City's Emerging Strategic Plan

While providing a clear destination (leading global University) and direction (academic excellence) each School and Professional Service will see their own challenges within this Vision.

To prepare for the development and the 2012 implementation of our Strategic Plan we will clarify and make more specific the general actions that flow from this Vision. We can assume that we will continue, as now, to be a well‐managed institution with sound standards, sound finance and a commitment to the needs and satisfaction of our students, staff and stakeholders and our widening access and environmental agendas. We can also assume that we can develop common and academically‐led procedures across the University.

Below is an indicative, rather than comprehensive, list of those general actions, as they indicate what we will need to do in order to achieve our Vision. A final list of actions will be contained within our Strategic Plan.

Education

• We will continue to direct student numbers towards our strongest courses and away from our weakest and innovate to strengthen our provision in domestic and international markets.
• We will maintain our current range of qualifications but will seek to re‐balance from lower‐level (e.g., diploma and foundation degree) to higher level (e.g., honours degree, masters and doctoral). 
• We will continue to increase entry tariffs to our undergraduate degrees (as we move towards a 400 tariff point entry). 
• We will shift the institutional emphasis from academic staff teaching hours to student learning. 
• We will improve the quality of our students' experience.
• We will continue to listen carefully to our students and further increase our measured student satisfaction.

Research

• We will recruit academic staff with international levels of research standing. 
• We will place great stress on preparations for the Research Excellence Framework (REF) exercise in November 2013 as a means of concentrating our resources both now and in the future, on international levels of research excellence.
• We will increase significantly our income from research and the proportion derived from the Research Councils.
• We will increase significantly the number of doctoral students (as we move towards an average of one doctoral student per academic staff member).
• We will build on our strength in interdisciplinary research, particularly in areas that relate to major global issues.

Enterprise

• We will develop our profitable enterprise activities. 
• We will prioritise consulting, high‐level CPD and the commercialisation of our intellectual property.

Internationalisation

• We will build on the internationalisation that has followed in the wake of our London location and discipline mix to develop a more systematic and overtly international approach to our activities. 
• We will broaden our range of international connections through strategic partnerships in order to strengthen both our education and research.
• We will use the World Cities World Class university network to enhance international research collaboration and promote the exchange of students and staff.
• We will further develop our activities in transnational education.

Human Resources

• We will invest in people as the primary means of driving this transformation.
• We will align the recruitment, grading, support, progression and promotion of academic staff with best practice in the sector.
• We will move to a position where the vast majority of our academic staff are both trained in research and active in research at international levels of excellence.
• We will design and implement a Professional Services structure to support our academic aspirations.

IT

• We will bring our IT provision for education, research and academic administration to 'sector leading' in critical areas of our provision and 'sector average' in remaining areas.

Estate

• We will create the quality of space required to make this transformation by reducing the maintenance backlog as quickly as possible.
• We will develop an Estate Strategy as part of the Strategic Plan.
• We will plan for the buildings we need to move forward from 2016.

Marketing & Communications

• We will strengthen our marketing and communications: internally and externally, physically and electronically, locally, nationally and internationally.
• We will develop a strong Public Relations capacity.
• We will establish City University London as a quality global brand.

Development

• We will use development activity to enhance our network of friends and alumni.

Sustainability

• We will continue our transition from a financially‐led to an academically‐led institution, both to achieve our Vision and because financial sustainability follows academic excellence rather than vice versa.
• We will invest in areas of academic strength and academic potential and disinvest in areas that do not align with our Vision.
• We will return to a position where we generate surpluses for investment.

Governance & structure

• We will develop institution‐wide clarity on the appropriate balance of collegial and corporate principles for effective governance, leadership and management.
• We will retain our current educational breadth, although there will be a need for reorganisation within some Schools, both to build on our strengths and respond to the market.
• We will be open, should the opportunity arise, to closer working and governance arrangements with other academic institutions in London.