Dynamo from Down Under

Brunel University has a new vice-chancellor who is determined to improve its performance, push it up the league tables and to rebuild it by 2006, the bicentenary of Isambard Kingdom Brunel's birth. Lucy Hodges meets a man eager for change

Professor Steven Schwartz, the new man in charge at Brunel University, personifies the new broom sweeping through British higher education. Confident, outgoing, optimistic and straight-talking, he plans a bold new future for the west London university which involves reinventing it to compete with big hitters like Bath. An American who has spent the past 20 years in Australia, latterly running Murdoch University in Perth, he finds much about the British way of higher education bizarre, especially the bureaucracy, and is determined to put Brunel on the map, if necessary by mergers of the kind being proposed between Imperial and University College London. And he is a great fan of Sir Richard Sykes, the rector of Imperial and the man in charge of the proposed new institution. "These mergers are inevitable," he says. "I think we're going to hear a lot more in similar vein. If Chase Manhattan has to merge with JP Morgan and if Glaxo needs to merge with SmithKlein and if Price Waterhouse has to merge with Coopers and Lybrand, why are universities somehow exempt from these pressures?"

The obvious college for Brunel to marry is Royal Holloway in Egham, Surrey, though Professor Schwartz is staying mum. It is relatively close geographically and with its strong humanities and arts departments, would complement Brunel's engineering and technology bias. Merger would create a good-sized university. But Royal Holloway is a much more prestigious institution, number 20 in The Independent's league table, and Brunel might have to climb up from its number 50 slot to be taken seriously by its neighbour. No doubt, the new vice-chancellor has such a scenario within his sights. Today, he has to content himself with collaborating with Royal Holloway via a Joint Enterprise Centre whereby they develop their intellectual property together, and through some joint research projects.

In the shorter run, in the next four-and-a-half years, he plans an ambitious £100m remodelling of his own university, which, he claims, is the biggest revamp of any university in the country. It would include more performing arts spaces, a big sports development through an indoor track and field site, a library extension and a new student union. The performance spaces, the sports facility and the library would be open to the local community. In addition Professor Schwartz plans a doubling in the number of overseas students and partnerships with other universities around the world.

"When we have completed rebuilding we will have quite an attractive and up-to-date campus," he says. "We want to finish most of it by 2006 because that is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Isambard Brunel, the great Victorian engineer and our namesake, and the 40th birthday of the university. We want to put ourselves in a position to compete with Bath."

Yesterday the higher education minister, Margaret Hodge, visited Brunel to look at the graduate centre and was treated to an earful of the new vice chancellor's irreverent charm and ideas. The fact that he favours a market-driven approach should endear him to her. Unlike many vice-chancellors Professor Schwartz is in favour of Mrs Hodge's desire to see higher education becoming more of a marketplace – with institutions expanding and contracting in response to customer demand. The problem is that she hasn't put much flesh on the idea so far. "If she is serious, she needs to take it another step and say what she means," he says. "We don't have a competitive system at the moment except perhaps at the postgraduate level."

Professor Schwartz, like other critics, describe higher education as one of the last "command economies". All students, except those from overseas, pay the nominal fee of £1,100 if their parents are well off. That fee is heavily subsidised by the taxpayers. Universities are told how many subsidised places they may have regardless of how good or bad they are at teaching and research. Although the rules have been relaxed, universities are not allowed to expand their numbers to meet the demand. The result is that the less popular places are protected.

Professor Schwartz would like to see the United Kingdom opting for a new system of student funding along the lines of the Australian Higher Education Contributions Scheme. That enables universities to charge differential fees - different amounts depending on the type of course - and students don't start paying the tuition until after they have graduated and are earning above a threshold which is close to the national average wage. Once that is in place – and he hopes to see it in the White Paper to be published at the end of November – universities can be set free to teach what they like and charge accordingly. Some will opt for high price and restricted numbers; others will choose low price and high volume. Some could go to the wall, in Mrs Hodge's scary description, but all those that survive will be student oriented.

As it is, British universities are not used to real competition like they are in the USA, he says. Institutions such as Stanford, Yale and North Carolina are in constant competition with one another, but that is not so much the case in the UK. "In the United States they never can rest," he says. "They're in huge competition. That is one of the reasons why they are so good because they can't stop."

This competition is what will push more universities to merge. The cost of running higher education institutions keeps on going up, he points out. Every university has to have a library, an internet backbone, study spaces, student facilities and sports facilities. Some do it with a big income and some with a little one. Who will win the race? That is how Professor Schwartz thinks – and it is certainly how he talks. For small universities the percentage being spent on those essential services is huge. They don't have the money to poach good academics, pay higher salaries and look at new ideas because so much money is going on the essentials. Therefore they can't compete. "Increasingly there will be more and more amalgamations, mergers and collaborations to try to get to the size of some of the international competitors and it's really hitting home that we're in an international competition," he says.

Professor Schwartz is a man who can't stop. That is why he is constantly casting around for how to improve Brunel. Having decided on the redevelopment plan, he has also restructured the administration just as Sir Richard Sykes did at Imperial. Twenty five departmental heads who were reporting to the vice-chancellor have been subsumed into three faculties. And Professor Schwartz is in the process of creating an American-style public relations, marketing, fund-raising and alumni organisation to project Brunel to the outside world.

In the new cold climate, Brunel should be pleased to have such a dynamo in charge. Professor Schwartz pulled Murdoch University out of poor rankings and debt in the Nineties to a five-star rating and a special Prime Minister's award. Will he be able to do the same for Brunel?

l.hodges@independent.co.uk

Brunel: could it be the next Bath?

The main Uxbridge campus of Brunel has mellowed since Kubrick'sA Clockwork Orange was filmed there. Sixties brutalist architecture has been softened by landscaping, flowers and trees. Nevertheless the new vice-chancellor, Professor Steven Schwartz, was struck by "the deteriorating infrastructure". That, he says, is a euphemism for "falling-down buildings".

As one of the colleges of advanced technology created after the Robbins Report in the Sixties, Brunel has always been strong in engineering and retains that strength today, being the second biggest provider of engineering places in London after Imperial College. It did not take off like Bath, which moved to a green field site and shot up the research league table. Instead, like Aston, Salford and Bradford, Brunel remains at the bottom of the old universities in the league table. Professor Schwartz intends to change that through an energetic policy of recruiting 60 staff who would devote two-thirds of their time to research and one-third to teaching. So far he has recruited 20 of those in areas such as economics, biomedical engineering, IT and law. "It's common to talk about universities as companies," says Professor Schwartz. "I think they're more like football teams. If you get good players, it almost doesn't matter how bad the management is."

Brunel has always had sound finances, which puts it in a strong position vis-à-vis some other institutions. Through mergers it acquired valuable real estate. The first chunk, in Twickenham, has been sold and the university is also planning to offload its Osterley campus. The money will finance the redevelopment of the Uxbridge campus. All of which should help to propel Brunel up the league table – maybe even to within spitting distance of Bath.