Professor Dame Sally Mapstone has been in the education field for over 30 years. The principal and vice chancellor of the University of St. Andrews who was in Goa recently, speaks to The Navhind Times about quality education, the changing demands of education and what institutions need to do to keep up with the growing technological world
DIANA FERNANDES| NT NETWORK
Founded in 1413, St. Andrews University is one of the oldest universities in the U.K. Since taking over as principal and vice chancellor in 2016, professor Dame Sally Mapstone has managed to turn it into a premier educational institution having dethroned Oxford and Cambridge from some of its national rankings.
Excerpts from the interview:
During your tenure, the university got a first place ranking in The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide for 2022 and The Guardian for 2023-24, which is a first for a space that has been held by Oxford and Cambridge. How did you achieve this?
It was a unique double first where we are the only university that has ever displaced both Oxford and Cambridge from the top domestic ranking at the same time. It had prompted The Guardian newspaper to say that henceforth people shouldn’t be talking about Ox-bridge (Oxford and Cambridge) but should talk about St-ox-bridge (St. Andrews, Oxford and
Cambridge).
We achieved this in a number of ways. At St. Andrews we place great emphasis on personal tuition, small group tuitions where your tutor in the subject will know you as a student and follow your progress. This is distinctive in the British system, because many universities teach students in large groups.
We also place great emphasis on research-informed teaching, we regard it important that our students are taught by the people who are doing the research and who’s books and articles they are reading. St. Andrews is also a very special, beautiful, historical place where students enjoy being there. In the National Students Survey, which is filled out by final year students across the U.K., we have been at the top across the U.K. in academic and extra-curricular every year that I have been principal (now my ninth year).
Setting up strategic plans has also been a part of achieving the university’s goals. What is a strategic plan, how does it work, and how would it help an educational
institution?
When I arrived at St. Andrews in 2016, there was something called as a strategic plan but it bore no resemblance to what I regard as a strategic plan, it was just a big description of what was happening at the university. That’s not a plan, it’s just a description. I am a firm believer that a university needs a strategy to know where it is going. And that needs to come from its culture. Traditionally, university strategic plans can be very boring and I didn’t want it to be like that. We had a big listening exercise across the university where we decided to plan thematically. We’ve been through two rounds and in the current reception we have five simple themes: world leading St. Andrews, diverse St. Andrews, digital St. Andrews, sustainable St. Andrews, and entrepreneurial St. Andrews. Those are the key things that drive our mission.
Those themes reflect everything we do. The concepts are fixed but they can take many forms and gives us the opportunity to promote other aspects. Like with diverse St. Andrews we can explore gender, ethnicity, disability, etc.
Can you tell us more about St. Andrews international excellence in teaching and research strategies?
We have been an internationally facing university ever since we were founded, on models that were continental. Most of the people who taught there were Scots who were trained in Europe, so the very model that the university was founded on was outward reaching. We looked much less to England, because the Scots and the English were generally at war with each other in the Middle Ages. The sense that we are outward looking has continued through our history.
For example, we recently founded a business school at St. Andrews at a site that was formerly known as Madras College which was the town’s secondary school. The name came from the fact that the school founder, Andrew Bell worked for the East India Company, travelled around and spent a lot of time in Madras where he observed a form of teaching where older children were teaching younger children. He brought that system back to the U.K., and started the Madras College. We have provided funds to move the school to a bigger area and we are taking the site to put up the business school there. This is indicative of our continuing set of relationships internationally.
We are one of the most international universities in the U.K., we recruit students and staff from 140 different countries and our orientation is wide with around 600 students and 50 to 60 staff from India. We also have students from the U.S., which is distinctive of our profile and is part of our ethos.
Have there been any efforts to explore collaborations between India and Scotland in research and education as part of St. Andrews international reach?
We work with a number of Indian universities like St. Stephen’s College in Delhi, and in the past 10 years with OP Jindal University. Our emphasis is twofold: on student exchanges both ways and to collaborate on research. For example, we are currently working on the concept of 100% renewable energy. We need to get away from the paradigm that the British dominate relations with India. India is a fantastic country with massive growth. It will have the largest population of young people over the next 10 years. We believe that our relations should be of reciprocity and mutual learning.
Social responsibility and prioritising diversity and inclusivity are some aspects that are at the heart of the university. Why are these important and how is it achieved?
They are important to me, because as women we still don’t function in a level playing field. One of my mantras is to ask myself what I am going to do today for equality. For me, promoting diversity, and beyond that, social responsibility is one of the reasons why I do this job because giving everybody who deserves a chance, the chance is one of the most important things to do in life.
I think when you run an institution, it just extends to social responsibility. We have been in our community for 600 years locally and it is our responsibility to the community not to disrupt it but to enforce and help it. Universities have to be about academia, but it also has to be about sharing their values more broadly and modelling the behaviours they hope to see extended. We have set ourselves to be net zero by 2035 and that involves changes in our practice and behaviour.
What inspired you to dedicate your career to education, and what drives your passion for it?
The wonderful thing about education is that you are always learning. I love learning and I think learning helps expand horizons. I also believe education should be open to
everybody.
I went to Oxford when not many women went there and that was a transformative time for me because it extended my horizons. I want everybody who has the desire and the aspiration to have that chance to have their horizons extended. I don’t think background should constraint them. It is important to share and promulgate it because education is one of the most enabling aspects of any society, and universities crystalise that potential.
How would you define quality education? What are the essential elements that make it effective?
Quality education is partly about knowledge but it is also knowledge made useful (which is the motto of the Royal Society of Edinburgh where I am a fellow). While I was teaching at Oxford (which I did for 30 years) I would tell students that after an hour of the class they should feel like they have got somewhere intellectually than before. Quality education is not about putting something into somebody but it’s about experiencing and exploring
that themselves.
It is possible to assess quality, but not in a rigid way. You can do it by understanding the aims of the course and then make sure that they are being delivered by interrogating those who have been receiving the tuition. Like for example with the National Student Survey. Every year we don’t know what will be the outcome because it is totally dependent on what students say. They could say one year they don’t like what we’re doing. We also get a lot of free text feedback and we look at that carefully because it tells us a lot. One year we saw that students were unhappy about the changes we made to our library and they felt it wasn’t enhancing their experience. You need to listen to what people tell you and you can raise the bar with quality.
What teaching methods do you believe are most effective in engaging students and promoting deep learning?
Involving students in their own learning is very important. I am a voracious reader and I think people should read. It worries me if students only think they have to read specific pages. A hunter-gathering aspect of research is very important, but at the same time I think we have to be alert to student behaviours and new forms of student pedagogy.
And the great debate at the moment is about AI. At St. Andrews we encourage students to use AI with us. We are not saying you cannot use GPT or any other language model. We are saying have a look at what it tells you about a particular subject and critique it ,because let’s not forget that it is what it reads. So students are told to do their research on a subject and then see what Chat GPT says. The students often see the limitations for themselves.
There’s a lot of anxiety out there that students will just be cheating but I think that will not be the case. AI will constantly reinvent itself and the great debate is obviously about whether it can attain some form of reasoning. We have to keep a watch on that and see it in terms of what it offers. We shouldn’t always see technological revolutions as being a bad thing.
What role do you think technology should play in the classroom? How can it be leveraged to enhance teaching and learning?
Tech can be utilised in all sorts of ways and the challenge for institutions is to stay ahead of that, not just in pedagogy but also in what classrooms should look like. You want to future-proof the classroom in a way that we can utilise tech because it changes so fast and it will be a challenge for institutions to keep up with it.
For example when we teach anatomy at St. Andrews we still use of cadavers. We think that is a way of imparting respect to the dead bodies. But at the same time we also use digital and virtual ways of teaching anatomy.
How can educators and policymakers work to reduce teacher burnout and increase job satisfaction?
Teacher burnout is an interesting thing. Students talk about burnout too. My generation struggles with the notion of burnout and I think that’s a generational issue. I believe there’s no substitute for hard work. But I also think that because we live in such a digital age, the kinds of pressures that people experience are much greater.
In academia the greatest pressure I think is between doing research and being a teacher. These two can pull you in different directions, and at St. Andrews we acknowledge and
encourage both.
But institutions also have to be compassionate and be understanding about workload. They have to be careful not to put a very heavy workload on young academics. You have to build a back story of teaching and research they can build on. At the same time we should not be frightened of work. Work should not be seen as hardship. If you start with that premise, you are likely to burnout faster.
What are some of the most pressing challenges facing education systems around the world? How can educationists
address them?
In the U.K. and Scotland, the funding model is a big challenge. There isn’t enough money to go around and there is a strain on funding and research, so universities are struggling and are going deficit. But I think a much broader issue is whether the university is going to be the primary means of delivering education over the next half century.
The demand for university degrees remains high, but people are very attracted by upskilling and reskilling in their careers with micro credentials. Universities have to be more adapting to the changing world and expectations of education. If institutions aren’t prepared to be flexible and offer a mix of traditional degrees, micro-credential, online learning and executive education, then they will be in trouble because the way people want to experience education is more dynamic now than over a quarter of a century ago. People will want to go to universities in the traditional way as an 18 year old but it will also be a case for more and more people to come back into education across their careers and if we don’t start offering those options other providers, employers and businesses will start to offer it.
You are the second female principal and vice chancellor at St. Andrews. You’re also the president of the Universities UK. Women’s consciousness and the focus of women in assuming senior academic positions has been another aspect that you have focused on in your professional career. Why is this so important to you and could you share its wider impact?
One of the reasons I took on the role of president of the Universities UK is that I think it is important for women to see other women in those major roles because it heightens their aspirations and makes them think that they can also do that. I know the most significant mentors and role models for me were other women and I owe my success to being encouraged by other women and to see other women in authority. Women bring a different way of doing business and I think it is important that we have this mix. I believe there is still a lot of rebalancing needed and sometimes men still struggle to understand that. We have to, in a very nice way, point that out to them.
What is your vision for the future of education? How do you see it evolving in the
next decade?
Education has to change with the times. It has to use the tools and models available but at the same time it has to interrogate those tools and models and work with it. It has to be accessible. It has to care about quality and it has to be flexible in delivery because that is what the world wants.
