The board, an international body of experts, was convened to find ways to turn around the struggling 139-year-old agriculture training institution.
It said Lincoln should aspire to be one of the top five agricultural universities in the world and one of New Zealand’s top five universities but that required a significant transformation of how the university was run.
It meant the university working differently and using the Lincoln Hub, a 27,000 square metre research centre to be built alongside the campus to specialise in agrifood and technology.
It would house 900 researchers from AgResearch, DairyNZ, Landcare Research, Plant and Food Research and Lincoln with the first stage of the complex approved by the Government in June with $206 million tagged for a facility jointly owned by Lincoln and AgResearch.
“With recent significant funding being approved by the Crown for the Lincoln University and AgResearch joint research facility, the university now has a new strategic opportunity to demonstrate its value-add to the primary sector and tertiary sector as well as wider NZ,” the report said.
That meant moving away from being a standalone university to being the academic heart of the Lincoln Hub and a valued partner to institutions with shared goals.
The university had a number of hurdles to clear before the board could consider that transformation successful, including its small size, improving relationships with key stakeholders and organisations.
It also questioned whether its governance structures were fit for purpose.
“Currently it is not performing to its potential because its vision and strategy are not well defined or understood and the governance, leadership and management of the university have lagged behind best practice for a decade or more.”
It suggested an operating model similar to Wageningen University and Research in the Netherlands, where the Dutch government encouraged collaboration between the private and public sectors and knowledge institutions.
Like Lincoln it struggled to attract students through the 1970s and 1980s but turned itself around by getting its reporting and management systems in order, having a clear strategy that identified areas of growth, improving engagement with alumni and partners in the sector and building a strong profile and communications.
Today Wageningen was recognised as one of the leading agrifood and forestry institutions in the world, focused on food and food production, the living environment and health, lifestyle and livelihood.
It had a staff of 6500 and about 10,000 students from 100 countries.
Like Wageningen the board saw Lincoln’s future in the agrifood sector and given strong governance, leadership, courage, productive relationships and investment it had the potential to be a leading global university in that sector.
“The university already has in place a number of respected research programmes and some gifted teachers and renowned researchers but too few.”
Research showed stakeholders supported the transformation but they wanted action quickly.
The board said there needed to be a rethink of the courses offered to acknowledge the value of the university to the tertiary sector and the economy was much wider than agriculture.
“New disciplines and degrees should be considered and some current courses re-evaluated and perhaps discontinued or simplified.”
In 2015 Lincoln reported a $6.99 million operating deficit, the culmination of a series of challenges including the global financial crisis and the Canterbury earthquakes of 2010 and 2011.
But there was clear evidence the university was not delivering on its potential.
A subsequent review revealed outdated infrastructure, including accommodation, a poor strategy, weak relationships with stakeholders, an academic structure that operated in silos, inflexible programmes, a lack of critical mass and poor technology for students and staff.
The 2016 appointment of vice-chancellor Robin Pollard saw a number of initiatives introduced.
They included reinvigorating the Academic Board, making academic units accountable for performance, more robust operations and performance improvement planning, improved financial management, the Transformation Board’s establishment and the divestment of the Telford training farm in south Otago.
As a result it reported a $493,000 profit in 2016, its first surplus in a decade, but the board warned enrolments were still lower than desirable and the university was still not well placed to withstand another external shock.
The university employs 598 full time staff and on October 1 had 2649 full time student equivalents.
Revenue on December 31 2016 was $118m with education and training representing 43% of that and research and development 33%, a sign of the progress Lincoln has to make to achieve impacts at scale.
