Grant Guilford Said VUW Is as Good, If Not Better, than Harvard

A chat with our soon-to-retire vice chancellor

Sally Ward (she/her)

At the start of the year, Matt and I met with Professor Grant Guilford. We wanted to know what to look out for this year, and to understand the complex operating structures within this institution from someone who knows a lot about the University. We couldn’t get another interview with him at this time. But luckily we recorded 30 minutes of the meeting, which took place on February 9. We talked about reputation, the idea of a global civic university (what on earth?), funding models, and what the VC thinks it means to have “marae at the heart” of this place. 

Vice Chancellor Professor Guilford is the Chief Executive of Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington. He tells us his job is to “keep the University ticking over, my staff paid, you guys taught, the research programmes undertaken”. 

We start by discussing University rankings. VUW is still number one for humanities and also has very strong programmes in natural sciences. We ask who measures these rankings. 

“We rely heavily on performance based research fund assessments which give you an assessment of the quality of your academic staff. The University came out number one in that for the second time in a row”, Guilford tells us. Given how crucial staff are, it saddens me knowing that some academic staff don’t feel valued by management, as evidenced by the fallout from the voluntary redundancy scheme that was widely reported on earlier this year. From time to time the University also does “specific brand work” and contracts a firm “to ask the people of New Zealand” where VUW ranks. 

I hope I never hear someone say “performance based research fund assessments” or “specific brand work” ever again. It reminds me that VUW is run like a business when I would prefer to think of it as a community-focused learning environment that speaks truth to power. 

Matt asks if the quality in teaching equals the quality in outcome, and the discussion very quickly becomes about reputation. “The quality of teaching is directly related to the quality of outcome for students. But it isn’t directly related to reputation. So very unfortunately a University's reputation, particularly an international reputation, is driven largely by research and the outcomes of research, and the great new things that are contributed to society, and also by an established identity.”

“So if you take a Harvard and compare it to us, I would bet my bottom dollar that the quality of education you get here, is the same if not better than you would get at Harvard—with the exception that you don’t carry that brand of Harvard in your back pocket which people then utilise for networking and all those other things”. 

Obviously reputation and branding is important, given that Government funding is supplied per bum on seat. Yet I find Guilford’s chat around reputation and branding icky. I don’t really care about the “reputation” of VUW for networking purposes. I think degrees are valuable because of the students who earn them and the teachers who support them, not a brand. 

Matt’s next question is “What do you believe the basis of a government-funded university should be, in terms of producing for its own society?”  

Guildford explains that universities are in a competitive environment as public sector organisations, which is a strange place to be in. I agree. “[...] we burn through about a million dollars of salary a day in a working week, so about five million a week. And so we’re very strongly dependent on revenue and that revenue largely comes in a bums on seats funding model from the Government.” He continues, “we’re forced into a competitive model to keep our people and our jobs and you taught.”

Guilford says that COVID-19 “has taught New Zealand about community again”. He believes it has accelerated a move away from a “self-centred neo-liberal economic model” which is necessary if we’re going to have a sustainable planet. This “brings this model of a global corporate university into further question”, he adds.

“Global corporate” is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as a large company that operates in many different countries. It seems to me to be the peak of a global capitalist society and I don’t like it. It seems like Prof Guilford doesn’t like it either:

“There have already been questions, but all of a sudden [during COVID] you are more concerned about community, about belonging, about inequality, about sustainability that the corporate university model sticks out more and more like a sore thumb.”

He thinks we’re heading toward a “global civic” university “where you are part of your community, engaged with your community, try to serve the community's needs and in so doing you thrive as a university, so it’s a virtuous cycle [...]”. On the VUW website, there is a page dedicated to the definition “global-civic ”, which I recommend reading because Guilford basically repeated the whole page to us. Basically it describes a university that values its local community within a global context. 

He then talks about how VUW is born in the Western tradition, but in a place that honours it’s Treaty. It’s not enough to be a global civic university in the Western tradition—“we’ve got to have this idea of having a marae at our heart, and that fed into the name change.”

Guilford says VUW was “struggling to maintain an identity”, and therefore unable to build a reputation. “Reputation is good for graduates when they’re looking for jobs and also impacts the ability to recruit new students”, he states. We’re back talking about reputation. 

“We wanted a Māori name that we could utilise equally with the Western name, so Te Herenga Waka became our name. But we now want to take that to another level. What does it mean to have a marae at our heart? Well part of it means a new building complex over there so that’s called the sustainable Pā.” Work on this has now begun. 

“From there we’re interested in academic structures that lead out from that so every student in our university is exposed to Māori world view, mātauranga māori, te reo, tikanga, and we help play our role in the decolonisation agenda in this country. Rawina Higgins will be leading that.”

Finally, we ask if Guilford is satisfied with his level of engagement with the student body. “My main interface with students is through the student’s associations, particularly Ngāi Tauira and VUWSA.” He says some of his communication is delegated to Wendy Larner and Stuart Brock, as Provost and Academic Vice Provost respectively, who work very closely with the student assembly and representatives of the students associations, and this is passed on. 

“I do have a reasonable feel for what the students are feeling”, he says finally. I wonder if he checks the internet. 

I’ve been hanging around this campus only one year less than Guilford. I started at VUW in 2015 and spent six years completing a conjoint undergrad before taking this job, which requires constantly listening to what people are saying about the University and how students are feeling. I have witnessed the name change saga, the Living Pā development, the tree planting, and unresolved tensions between senior leadership and students and staff (which you can read about on the previous page). I wouldn't want his job. I have no doubt he is passionate about his work and cares about our education.

It was chilling to hear Prof Guilford throw around all that business jargon, because at times it can feel like students are just numbers, here to balance the ledger. Whether that’s due to Guilford’s leadership or Government settings or both, I’ll leave for you to ponder.