What does a university president actually do? In this, his new weekly Irish Timescolumn, DCU's FERDINAND VON PRONDZYNSKIaddresses the big question

I MUST begin with a terrible admission: I am the most senior – and by that I mean the longest-serving – university president in Ireland. I don’t think I am the oldest, but I have been doing this job longer than anyone else – for nine years.

But what is “this job”? What does a university president actually do?

When I was a student in Trinity College Dublin, the provost of the college was the noted and widely respected historian FSL Lyons. And yet, I am by no means sure now that I was aware of even his name at the time, and I certainly never met him then. And if someone had asked me what his job entailed, I would have been quite unable to attempt any answer.

Lyons’s successor as provost of Trinity was the botanist Bill Watts. He took up the post in 1981, just after I had started my academic career there as a lecturer in industrial relations. By 1983, I would have been able to offer a much more detailed view of what the provost’s job was, because in that year, I was a bit player (as branch secretary of the Irish Federation of University Teachers) in a significant bit of industrial action that nearly closed the college, and during which I had one or two public arguments with him (which, to his credit, he never held against me). In fact, Bill Watts was a very visible presence on the campus, though, to be fair, I doubt that many students would have recognised him.

Watts actually wrote an autobiography, A Memoir, in which he set out his experiences as provost of Trinity. In this book, he wrote that “the provost is both by statute and custom the college’s chief executive” with responsibilities that are “potentially heavy if things go wrong”.

The use of the term “chief executive” is seen by some as incompatible with the collegial traditions of academic life, in that it conjures up an image of a company operating in a commercial setting. The term used in the Universities Act 1997 is “chief officer”, and Schedule 4 of the Act describes the role as follows:

“The chief officer of a university shall, subject to this Act, manage and direct the university in its academic, administrative, financial, personnel and other activities and for those purposes has such powers as are necessary or expedient.”

This may suggest that the president of a university has fairly dramatic powers to manage the institution and to act as the ultimate decision-maker. The reality is often a little different. Decision-making in higher education institutions is complex, and will tend to be less than wholly effective if it does not secure the goodwill and support of at least a significant majority of staff. This is reflected in the more detailed description by Bill Watts of his role as provost, which seemed in particular to consist of chairing committees.

So does everyone then know what a president does? I’m not sure. Occasionally, I meet groups of students in DCU and ask them what they imagine my job is like. Mostly, they haven’t a clue, but some suggest that it must involve attending (or chairing) a lot of meetings and eating a lot of dinners.

Another take on this was given to me by a group of visiting primary school pupils, whom I was asked to address. So I asked them also what they thought my role was. They all looked completely at a loss, until one young girl suggested I might be a “tour guide”. When I thought about it, I felt that was maybe not a bad answer.

Of course, in many respects the job is what the holder is able to make it, and different presidents have different (and equally valid) approaches. He or she is clearly the public face of the university, and the person who explains and interprets the institution to stakeholders and the wider public. But the president is also expected to exercise leadership, in particular by proposing the university’s strategy to its board. He or she must be an agent for change and a defender of continuing values.

While there are, as I have suggested, a number of different ways of carrying out the job, it has been my view that the president should be visible, both inside the institution and in a more public setting. I cannot judge whether DCU students know more about me than I did about Leland Lyons, but I think it is important that students as well as staff have some direct access to the president.

But what the president can do in particular is to develop a degree of institutional knowledge and ambition that can define the university’s sense of purpose, and which can also help carry it through more challenging times.

When I took up my post, Ireland was in the middle of the boom years of the Celtic Tiger, when everything seemed possible. Right now, we have sunk into a sense of pessimism and gloom, and while this makes the job of president much more challenging, it also gives the role a much clearer purpose.

And so, over the weeks ahead, I am hoping to describe a little more what I do on a day-to-day basis, and through that, perhaps, help to shine a little more light on the role of a university president, at least as understood by this one. It is my view that universities are crucial to this country’s recovery; and that what we need is not just the survival of universities, but their ability to inspire and to innovate. It is my hope that I will be able to explain a little more what a president can do right now to help the academic community meet societys expectations.

Ferdinand von Prondzynski is president of Dublin City University. His daily blog is now attracting more than 10,000 readers. Over the coming months, he will be writing a weekly diary giving his take on educational matters – and a great deal more besides