DTP 2018-19 City University of London

The City Vision and Strategy 2026, agreed by the University Executive and Council, will guide the activities at City, University of London, with a particular focus on the next five years and will be made operational through the Education & Student Strategy, Research & Enterprise Strategy, Internationalisation Strategy, People Strategy, School and Professional Service and individual School Strategic Plans and, ultimately, people's individual objectives, reviewed as part of the annual Staff Appraisal round.

Achieving the Vision is based on the three strategic priorities of (i) maintaining the quality trajectory ('better'), (ii) achieving growth ('bigger') and (iii) leveraging partnerships within London (including through the University of London) and internationally - with the aim of making City much better connected, both nationally and internationally.

City, University of London, will thus build on the quality focus begun as part of the previous Strategic Plan 2012 - 2016 and maintain City's current upwards trajectory supporting our research students, emphasizing enhanced research intensity, research quality, educational quality and thus achieving a better student experience overall. This further improvement in quality will remain vital to our success: it is seen as a key driver of both research itself and the staff at City who lead it, attracting the students whose lives will be enhanced through their achievements in studying for their research degrees at City. The Vision and Strategy 2026 calls for growth while continuously driving up quality, under the firm guiding principle of 'quality-constrained growth'.

Growth at this time in research is particularly important, to achieve the critical mass necessary for both research excellence and to promote a better educational experience of the research students, while enhancing the effectiveness and impact of the investment in research. Achieving the critical mass planned will allow us to create the planned improvement in the quality of our research outputs, through better economies of scale and not significantly increasing costs. City invested heavily in high quality, research active staff over the period of the previous Strategic Plan and increased its number of research active staff submitted to REF 2014 to 426 (from 354 for RAE 2008), giving momentum to increasing research student numbers and research grants won. Thus, over the next five years City's strengths will be leveraged through the impact these staff have brought, as well as new and joint degrees or shared pathways and through actions taken to improve student retention and completion. This increased momentum in research underpins the strategy for growth in student numbers, accompanied by a planned continued rise in research and enterprise income, as City builds further on its international profile and successfully accesses a wider range of research income sources.