Strategy to Join the Elite: Merger and the 2015 Agenda at the University of Manchester – An Update

Abstract

The logo of the University of Manchester incorporates a date of establishment of 1824 but this display of pedigree disguises the much more recent foundation of a new university by Royal Charter (A Royal Charter is a means of incorporation granted by the Sovereign of the United Kingdom on the advice of the Privy Council. The UK’s older Universities derive their legal identity by this means, and though largely dependent upon government funding, are independent not-for-profit bodies with their own governing bodies with responsibilities similar to those of a company board) on 1st October 2004. This new university, immediately the United Kingdom’s largest, was formed through an effective merger of two institutions, the Victoria University of Manchester (This was the formal name of the predecessor institution, reflecting its Victorian foundation, but it was almost universally known by the same name as its successor, the new University of Manchester. Prior to the merger UMIST staff and students almost universally referred to it as “Owens” after its historic college origins) (VUM) and the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST). At the time the use of the term ‘merger’ was discouraged as the project was not principally driven by the typical merger objectives of rationalisation and achieving scale. Rather the aim was to create a new institution that would drive towards a much higher position in the pantheon of world elite institutions than either of its predecessors had achieved in modern times but with a distinctive identity that did not emulate the UK’s so-called Golden Triangle of Cambridge, Oxford and the leading two London Universities, nor the highly-endowed US Ivy League.