Bad leadership is a treasure trove of learning. I’ve had good bosses and bad bosses. I’ve probably learned more from the bad ones. Learning to lead is as much about what not to do as what to do. You learn the personal impact of bad leadership. How it pervades an organisation, reverberates 1/

Universities get carried away with buildings. Vanity-project mindset sets in early. Most students don’t come for shiny new buildings. Most students don’t come for the architectural prizes that cost extra millions on the build. They come for community. For the richness of human experience, the

Very proud that BNU has been named as southeast university of the year by Whatuni. Voted for by students, rankings don’t get more meaningful than this. I’ve said it before, BNU is a special place. www.whatuni.com/student-awar...

Two years ago, as part of our inclusive recruitment approach, we started sending out interview questions 72 hours in advance. For all posts. And it’s been great. People come more relaxed (or as relaxed as they can be) and they bring the best examples of their expertise rather than what they 1/

There is nothing like working with talented people. Nothing like the rhythm of a high performing team when it gels. Nothing like the fluidity of excellence, the easy flow of ideas, contention, challenge. We spend a lot of time at work. Far better to spend it with talented people.

Great job opportunity here at BNU - details below alumniglobal.com/job/bnu

£37.4 billion net economic contribution. The enlivening of communities and classrooms. Global soft power value, global literacy. Cross subsidy funding of research. Cross subsidy of niche courses. Cultural richness and perspective. In a rational world, nations would genuinely welcome 1/

Nothing kills excellence like micromanagement. Nothing. I’ve seen it across FE and HE. Talented people, driven people, then a leader shows up who can’t let go. Suddenly the energy shifts. Questions replace initiative, permission replaces judgement and people stop bringing their best thinking 1/

I’ve been in HE for 19 years and this is the most difficult context I’ve seen in that time. But I love what universities can be. I still have hope that one day higher education will be seen as a true social good once more, that the impact of universities will become rightly appreciated 1/

Want your job application to stand out? Don’t use AI. For me, real writing is a differentiator for recruitment. When a panel are assessing applications, they want to hear a voice, they want to get an idea of what you would bring, real experiences rather than the generic. They want to feel a 1/

‘For many scholars, especially those from ethnic or white working-class backgrounds, linguistic assimilation demands a Faustian bargain of accent switching, adopting RP as the currency of credibility’. Superb article in the comments on accent bias in HE. Early in my career, 1/

Educational access is economic. Attainment is economic. Graduate outcomes are economic. If social mobility is the goal, then support must be weighted towards those with the least. Not rhetoric. Not positioning. Real investment in the students who stand to gain the most.

Really proud to have written this with @profdamienpage.bsky.social championing the value of teaching staff who are disproportionately hit by cuts, but are what drives the fundamental activity of HE - educating students.#HigherEducation #TeachingAcademics www.timeshighereducation.com/even-hard-ti...

AI will kill universities according to those making a fortune from AI. Everything will be free so what’s the point of higher education. Intelligence will be like a utility. Institutions of knowledge will become obsolete as AI democratises knowledge. 1/

That’s the Easter break sorted

The simplest leadership advice is: do the right thing. Simple. But problematic. Because not everyone is a good judge of what the right thing actually is. Too often, the right thing becomes whatever carries the least personal risk. The decision that protects reputation, position or relationships.

Six months ago we introduced meeting-free Fridays. Fridays have become the day people catch up, read, write, plan. New ideas get bounced around. Publications and projects get shared. New resources developed, new technology experimented with. 1/

Meet the specific needs of students. That’s what drives us daily at BNU. The needs of students who have to work long hours, who have caring responsibilities, studying in a cost of living crisis. Commuter kitchens at all campuses. Bringing a GP surgery on campus. Commuter accommodation at £35 1/

Elitism in higher education never went away but it’s becoming more acceptable again. As competition intensifies, some universities are quietly rediscovering the comfort of exclusivity. We see it in the silent acquiescence to the Mickey Mouse narratives, the ‘too many students’ narratives, 1/

The majority of organisational problems are caused by a lack of talent. And the majority of organisational problems can be solved by a density of talent. Recruiting, developing and retaining talent should be our preoccupation.

The government’s response on unpaid internships is welcome but it must lead to real change. As the Sutton has pointed out below, unpaid and unadvertised internships remain a significant barrier to opportunity. They privilege those with financial backing and insider networks over those 1/

I’ve worked in education for 26 years, half my life. And I’ve never regretted it once. Education can be maddening, wildly frustrating, exhausting mentally, physically and emotionally. There are times of grind, times of counting the days until holiday, times of boring meetings and pointless 1/

So we’ve bought the old Uxbridge Library as the base for our new West London site. Right on the high street, 2 minutes from the Tube. No expensive new build, paid off in saved rent in 7 years. A space where we can create a centre of innovation in practice-based education at the heart of the 1/

Universities are held to account for the percentage of their students who achieve ‘graduate outcomes’. Yet here is more evidence below that graduates from lower socio-economic backgrounds, particularly those who are Black and Asian, are significantly less likely to secure entry-level professional 1/

Universities are complex. Strategy should be simple: 1. Identify the problems 2. Outline how you’ll solve them 3. Create clear, measurable actions and provide the support and resources to achieve them That’s it.

In the last year, I’ve done over 50 ‘back to the floor’ meetings, spending time with professional service and academic teams talking about the day to day reality of BNU. I’ve been proved wrong, been corrected, had my mind changed, been encouraged to think differently. Strategy has been 1/

We’re now recruiting for a Chief Finance Officer to join BNU. Great opportunity to join the best exec team I’ve worked with, reshares appreciated. jobs.bucks.ac.uk/vacancy/chie...

Graduates benefit personally from higher education. They earn more. They gain more. The constant refrains in the discussions around student loans. And of course it’s true. But any good-faith consideration of the student loan system must equally foreground that the country benefits from 1/

We’re recruiting for a Head of Registry Operations, a key role in reshaping how we do things. Reshares appreciated. jobs.bucks.ac.uk/vacancy/head...

Whenever there is organisational misbehaviour, there is someone who excused it. It’s banter. Or they grew up in a different era. Or people are just too sensitive. Or they really didn’t mean it like that. Or that’s just how they are and you should just ignore it. 1/

This year we closed BNU for two weeks at Christmas as a thank you to everyone who worked so hard to achieve so much. The feedback was clear. People came back better, fresher, more connected with family, more energised for the year ahead. So we’re doing it every year. 1/

The more senior you become, the harder it is to be an active researcher. But *thinking* like a researcher should never go away. The abiding curiosity that propels enquiry. The instinct of what threads to pursue and what rabbit holes to avoid. The judgement of when understanding-seeking 1/

Join us tonight at 8 pm BST where we’ll be exploring Leadership and Academic Flourishing with @profdamienpage.bsky.social Read the blog for more: lthechat.com/2026/01/26/l...

Join us tonight 8-9pm BST for the #LTHEchat. VC @profdamienpage.bsky.social hosts this week’s topic, Leadership and Academic Flourishing. Blog post 👇🏼, see you at 8! @lthechat.bsky.social

Join us for this week’s #LTHEchat which will explore Leadership and Academic Flourishing with @profdamienpage.bsky.social on Wednesday 8-9pm BST

Don't forget to join us tomorrow, Wednesday 8-9pm BST, for #LTHEchat which will explore Leadership and Academic Flourishing with @profdamienpage.bsky.social Read the blog post at: lthechat.com/2026/01/26/l...

Looking forward to this!

You can tell a lot about universities from the things they obsess about. Take BNU. We don’t obsess about indicators of prestige or league tables. Nor do we obsess about winning architectural awards or attracting visiting dignitaries. Garnering nominations for honours? Politicking 1/

Part of the problem with bad leadership is that it never truly goes away. It gets recycled, repackaged, relocated. Reputation-washed through conference panels, advisory boards, honorary awards, and the old boys’ network. Manufactured amnesia. The people who were affected however, never forget.

Great away day with the BNU exec team yesterday. Real conversations, real creativity, real challenge. Focused, strategic, trivia-free zone. Innovation, collaboration, co-creation. Respect for expertise, respect for talent. Trust, not trust exercises. Critique, not criticism. How it should be.

Sit on enough recruitment panels and you’ll hear someone want to reject a talented applicant because they’ll think they’ll get poached after a couple of years and leave. That never made any sense to me. I’ve only ever hired people who will leave for more senior posts if there’s no 1/

In every organisation, there are people, gifted people, who know that things can be, should be, done differently. Who know how to change the status quo. Who know how to create positive change. The problem, mostly, is the organisation restrains them, restricts them through hierarchies, 1/

If you’re a leader, model hard work, model ethics, model authenticity, model focus. Absolutely. But, most importantly, model resting. Normalise resting, normalise separation from work, switching off, doing nothing or doing anything else but work. Put ‘out of office’ on and mean it.

I’ve mentored a lot of aspiring leaders over the years and self-doubt comes up frequently when they outline their development needs. It’s usually seen as a flaw, a barrier in their leadership journey. But constructive self-doubt is essential for leadership. It sharpens judgement, 1/

Ask yourself: if you started a university from scratch, what would it look like? How would it be structured? What courses would be in the portfolio? What research would you do? What people would you need and what skills, behaviours and motivations would they have? How would you create a 1/

Everyone is about values until those values are tested. It’s easy to talk about integrity, respect, or transparency when things are going well. It’s much harder to live by them when the stakes are high, when a decision comes with a cost. That’s the real test of values. 1/

If meritocracy was real, organisations would rarely fail. But they do. And not because people aren’t talented, but because talent is not always the primary criteria for who is recruited and who is promoted. Organisations primarily fail when familiarity is valued over competence, when networks 1/

In the second act of the AI revolution, the humanities fight back.

In a cost of living crisis, food needs to become central to university life. At BNU, where once we contracted an expensive external company, last year we worked with our Students’ Union to take over our entire catering operation. The results have been amazing:

Universities should contain both difficulty and ease. Learning should be difficult. The process of learning is, by its very nature, difficult, and that is no bad thing. For everything else, for every other element of the student experience, there should be ease. Applying should be easy. 1/