a very obvious drop off in applications for postgraduate study. Now why do people from English universities who have got undergraduate degrees, why are they suddenly much less likely to do a Masters degree? The reason is they’ve got £27,000 student debt from their fees and they’ve got whichever debt came from their subsistence. So you can do it either way. The Scottish government has chosen to do it the normal European style; the English government has chosen to do what is normal in the US and in terms of access the money will come from somewhere. In Scotland the taxpayer pays; in England the taxpayer ends up paying too because they’ve got to subsidise this ineptly handled loan book. So I mean, I think from the point of view of the family and the students, I think a high

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fee for entry is a barrier. But there are other ways of dealing with things can be explored, some form of graduate taxation? I have no difficulty with the notion that people who are better off that have some form of university education can pay a bit more tax than people who don’t and that bit more tax might be applied to the funding of the undergraduate system as it goes along. So I think it’s an open question, really, but you have to be clear that what is being done in Scotland is not unusual. This is what most European countries do in terms of initial access to higher education.

Kirsty MacGregor: MA Philosophy and Lit, 1981, DipEd. 1982, MBA, 2001. Thank you also for the wonderful presentation which was very entertaining. You made us all feel very proud, in this room, of our association with the University. And this is a question really, I don’t know if you can answer it but if there are two or three things that you feel outstandingly proud of over your own time, over the past 15 years you feel has marked your time here?

Principal: I think I would be proud of the internalisation. I mean when I started 19% of the students in the University came from outside the United Kingdom. I was interested in that. Then when I looked at the situation in 1900 and the answer was 19%. So for the whole of the 20th century the proportion of international students stayed constant. And now we’ve moved from 19% to 43% and I think the University, in all sorts of ways, is richer for that. So I’d be proud of that. I’d be proud that we’ve moved into a leadership position with e-learning. We’ve got 80 online masters which have great promise for the future. We’re heading onto 40 MOOCs reaching 2and a half million, very helpful for the University’s reputation and compared to other universities. I’ve worked very hard at this with my senior team. We’re very good at interdisciplinary: we will have medical projects that will involve statisticians, that will involve social scientists, and so I think the University as a place for high quality interdisciplinary, I think we have improved on that position. Sometimes that involves fiddling about with the way that budgets are allocated to encourage people to do things. So those would be three that I would single out. Oh and probably…as I came to the university I was a trustee of the Courthold in London at Somerset House and we threw the cars out. And I came up here and found, with respect to the Chancellor’s Assessor, a lot of judges had taken the view that, as they were law graduates, they had lifetime parking privileges in the old College quad. I partitioned the task. I would do the hard thing, I would remove the cars from the Old College quad and another colleague would raise the money. There’s a computer keyboard somewhere that has got a single key and you would press it and the letter goes “in all my lifetime of experience nothing more outrageous has ever happened than…your mad idea to stop me parking in the Old College”. I think I got easily the fiercest opposition that I’ve had for anything, was the removal of cars in the Old College quad. And then I bumped into this person who broke all of the Vice-Principal of Advancement’s rules. I met one of your fellow alumni, he had very expensive shoes we talked for a couple of minutes. I observed to him that we had this need. And he said have you any idea how much it would cost. And I said I know exactly. It would cost £1 million. He said he’ll have to talk to the wife, the wife was there and the result is I’m very pleased with the lawn.

Alan Brown: Medical graduate 1963, General Council Court Assessor. Thank you Principal for a wonderful talk. You’ve answered the question a bit but can we come back to the Home Office Problems. Does the Higher Education sector in the UK have any leverage with the Home Office?

Principal: We have some. The battle we have not won is to remove international students from the immigration figures. If we could win that battle, which we haven’t won, life would be very easy. But we have won quite a number of other battles with them. The Conservative government,

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in my experience, has one strange characteristic to it, which is they announce they’re going to do something crazy and you say please don’t do that and then they say no we will. But the third or fourth time of asking they sometimes say oh, all right then. So for example, a battle we won that was really important was undergraduate visa length [which] was tailored around the English three year degree. And we had to go and say to them, look that’s not going to work in Scotland. And they said oh no no, the undergraduate students in Scotland would just have to apply for a second visa. And we said we can’t be disadvantaged by our students having to have two visas when a student going to England just needs the one. And they said okay we’ll add a year to the visas, having refused us the first couple of times. The other quite important victory that we have won is that the overall numbers are not capped. The nightmare would be if we were told you’re allowed 100 international students. For us, it would be a nightmare if we were told it’s a thousand, it would still be the wrong number. But despite some internal pressure in the party, there is no capping. So as a university we can and we do, we perform massively above the UK average for international students. But there is no cap. Nobody is saying you can’t have more than 10% of your student body. That would be a problem for us with 43%, but we have successfully resisted a cap. So that is important and we are in good standing. We’ve had an audit form the Home Office of our procedures and we were successful. When we help a student apply for a visa, the statistical chance they have of success with us is about 99.25%. So that is okay and we work on that. But there is the real pressure within the UK politically to reduce the overall immigration figures and the only way to do that this can currently be done is to reduce the number of international students. That’s the only way because that’s where the hundreds of thousands are: it’s the international students visiting the UK. When we had post study work in Scotland we didn’t have it in England. The statistical work has been done. Students who came here from overseas did not then rush to London to work, they stayed in Edinburgh or Glasgow mostly and worked. And then when they‘d done some work they went back to their home country. Not for the long term but we had some very attractive people working here and paying taxes. So the struggle will continue.

Alan Johnston: MBA 1989. Principal again, congratulations on the enormous impact you’ve had on our great University in the last 15 years. One particular impact has been very successful and managed expansion and I wondered if you had a comment or some thoughts for us on what might be an optimal size or a limit to that expansion in the future?

Principal: A very good question. The advantage of scale is…if you look at something like engineering, it’s got half a dozen sub disciplines. Combined with Heriot Watt we are ranked no. 1 in the UK in general engineering… The advantage of scale is that you can employ a lot of academic colleagues and cover a lot of waterfront. So a big medical school allows you to cover a lot of medical specialities, also a big engineering school. A big Informatics School allows us to cover databases and robots and theoretical computer science and speech and such, so my own feeling and it will be up to my successor and his senior team to see where they want to go is that the university can certainly usefully be a bit bigger. We think we’re big, a little bit smaller than the University of Texas in Austin. When I was there in the early 70s, the University of Austin, a very successful university it’s about 80,000 students. Some of the world’s great universities are really very substantial and the advantage of being substantial…and we’re on seven different sites, three medical sites, a big humanities site in the middle…I would see growth.. we couldn’t have moved in such a decisive way into Byzantine studies if we didn’t have one of the biggest departments in classical studies in the UK. We couldn’t do that. Likewise we couldn’t really be in fire safety

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engineering or some of the more arcane engineering specialities if we didn’t have a great big Engineering School. So I think there is a real advantage to it.

The challenge of course is to find ways of ensuring a sense of community. Some parts of the university the Vet School and the Divinity School have really got it. Some other parts like the regular Medical School, is very big, and there are real issues like how do you design things so that at a personal level….right now when we take staff and students together we are a community of in excess of 50,000, that’s quite a big community.. the only way you can cope with that is to say this is my building and this is my common room and I think we have to work at that. But providing that community building is done there isn’t any reason why one shouldn’t grow. But I think this growth must be strategic though. I think one should be asking oneself do we really want the engineering School to be bigger? We’ve been growing it rapidly recently. Do we want Literature, Languages and Culture to be bigger? I certainly think we do because we’ve just added Korean, which is wonderful. But there are other languages which we don’t have. The only way you grow the modern languages we have is by growing the size of LLC. Each extra language is going to need another half dozen academics who specialise in it. So I think growth is a good thing. I think the university has benefited from it but the issue to watch is always the sense of community.

Margaret Tait: Thank you very much and thank you Principal again. A very educative, informative and entertaining talk. I very much enjoyed your presentation but unfortunately you’ve left out one of my pet subjects and I’ll return to that in a moment. You must wonder why we turn out every February to hear the Principal giving his report and the answer is we’re only a small drop in the bucket compared with 211,000 we’ve been hearing about. But every one of these 211,000 graduates is interested in the reputation of this University and that it is maintained. And I would like to say and I’m sure everyone would agree that not only has this University’s reputation been maintained but it has been considerably enhanced under your leadership and I would like to thank you for that. Coming to one of my pet subjects that is not listed as one of your conclusions is something that’s coming up the political agenda, particularly this year with a female Prime Minister and a lot of female people in government. And that is the gender pay gap. And you’ll remember when I was an Assessor of Court I mentioned the fact. Remember Members of Court that when you’re dishing out the pocket money to your children or grandchildren one pound to the boys and 88p for the girls and when the girls say that’s not fair, you say I am preparing you for life and, in particular, horrors if you get a job at the University of Edinburgh. Now I know things have improved at the lower end of the career structure. How is it at the Professorial level? Please tell me the situation is better?

Principal: A very good question Margaret. The situation is better. We have reduced the gender pay gap by 3% in the last calendar year. It’s obviously rather structured by age, so if you look at the senior staff in four quartiles there are less women and more overpaid men in the top quartile, and then the situation gradually improves as you go down the quartiles. But as people get older they move up the way. So we are improving. We have our higher proportion of female grade ten and Professorial staff than our peers. It’s not dramatic but we are a few percentage points better than the average Russell Group University and at university level we do have Athena Swan Silver, which is good but obviously we can still improve things. Fortunately, in happy preparation for your question, we were looking at the data yesterday, which tells us that in the last year there has been a really good improvement, but it takes year on year to do. And we have many people who have careers of forty years with us, many people who have careers of twenty five years with us, so improving processes in terms of promoting women, which we have, and in terms of rewarding

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them it takes a while to work its way through the system. But it is working its way through the system. Very good Question. Thank you.

Chairman: Ladies and gentlemen. Again, I think we should show our appreciation to the Principal. Unless there is any other competent business, and I’m hoping there is not, I would invite the Convener to move the motion for adjournment.

B Presentation of the Report of the Business Committeeat the General Council Meeting on 18 February 2017

Convener of the Business Committee: Professor Stuart MacphersonChancellor’s Assessor, Principal, Members of the General Council and guests. It is a real pleasure for me to be giving this, my first Report, as the Convener of the Business Committee. On behalf of the Business Committee, may I congratulate the Chaplain on her award in the new Years Honours List for her service to Multi-Faith Education and Community Cohesion. Congratulations.

First of all I would like to thank members of the Business Committee for the honour of electing me to this position. As an initial act I wish to record our thanks to my predecessor Professor Charles Swainson, who is with us this morning, for his commitment to the Business Committee over the past eleven years. Apart from the four years that Charles served as Convener he previously chaired the Academic Standing Committee. He has given a substantial and enormously beneficial contribution to our work and we are all grateful for it.

On a less happy note, I’m afraid that we have recently had to note the passing of one of our Committee members. Anne Paterson died in the autumn and the secretary sent a note of sympathy to her family on behalf of the General Council.

I’m impressed that the Business Committee is currently a thriving discussion forum and comprises a wide diversity of members from across the General Council. All our meetings attract very good attendances and positive participation from all. Our new members this session fully exemplify these principles. Briana Pegado is a very recent graduate who was a senior member of the Edinburgh University Student Association. In comparison, Stephen Hillier, Emeritus Professor of Reproductive Endocrinology, who doesn’t look like a recent graduate. Steve served the University for many years, culminating in undertaking the post of Vice Principal International. Krystyna Szumelukowa brings unbounded enthusiasm and her wide experience in a variety of fields. In addition Kirsty MacGregor who just arrived, an experienced member of the BC, has agreed to re-join us despite her very busy diary as she demonstrated this morning. Thanks Kirsty.

You have already heard of the two members recently elected: one a seasoned veteran and one a new addition. However we are always keen to attract members of the GC to the Committee and I’ll be pleased to hear from anyone with the time and interest to participate.

The Academic Standing Committee now chaired by Steve Hillier has developed the excellent tradition of inviting the senior representatives of EUSA to their first meeting of the session. This occurred again this year and, as always, it allows current student issues to play a part in the setting of our priorities for the forthcoming year. For this session the whole Business Committee then agreed that the student experience, and in particular Teaching and Learning, should be given our highest priority. It was also decided that the other areas of importance were reviewing the

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University’s strategic plan and its implementation, assessing the implications of the result of the referendum on membership of the EU and the University’s planning for Brexit. And thirdly, further changes around university governance in Scotland.

Last session ASC held a very interesting meeting with Senior Vice-Principal, Charlie Jeffery, who had been appointed to lead the development of Teaching and Learning and the wider student experience across the University. The Committee decided that because of the pre-eminent importance of this topic, Professor Jeffery should be asked back again this session to describe the advances made. It is very unusual for us to invite someone back so soon after they have contributed. However the second invitation demonstrates the high priority we give to this matter and I am very pleased to say that there was no hesitation in Professor Jeffery’s acceptance. His commitment and enthusiasm to this matter were still very evident and the changes already brought about were impressive. The committee understand that action has been and will be taken on a range of fronts including the management of Schools, more effective ways of allowing student feedback, giving teaching the same priority as research, staff appraisal, tutorial groups, Estates and Transport. This is a long term challenge and we will keep in close touch in the coming sessions.

The University has already put in a huge effort into improving the student experience and it is disappointing that this has already not brought about significant change in the student comment. We are convinced that Professor Jeffery’s proposals are on the correct track but that it may take some time to be fully implemented and to show through in surveys.

Professor David Munro chairs the Constitutional Standing Committee and they will take the lead on Brexit and University Governance. The latter will be dealt with later in the session but David has already chaired a most informative meeting discussing the University’s response to Brexit. This attracted probably the highest attendance ever at the sub-committee and, to me, this demonstrates the perceived importance of the subject and the commitment of members of the Business Committee to investigating the University’s work. The University Deputy Secretary, Tracey Slaven, gave a comprehensive presentation, pointing out that every day this agenda changes. Members gave praise for the manner in which the University had responded to this subject, especially the speed of response and the development of a very informative website. Tracey was very able to respond to a host of members’ questions and again this is a subject we’ll return to, I’m sure, frequently, over the years.

I wish to cover two topics covered by the Public Affairs Standing Committee chaired by Matt McPherson, no relation, he wanted me to point that out! The first is the June 2017 Half Yearly Meeting, this coming summer. Following the undoubted success of the format adopted in London last summer, a similar more active and engaging event is planned for the afternoon of Saturday 10 June, in the Medical School at little France. Together with Professor Moira Whyte, the head of the Medical School, we have planned a programme to inform and engage those attending with a taster of some of the world leading activities going on at Little France. Headlined “From Molecule to Man: research and teaching at Edinburgh Medical School”, there will be an overview of teaching going on at the medical school from Professor Whyte, and then three revolving programmes covering human imaging and the zebra fish project, big data in medicine and a visit to the Ann Rowling Regenerative Clinic. There will be opportunities for debate and discussion around these topics. We hope that this will prove attractive and encourage everyone today to join us again in June.

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The second matter relates to publications. In future Edit will only be published in the summer and will be more feature driven and pictorial. There will be one page devoted to the General Council. This will enable us to publish Billet, our more formal publication, separately, in both winter and summer. This will be dispatched, electronically, to around 90,000 GC members and a printed version to the 900 members who have asked for it. We currently have 211,000 members of the General Council.

The fourth sub-committee is Finance and Services Standing Committee and I much value Sir Philip Mawer’s Chairmanship of this. The annual meeting with the Director of Finance was held recently and again yielded an informative presentation and rich discussion. We were most impressed by Phil McNaull’s stewardship of the University’s finances and preparations to negotiate the challenges ahead, not the least of which is likely to be the consequences of Brexit. I would recommend the current Annual Report and Accounts to members. Although this contains the usual numbers, of interest to accountants, which some of us don’t always understand, these are now related to the University’s activities and the report provides a very useful look at activities across the organisation.

I’d like to make a personal statement as my penultimate comment. It is always challenging to take over a body that has been so well led in the past and encompasses the talents apparent in the Business Committee members. However I am reassured that I will be kept in line by having four excellent sub-Committee Chairs and a very experienced deputy in Gordon Cairns. If you add to that Mike Mitchell, as Secretary, and Alison as the Assistant to the Secretary it is apparent to all how well supported I am and I wish to thank them all for that.

Finally let me say a few words on behalf of the General Council and particularly the Business Committee, to the Principal. Sir, we are indebted to you for the energy and devotion you have given over the last 15 years. The University has gone from strength to strength under your stewardship. It has expanded in breadth, incorporating new disciplines. It has expanded in student numbers and it has steadily risen up the rankings to achieve the world renown it enjoys today. Moreover we would like to thank you for the support you have been to the General Council. I’m sure my predecessor as Convener, and all Business Committee members who have served during your term, wish to join me in thanking you unconditionally. We could not have wished for stronger backing. We all wish you well for whatever challenges you now wish to take on, although we know it will not be a quiet retirement. We have written to Peter Mathieson welcoming him on behalf of the General Council, to Edinburgh and look forward to giving our continued backing to him as Principal. That concludes my Report.

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