End of an era as leader Les hangs up his mortar board and retires from uni

“I’m not really looking forward to it,” jokes University of Bedfordshire Vice Chancellor Les Ebdon following an announcement earlier this month that he is to say a fond farewell to his colleagues and students next year.

“I enjoy the job, it’s a super job being a Vice Chancellor and being the Vice Chancellor of this university is the best job in the sector. I’ve nothing really planned, I’m open to offers,” he said.

After an academic career spanning more than three decades, Professor Ebdon has decided to hang up his mortar board and gown at the end of the current academic year, when he will be 65.

He told the Luton News: “It was a tough decision to retire and it’s one that I’ve been putting off for several years because things have been going so well here.

“I thought it right to see the university through the choppy waters of change from direct government teaching funding to using student fees for funding.

“With the new system coming in and the university well placed it feels like the right time to hand over the reins.”

Professor Ebdon began his academic career with a BSc and a PhD at Imperial College in London before lecturing for a period at Makerere University in the Ugandan capital Kampala, where he said he met infamous dictator Idi Amin on several occasions. “He made it a fairly scary place to be,” admits Professor Ebdon.

He then moved on to Sheffield City Polytechnic before moving to what’s now the University of Plymouth as Reader in Analytical Chemistry in 1981, moving up the staff ranks over the next eight years.

Following a 14 year stint as a Deputy Vice Chancellor at Plymouth, Professor Ebdon was given the chance to return to the area he grew up in (he was raised on an estate in nearby Hemel Hempstead) in September 2003 with the vacant Vice Chancellor’s chair at what was then known as the University of Luton. And his past experiences of the area meant that he knew it had great potential.

“It’s considered cool to denigrate your home town in this part of the country,” he said.

“You wouldn’t get that in Sheffield. But that disguises the fact that people do actually rate the town and its achievements.

“The thing that impressed me most was the harmony in the town. Me and my wife had a coffee in the town centre when we were mulling over whether to move from the coast in the south west to Luton and we saw groups of youngsters of all ethnicities mixing together and we thought that was one of the most exciting things about being here.

“We’ve not had a second of trouble within the university in terms of all the different groups.”

When Professor Ebdon took over the then University of Luton was financially unsteady and had a somewhat dubious reputation. It has since gone from strength to strength, merging with Bedford’s De Montford campus to become the University of Bedfordshire in 2006 and earlier this year winning the prestigious Queen’s Award for Enterprise. During Professor Ebdon’s tenure the uni has transformed from a £30 million institution with less than 10,000 students to an annual turnover of around £130 million today with more than 23,000 students studying there and 1,000 staff on its books.

It is now regarded as one of the most financially sound universities in the UK and is third in the league tables for the number of international students.

But the turn around wasn’t easy.

Professor Ebdon said: “It was a challenge to make people proud of what they were achieving, we needed to raise people’s expectations and aspirations for the place. I said when I came here: I can’t promise you new buildings straight away, not until we get the finincial situation straight, I can’t promise you big name professors straight away, again not until the financial situation is secure, but we can make this the most friendly and welcoming university in the country.

“It’s a university that’s open to all types of people and we built our success on that. And now we’ve got the new buildings and the big name professors to go with it.”

And what will Professor Ebdon miss most about the place?

“The students are fantastic, just to hear some of the success stories and the obstacles they have overcome and to see them achieving great things,” he said.