Prof. Eric Thomas Interview Questions & Transcript Mesut Erzurumluoglu University of Bristol PhD Genetics Personal questions Who is Eric Thomas as an individual? Please also comment on your family life... To cut a long story short: I was born in the North East of England (Hartlepool) into a family of 6 kids. I am a Geordie and passionately support Newcastle Utd. I studied at a boarding school before going to Newcastle medical school where I met my wife; and I have two children. One of them is going to marry a Mexican and the other is in love with a Polish girl. So I have a very international family. Who or what was your inspiration(s) in life. Any life changing moments? I d say many of the doctors I worked with during medical school years, but the most inspiring one was Prof. Ian Cooke whom I did my research project with in Sheffield. He was a fantastic academic and made me think like an academic also. Professor Eric Thomas, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bristol, is President of Universities UK As for the life changing moment: me spending time in Australia in the late 70s (aged 25) which enabled me to look towards life in a different way. I had decided to take a break and see the world as I had studied intensively for a very long time at medical school and university; and then worked another 2 years as a junior doctor. I travelled to Africa, India, and Singapore etc. As for the life changing moment: me spending time in Australia in the late 70s (aged 25) which enabled me to look towards life in a different way.
and then stayed in Australia for 18 months. It focuses your mind when you re very far from home, 13000 miles to be exact and all you have is $250 in your pocket and no return ticket. I earned some money there but it was the experience itself which taught me a lot. What are you most proud of in your personal life? It s my family. Any father who says otherwise, I d say something s wrong with him. Questions about and Academic life Who is Prof Eric Thomas as an academic? Your ideology, aims in academic life, achievements. As an academic my area of interest was reproductive medicine and in vitro fertilisation (IVF). I did some fundamental work on how Endometriosis happens at a cellular and molecular level. I didn t get a Nobel Prize but nevertheless I m proud of what I did. Was that part of your dreams as a child? No (laughs). My father was a doctor so I came from a medical family. This then led me to become a doctor. Why did you become an academic? Why Medicine, Gynaecology, Obstetrics? Being present at birth is a fantastic feeling. Most medicine is about making ill people better, but in obstetrics normal people are doing something normal with an immensely positive outcome. Then a disorder called *endometriosis and IVF became my area of special interests. *Endometriosis is a female health disorder that occurs when cells from the lining of the womb (uterus) grow in other areas of the body What are you most proud of academically? Any decisions you took, findings, paper I did some fundamental work on how Endometriosis happens at a cellular and molecular level. I didn t get a Nobel Prize (laughs) but nevertheless I m proud of what I did. As the Vice-chancellor of Bristol and President of Universities UK What does a vice chancellor do? A Vice-chancellor leads the institution through strategic leadership (i.e. thinking about what s ahead for the university) and by closely leading a small senior team; also by representing the university to all internal and external stakeholders and is the biggest source of intelligence and information the university has. In short, this job requires leadership, representation and information gathering. Just to finish off, I believe a vice-chancellor should only do those things only a vicechancellor can do. If somebody else can do them, get that somebody to do them. Simple... Do you have any time for research? Got no time for it at all... University of Bristol is a 450m a year organisation with 6000 staff and these are exactly the reasons I can t do research. Do you miss your research days? No because I love my current job. What is the job of President of Universities UK? My main job here is to be the representative of the sector to the many stakeholders; and also to chair the board meetings and the members meetings. So for the latter meeting, I ve got to be able chair all 130 vice-chancellors within the UK.
What do you mean when you say stakeholders? Government, NHS, Businesses, Charitable sector, local city council, alumni, residents in the city, third sectors and also the students - who are stakeholders by definition in the university; and the list goes on and on, even foreign governments are involved... Likewise, the job of the Chair of the Board of **CASE Europe? CASE is a massive organisation, mainly focused on philanthropy in Higher ; and I am the chair of a rather smaller group based in the UK. **CASE helps its members build stronger relationships with their alumni and donors, raise funds for campus projects, produce recruitment materials, market their institutions to prospective students, diversify the profession, and foster public support of education I owe a duty to provide a very good academic experience to the overseas students that come to study here. Did you take any controversial decisions in the past? For example you recently took the decision to monitor non-eu students every month. What is the idea behind it? There is a lot of hostility and even a Change.org petition has been opened for you to review the decision. I d like to answer the question in terms of duties. Who owes who a duty? I owe a duty to provide a very good academic experience to the overseas students that come to study here. I also owe them a duty to make sure that a situation like what has happened in London Metropolitan University does not to happen here. If I am not able to answer the UK border agency s questions, they can revoke our highly trusted sponsored status which will mean that all 3000 overseas students in this university would have 90 days to find another course. I m anxious for them. I m anxious for myself also of course (laughs) but I restate that whatever the rights or the wrongs of it I have to able to answer this question: How do you know that the overseas student is continuing to study on your course? I can only be sure of it by saying that the following contact points have been made; and if they re not made, this is what we do. We contact the student and ask whether there is a problem and try to help him/her tackle the source of the problem. That is all we re trying to do. We are not sending any data or anything to the UK border agency. Then why is there so much hostility towards the decision? Maybe it s because we haven t been able to explain it as clearly as that. The university is full of independent departments and maybe we haven t helped them phrase it right. Maybe the methodology used is also contributing to the antagonism? It is difficult for us and them. We ve yet to fully agree with the UK border agency on how to go about doing what we re doing. We have to know why a certain student has missed some contact points whether it is due to a family issue so that the student had to go home for some time or was not feeling well not because he/ she is working somewhere using the student visa as a means to get into the UK. The tuition fees in the UK have increased enormously in the past year. What are your views on that, especially in terms of the right to education set out by the human rights court? The issue is quite simple. We either had a tuition fee increase or took a 25% (maybe more) cut in the amount of money that we got for teaching students. is not a protected budget. It s not like the health service. It s quite interesting. When I qualified as a junior doctor, on my first wage I paid back 28% of it as income tax. The same junior doctor in 2012 pays 14%. I feel I paid for my higher education
by carrying a higher fiscal burden. We have chosen over series of elections to elect people who say we should pay less tax. Fine, but the money has to come from somewhere. The difference between me and the current student is that the current student now pays that additional tax directly to their own education. Also I d like everyone to know that we do not get more money than we used to. It seems as if the UK universities aren t doing as much in terms of sending their students on Erasmus programmes. What are your thoughts on that? Wouldn t it be better for them to see and learn about different cultures and languages - which you say has changed your life? Yes it would be better for more of our students to go on Erasmus courses, but it seems to be much more difficult for us to persuade our students to go abroad than it is the other way round. The UK government currently has a working party which is trying to think of ways to solve this issue and persuade our students to go abroad more. There are language issues and sometimes the university courses are very different and therefore intertwining them is quite problematic; but we always say to our students: widen your horizons and be more international. You signed an agreement with President of the Turkish Council of Higher (Prof. Gokhan Cetinsaya) in 2012. What was the idea behind it? What has this changed for Turkish/British students willing to study in the UK/Turkey? The agreement had two sides to it: firstly Turkey wanted to send more students to the UK and we want to do the same to Turkey, so it was a systemto-system agreement. And secondly not so much in this country but many universities in Turkey are much happier if they re operating under some kind WIDEN YOUR HORIZONS AND BE MORE INTERNATIONAL
of agreement with another country. The hope was much more mobility and collaboration on research projects among the two countries. I had a fascinating trip to Ankara and Istanbul with the minister and I feel there is a lot of good will on both sides so I think the outcome will turn out to be very positive for both countries. Finding scholarships is much harder in the UK compared to the US. Is this issue being overlooked or is this the best UK can do? Certainly is. Just before this meeting, we were having a discussion with our director of development on how to get donors to setup a funding scheme for postgraduate scholarships. We believe philanthropic reasons are going to persuade people to come forward. If we don t do something about, I m afraid it seems like the only people who are going to do a postgraduate study are who come from well off backgrounds. That is terrible in terms of social mobility. What are your thoughts on the changes in the (Student support) regulations in 2012? There is a lot of hostility on it e.g. majority of students with Discretionary leave to remain (DLR) will not get loan/grants from Student Finance England... I really do not know what changes have been made and am not familiar with some of the terms but I will be asking the international unit about it now that you have brought this up. Where do you see the UK education system going? There is the criticism that all universities care about is money, also the criticism that universities are becoming more research based and not paying enough attention to teaching which is where they get most of their money from. I definitely do not agree with the statement that all we care about is money. The university is a public body which is value driven. We are given value by educating highly talented young people and discovering new knowledge. My job is to make sure that they get the very best environment for those things to happen which means the best students and staff who are as well supported as they possibly can be. I need to make sure that I have given those people the space to be able to wander and be creative, and keep this set of values right at the top of the agenda. Part of doing that is to make sure that the financial ship sails properly. Without money none of these can happen. One of the tricky parts of my job is resource allocation; we cannot do everything so I have to determine which things are of highest importance. If I allow University of Bristol simply to become money focused, over time it will cease to become the university that it is; we ll lose the values. As for universities becoming more research based, these things come in cycles. When I was an undergraduate (at Newcastle), it was all teaching, then a little bit of research. Throughout the 80s and 90s research became more concentrated and teaching perhaps slipped back down. With the recent arrival of higher tuition fees, it is now right back at the top of the agenda. We do not see our students as customers but as colleagues; but they still have a right to say hang on I m paying for this; what are you delivering for me? Why should A student s time at university is unique, irreplaceable and transformative. I come here rather than picking a different university?. These questions are being asked with a lot more depth now compared to the past. So you do accept that universities have become more research based? Not completely. I went through a life in which I had three different jobs: I had to teach people, had to do research and had to treat people. I always regarded all three equally as important. You re in one of the most creative departments*** in the planet for example, and a density of research does give a sense of intellectual energy and creativity which affects teaching because you re being taught by the
very people who are out there creating new knowledge. ***Talking about the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, with a world famous cohort in ALSPAC and research centres/ labs such as BGEL and CAiTE within it. General How do you manage to keep up with so many commitments? I have a very good secretary. You have to be able to manage your life quite astutely. I was very careful about answering what a vicechancellor did in the interview. I don t do any more than that. I never do work that I don t need to do. Being able to say no? Absolutely, with great frequency... Would you change anything in your life if you were to go back in time? Anything you always had in mind but couldn t do? It would have been fantastic to be a guitar legend or playing for Newcastle Utd (laughs)... However I don t really have any regrets at all actually. I ve been extremely fortunate and I m very happy with the way things have panned out. I probably would have wanted to visit America earlier. I didn t get to see America until I was 37. What is in the short term and long term agenda of Universities UK to tackle such problems? Universities are self standing autonomous institutions; and all have their own say on how they want to tackle these issues. However, I do not admit that there is a big problem and restate that it is just part of the cycle that sometimes research comes first, and sometimes teaching. How does the Vice-chancellor look at the societies affiliated with the Student Union? What else can they do to build on what they re already doing? In this university I m extremely happy with they re doing. They re incredibly dynamic and up to all sorts of interesting and entertaining stuff. I think there are over 160 societies/clubs in the university and it wasn t anywhere near like that when I was a student. Why America? Which state/cities especially? It is a bit like a Tale of Two Cities. It s seen the best of times and the worst of times. I think I would have been very taken by the dynamism of the country earlier in my life. Remember this would have been in the late 60s, early 70s. The New York and San Francisco of the time would have been interesting. Any final words for students? Tips, suggestions? How do they become successful just like you are? I think there is no doubt that a student s time at university is unique, irreplaceable and transformative. Students must make sure that s what it is. It s gone before you know it. When you come in, you think I ve got 3-4 years and with the blink of an eye you re in your final year revising for your exams. Particularly the undergraduate experience here is utterly unique. Just go at it with everything you ve got in all aspects - work and play. One thing is certain though: To be successful, you have to work very hard! That is just a statement of fact. (Talking to me) When you re writing your thesis up you ll know what I mean...