In recent years AHUA has made a choice to talk about an absence of people of colour* within the professions it serves.
There was a discomfort that had existed unanswered for too long when looking at the annual association conference full of registrars, secretaries and chief operating officers – who were overwhelmingly white.
It was an acknowledgement that, while some progress was being made in the diversity of the students and staff that the association’s members served and supported – and even in the population of vice chancellors and university chairs they work with, the group of heads of administration has remained stubbornly white.
While we could have chosen as a membership organisation to defer on this issue to the institutions who appoint our members, we choose to recognise our responsibility and ability to influence and inform institutions.
We proactively sought out initiatives where we believe we have agency to increase opportunities to enhance progression and diversity and are committing resources to our members to help their own activities. We considered it a responsibility we share with institutions and the sector.
The work of the association to address this was multifaceted because, despite limited capacity and resource to invest, we knew that there was no silver bullet to be fired or piece of marketing that would change our language and in doing so break the barrier that appeared to exist.
We also knew we would need to speak about things that might be uncomfortable at times, and that would need some care to avoid being white folk talking about race in ways which inadvertently perpetuated problems or failed to acknowledge the privilege we might have.
A reciprocal mentoring program was established bringing together AHUA members with minority ethnic staff from middle management and director-level roles using frameworks that tried to create equal power in the relationship, and mutual learning and dialogue that would help advance the way people think about race and equity in their work and practice and aspirations.
A bursaries programme was launched for ethnic minorities to join our flagship “Aspiring Registrars and COO’s Programme”. The bursaries were designed to demonstrate our ambition to create pathways into the roles AHUA represent and bring together and diversify the conversations that take place within the course. They resulted in an increase in applications from a previously underrepresented group in the first year and it’s a pilot we may well repeat or extend in due course.
A research partnership and evidence base
These projects were modest attempts to start to try to generate change but we had to acknowledge that they were based on our own judgements and experience, as a largely white population of people who had made it into positions of power and authority.
It was on that basis that we decided we needed a robust evidence base that included the voices and experiences of those who are ethnically minoritised. So, we developed a research brief and ran a tender process to try to find a research partner who could work with us to best inform our further and continued work to deliver real change. In late 2024 we launched the research project with our partners at Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University
The research takes in two research phases. The first phase is desk-based, looking at institutions and what their available and existing data tells us about the structural profiles and institutional experiences of work on diversifying workforce, particularly at more senior levels in professional services.
This phase might reflect on race quality charters, Athena swan charters, ethnicity pay gap reporting and data on race/ethnicity in career progression.
The second phase conducts interviews and focus groups, primarily with people who are ethnically minoritised professional services staff and captures their own work experiences and perceptions of professional services. All of this data and research is intended to help us start to more deeply understand the barrier and enablers for career progression.
We are really anxious not to assume the research findings and outcomes will identify simple, easy solutions to a deep-rooted challenge for us. Equally, we are determined that the research outcomes (however uncomfortable) can be disseminated widely and that the substance of the research finds practical, initiatives that leverage change based on evidence.
Whatever the outcome, we are very firmly committed to gathering the research evidence that can underpin our work to bring a new diversity to the administrative leadership of universities in the years ahead.
If there are institutions who wish to share their data as part of the first phase please do get in touch with AHUA and / or Louise Oldridge (louise.oldridge@ntu.ac.uk) as the research project lead and we will make sure we can help you set up a collaborative agreement to share the available data and start be part of the project. We require participating institutions to be signed up before the end of March. Find out more about participation in interviews and to sign up.
*We recognise that this term is one way to refer to a community of people that share experiences of race and racism. We are continuously seeking ways to better engage and reflect the sector and community, and welcome feedback on our choice of language.
