David Owen has retired after 14 years as Chancellor at Liverpool University.Peter Elsontalks to politics’ oldest boy-wonder
LIKE the very model of a modern-day monarch, Lord Owen has seen Liverpool University’s vice-chancellors come and go.
Now he has hung up his own Chancellor’s robes, after nearly 14 years in this second career.
Incredible changes have occurred in his time at Liverpool.
Not least is its successful creation of the world’s first Sino-British university at Xi’an Jiaotong, a source of huge envy across UK higher education.
There have been international triumphs like upgrading the School of Tropical Medicine and Faculty of Veterinary Science.
A fine tally, considering his initial response when asked to take the role was “it’s a job for an old fart”.
In reality, he was fired up from his role chairing the EU’s committee on the former Yugoslavia, sorting out the aftermath of civil war, ethnic cleansing and war crimes.
This meant he inspired and drove forward Liverpool’s Institute of Irish Studies’ part in Northern Ireland’s peace process.
“The job has been great fun and highly enjoyable for me and my wife,” he says.
“However, it’s the right time to go. I’ve been here with three vice-chancellors.
“Besides, I’m 70, so I am really an old fart now.”
But what does a chancellor actually do? Essentially, he is the outsider giving advice at a high level.
“A chancellor does not have power in the normal sense. It’s like the Queen and Prime Ministers,” he says.
“You sit on top of the edifice of the university. I’m lucky that I’ve had three excellent vice-chancellors with whom I’ve got on well and influenced.
“In my time, Liverpool took off and the university, too. It’s been a great privilege to be part of it.
“I always thought Liverpool was worth coming to and fighting for, all through its troubles.”
In conversation, we keep returning to one topic: funding.
“The easy money is over, no matter how much the Government might pretend. We all know we are in for a very nasty period of constraint in public expenditure, and that’s going to affect universities.
“Liverpool has got to maintain a high level of scholarships. We take many people from state schools and those parents who couldn’t support their children without scholarships.
“The quid pro quo is that fees are paid by the parents or students themselves and won back through the loan system, but the Government supports a higher level of scholarships.
“But I’ll bet the Government backs off on both these issues and the universities will have to find more money for scholarships as well.”
The last but one vice- chancellor, Prof Philip Love, started raising money from the alumni, aided by Lord Owen.
This was expanded into a lucrative alumni scheme by the next VC, Prof Drummond Bone.
“We were lucky then as a number of people we approached had a lot of money and were ready to be generous. It’s a very different, tougher climate now.”
Money spent on science will be harder to find and the university must look abroad, he says.
