Vice-Chancellor Sir Leslie Fielding, from October 1987

• Education is crucial for a knowledge-based future but the education system is under critical scrutiny, with demands for greater accountability for the state resources consumed; 'value for money' and 'relevance' are watch words. Academic freedom has to be defended against bureaucratic centralism. Sussex's progressive thinking is an advantage
• The VC wants Sussex to be less reliant on state funding, to develop closer partnerships with other academic institutions and with industries and services of the South-East, to widen access for students with non-traditional qualifications, to review and adapt teaching methods and research, and to widen international connections especially with the EC
• Since the establishment of the Careers Advisory Board and the appointment of careers tutors in each UG school, student unemployment after graduation has dropped from around 20 per cent in 1983 to around eight per cent in 1986 (around the national average for graduate unemployment), and the number of students in employment has risen from around 60 per cent in 1983 to around 70 per cent in 1986 (slightly better than the national average)
• Management of the university another key concern as intervention by the state increases exponentially, covering administration, admissions, teaching standards, examinations, research support, training and appraisal of staff, PG completion rates, budgets, and so on
• Sussex is the first British university to have a formal corporate planning process, to practice budgetary devolution to individual units and to create a joint Council-Senate Planning Committee
• Sussex has made major changes including restructuring administration, reforming Senate, strengthening the role of Council and slimming down the planning committee, and clarifying the role of VC. This year sees the first moves towards a more managerial approach to administering the University
• Financial constraints are eased as the UGC awards Sussex the sixth largest percentage increase in the UK. This is thought to be because Sussex is focussing on research in engineering, computer science and science policy research
• Research funded by industry is up 40 per cent and has increased by more than £250,000 pounds in the last four years. Total research grants and contracts are up 11 per cent to £5.88 million
• Two major art collections are given to the University: watercolours, sketches and woodcuts by the war artist Dorothy Coke; and works by Arnold Dagahni, both of whom had lived in Brighton and Hove
• Eighty-one-year-old James Thornley becomes the oldest person in Britain to earn a Doctorate: he graduates in Development Studies in summer 1987
• Three hundred mature trees are lost in the Great Storm which strikes the South East in October 1987. Beeches, oaks, sycamores and elms which survived Dutch Elm disease were lost
• Professor Denys Wilkinson and Sir Richard Attenborough are awarded honorary degrees in summer 1987

Quote

[The new School of Cognitive Studies is] 'a pioneering centre for research into intelligence and the mechanisms underlying it in humans, other animals or machines and builds on work at Sussex that has developed since the late 1960s' Professor M Boden

Undergraduate subjects areas in order of popularity (numbers are approximate)

Applied Social Science: over 600 students

Languages: 600 students

Humanities: 500 students

Physical Sciences: over 400 students

Biological Sciences: 400 students

Other Social Sciences: 400 students

Engineering: over 300 students

Computing/Maths: 300 students

Postgraduate subjects areas in order of popularity (numbers are approximate)

Applied Social Science: over 500 students

Physical Sciences: over 200 students

Languages: over 100 students

Biological Sciences: 100 students

Other Social Sciences: 75 students

Computing/Maths: 75 students

Engineering: 50 students

Humanities: 50 students