Information about Michael Sterling

Professor Michael Sterling FREng (born 9 February 1946) is the Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of Birmingham. He began his career as an electrical engineer in 1964 joining AEI (later GEC) as a student apprentice with a scholarship to the University of Sheffield to read Electronic and Electrical Engineering, graduating with a 1st class Honours degree and subsequently a PhD in computer control in 1971. He then joined Sheffield as a Lecturer and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 1978. He then moved to the University of Durham as Professor of Engineering in 1980, before being appointed as Vice-Chancellor of Brunel University in 1990.

Professor Sterling has an engaging manner, but is hard-nosed in his pursuit of university success and favours market-led models, sometimes attracting the ire of employees. He is Chairman of the Russell Group, representing the UK’s 19 leading universities, a Board Member of the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS), a Board Member of Advantage West Midlands (the regional RDA), a member of AWM’s Innovation and Technology Council and Chair of AWM’s Information and Communication Technology Steering Group. In addition he is a member of the Prime Minister’s Council for Science and Technology and Chairman of its Energy Sub-Group.

At Brunel, Sterling owersaw the consolidation of the University and a merger with the West London Institute of Higher Education, which produced a multi-sited University with a student body of 12,000. More controversially, he closed the Departments of Physics and Chemistry, even through Brunel was supposedly led by science and technology, and oversaw the award of an honorary doctorate to Dame Margaret Thatcher, against strong union and student resistance.

On his appointment to Birmingham, Professor Sterling said that he was 'looking forward immensely to the challenge of leading the University of Birmingham into its second century. It is a great international university which has not forgotten its local roots. There is huge potential in the University, the City of Birmingham and the West Midlands region'. In addition, he said that he relished 'the opportunity of working with new colleagues to achieve our common purpose of maintaining and improving Birmingham's position in the front rank of universities'.

Yet once installed, he soon dismantled the world-renowned Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies founded by Richard Hoggart and Stuart Hall, provoking an international campaign to save it. The Centre, however, had only achieved a very lowly 3a ranking in the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise, indicating that it had perhaps been living on its past glories. In addition, Birmingham has consistently slipped down most independent (mainly newspaper) national rankings. Indeed in 2006 it was ranked only 33rd out of 109 universities according to the much respected Times Good University Guide. However it still remains one of only eleven British universities ranked in the world's top 100, perhaps more a testimony to its reputation than current status. It also attracts the fifth highest number of applicants annually. Sterling recently courted controversy when claiming that the then proposed £3,000 top-up fees would not be enough for Birmingham, stating that £5,000 would be more appropriate for his university.

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