Prof David Fleming encourages young people to go to university

When he was granted an interview at Sheffield Polytechnic, he deliberately tried to sabotage his chances. On the train to Sheffield, he started thinking about what he could say that would ensure a rejection.

“And I thought, when they ask me why I want to come, they’ll want me to say ‘Because I want to expand my mind and broaden my horizons’.”

So he did exactly the opposite. When the inevitable question came, his answer was: “Because I want to earn more money.”

His strategy didn’t work. “They turned around and said: ‘How fantastic to find somebody so motivated’.”

That is how, at the age of 21 and right at the start of the 1980s, he found himself enrolled to study for a BSc in Urban Land Economics.

It was, he admits, utterly terrifying. At school, he had been constantly told by teachers that he wasn’t very bright. He failed the 11+ at his primary school in Southport, Lancashire. After his middle-class parents scraped together the money to send him to a minor public school in the desperate hope it would help him do better, he managed only a single A-level.

When your teachers say you are thick, it rubs off, he says. “At primary school, I remember the head teacher telling me that I wasn’t bright.” At boarding school on the Isle of Man, meanwhile, he was told he was a ‘jolly good chap’, but not academically able.

He was good at getting on with people, however, and after leaving school, he found work as an estate agent in Lytham St Annes. By 21, he had risen to branch manager and drove a smart Triumph Dolomite. Life seemed good.

Then his mother and Lesley got on his case. “They said ‘David, we believe in you. We’re convinced you need to go to university. Your life chances will be so much better.”

So there he was, in his first week of term at Sheffield, wondering what he had got himself into.

“I remember sitting on a bench in the middle of Sheffield almost in tears,” he says. “I was thinking, ‘What have I done? What if I can’t cope with lectures? Will I be made to look a fool? How do I do my washing? Will I be able to cook spaghetti bolognese?’”

As it was, he soon found himself taking to academic life. “I worked really hard because I was scared of failing. And once I started getting some success, that gave me encouragement. I ended up with a first.”

That seems a long time ago now, but he has never forgotten the lessons. He understands what fresher students are going through when they arrive at university; and he appreciates more than most the value and importance of a good education – and how you should never write anyone off.

“I’m a living, breathing example of somebody who got a second chance,” he says.

We are chatting in the light-filled vice chancellor’s office at York St John University. Look out of the window, and you can see the towers of York Minster. Since he took over the top job at the university earlier this year, he delights in showing visitors around the campus, and then in bringing them here, to this room. He is clearly in love with the beauty of the surroundings, and with the history and traditions of what is both York’s newest university and, in a sense – with its long history as an institute of higher education – York’s oldest.

Not that, even after getting his degree, he ever expected to be here. A natural networker and wheeler-dealer, business was the world he felt most at home in; and business was the world he returned to after graduating.

A big, burly Lancastrian, he is one of those men who instantly puts you at your ease. There are no airs and graces: he just comes across, in his good but slightly rumpled suit, as open, friendly and genuinely interested. He has never in his life failed in an interview, he says cheerfully. “I always get the job.” And you believe him.

Sure enough, soon after graduating from Sheffield in the 1980s, he got himself a job as an estates assistant with Bass brewery in Nottingham. He was quickly promoted to director of development in Bass’s leisure division. His wife was working as a chartered accountant: and again, life was good. “We had a nice house on the outskirts of Nottingham, nice cars in the drive: it was a great time.”

Then, one day, Lesley looked at him. “And she said: ‘Do you know, we’re too young for this. Let’s do something else.”

They were in their late 20s, still without any children. “So I said OK,” Prof Fleming says.

They quit their jobs, sold the house, sold the cars, and got on the plane to Australia. There was a sense of absolute freedom, he recalls. Suddenly they were jobless, possessionless, rootless. “We didn’t have a single key, for anything.”

They arrived in Sydney, where Lesley already had a job to go to; David didn’t. So he started wandering around Sydney, knocking on doors. One of the doors belonged to a surveyor and real estate agent, Jones Lang Wootton.

“I got chatting to the receptionist and said ‘I’m looking for a job. I’m a chartered surveyor.’” There was a job going, she told him, for someone to value international hotels. “She said ‘I think the director’s in. Do you want to see her?”

His charm worked its magic. “I came home that night having got a job.”

It was a job that involved travelling all over the Pacific and South East Asia, doing valuation reports on hotels. After he’d been with the firm eight months, it came time for his annual bonus – and he was given a cool AS$100,000. “I was making them money,” he says modestly. It was the end of the 1980s and, once more, life was good.

Before long, he had set up, with a business acquaintance, his own consultancy firm, based in Tokyo. Lesley continued to live in Sydney; David spent the week in Tokyo, and flew home every Friday evening. The business was, he says, very successful.

Then, in 1991, Lesley became pregnant with their first child. They had another of those conversations about what they wanted to do with their lives. The result was that he rang his old tutor from Sheffield, who was now a Dean of faculty at Nottingham Trent University, and asked how he could go about getting a job as a lecturer.

“And he said ‘I would be more than delighted to have you work for us.’”

It meant a huge pay cut, but with a child on the way it seemed the right thing to do.

They jumped on a plane again, and that September David took up a job as a lecturer in Economics at Nottingham Trent. His career in academia had begun.

David Fleming CV

Age: 51.

Occupation: vice chancellor, York St John University.

Education: Failed 11+. One ‘A’-level.

BSc in Urban Land Economics; postgraduate Diploma in facilities management MBA and DBA.

Employment record: Estate agent, Lytham St Annes; Director of development, Bass Leisure; Jones Lang Wootton, Sydney; Pannon Pacific Consultants PTY Ltd, Tokyo; Nottingham Trent University, senior lecturer; Northumbria University, Dean of School of Built Environment; Sunderland University, deputy vice chancellor.

University still good for life chances, says new uni boss

YOUNG people should not let the prospect of increased tuition fees put them off going to university – because it will transform their lives, says York St John University’s vice chancellor.

Prof David Fleming, who joined St John in June, says going to university is a no-risk strategy.

Young people will not find themselves saddled with debts for the rest of their lives, he insists, but their prospects will be transformed.

“There is no risk. You only start paying back when you start doing well. But going to university is really good for your life chances. It is good for your earning potential, for your personal development, for your social benefit.”

Prof Fleming, 51, who failed his 11+ and was told by his teachers at school that he was not academically able, said going to university at 21 was a turning point in his life. Graduating, he said, “gave me great confidence. And it has held me in unbelievably good stead”.

He accepts there is a danger that young people could be put off by the rise in tuition fees. Under Government proposals announced following the Browne review, universities could put annual tuition fees up to as much as £9,000, from £3,290 at present. A student paying tuition fees of £6,000 a year could leave university with a debt of £30,000.

A university education is still a good deal, Prof Fleming says – and it is up to universities to explain why. Under the proposals, graduates will not have to start paying back their loans until they earn at least £21,000, compared to £15,000 today; young people need to change their thinking about that debt, Prof Fleming says.

“We need to change the discourse, from it’s a big debt, to ‘This is the deal, and it’s not a bad deal’. You are able to go to university whatever your background, and it is no risk.

“When you are 16 or 17, do you worry that when you get older you are going to pay 30 per cent income tax? Do you worry that you are going to pay X per cent on national insurance, and so much on your pension? That doesn’t worry young people.”

On the wider challenges facing universities, Prof Fleming said York St John should aim to carve out a niche as a ‘civic university’ at the heart of York. It wasn’t in competition with the University of York, he says. “That wants to change the world by outstanding research; we want to change the world by having outstanding teaching.”

He said there would need to be more flexibility in the way universities offered degrees, with more part-time courses, summer terms, and even ‘earn and learn’ degrees.

He is also keen to improve York St John’s national and international profile – and plans to recruit more international students.

“At the moment we have 130 international students, full time. If we had another 1,000 international students in two or three years time, that would make a significant contribution to diversity in the city.”