I'm still at my desk but will shortly be going home to complete my packing befroe setting off on holiday tomorrow.  When I first became a Pro-Vice-Chancellor the then Vice-Chancellor, Bob Boucher, told me that he wanted me to take three weeks' leave as a block each year.  He argued that he wanetd his senior team to have a 'proper' holiday.  And his argument was that if you take only a week off no one will cover any work for you, two weeks and some will get done but not all.  But with three weeks off other people have to take over significant elements of the day-to-day business - and that colleagues may appreciate more what it is that you do when you really are there.

Actually, many people now find it difficult to switch off when on holiday - in part because we all carry smart phones that can be used to read our e-mails wherever we are in the world (although often at a price).  At one time we were almost completely out of contact whilst on holiday - now many people find it difficult to restrain themselves from staying in contact. I will confess that, befroe I had a smart phone, I could occasionally be found in internet cafes abroad, just checking on the NSS results, or the post A level recruitment position or some other piece of information.  And it's that last word that is the problem: we don't like being without information - even if there's not much we can actually do with it. 

So, I will try to restrain myself over the next two and a bit weeks (I'm not taking as long away as I was told - A level results week beckons).  But I suspect that at some point I will yield to temptation, when no one else can see me, and will switch on international roaming and download e-mail. 

There will only be two blogging days in August beacsue of my holiday - 15th and 22nd. 

It's graduation week.  There are 15 ceremonies at the rate of 3 per day, and this year I am attending 10 - 4 where I am Presiding Officer and 6 where I am attending but taking no formal role.  Apart from the ceremonies at which I preside, I also attend all those where there is a Senate Award winner, plus one or two others for reasons such as an honorary graduate who is known to me.

It's not actually the ceremonies I want to comment on today, but the lunches.  I know these will be a closed world to most readers of this blog.  Each day during graduation week there is a special lunch served at which the university hosts each day's honorary graduates and their families, as well as a number of civic dignitaries who come to take part in the ceremonies - the Lord Mayor, both of our local Bishops, the Lord Lieutenant, the Master Cutler and so on. The University contingent is made up of those who are reading the names and those who are presiding at that day's ceremonies, with other members of the Unviersity Executive Board attending when they can.

One of the most delightful aspects of these lunches is the conversation - a group of interesting people thrown together for 90 minutes while the Octagon is re-set for the afternoon ceremony. This week I have listened as a colleague from Journalism has given an expert's view of the crisis at News International, discussed opera with a local dignitary, been part of a conversation about the energy conversion for various types of meat, received an explanation of environmental controls on oil rigs off the coast of Africa, and been involved as conversation has flowed over many other topics.

When I first arrived in the university, staff from a variety of departments used to meet together for lunch.  Those around the table varied through time, but among my lunch companions have been an applied mathematician, a sociologist, a scholar of linguistics, colleagues from the Management School, and many others.  The varied conversations that such a mixture engendered seem to me now to be things of the past.  Colleagues today collect a sandwich to eat in their own rooms, or generally eat lunch with others from the same department.  Is it that we have less time, or that we are no longer as interested in wider concerns as we once were (perhaps made narrower by the focus on the RAE)?

But there is little to compare with gentle conversation with those from very diferent backgrounds to set the mind on to new tracks and create new lines of thought.  That's why I particularly enjoy the graduation lunches that I am privileged to attend as a member of the University Executive Board: they are very stimulating events.  I am very lucky to have the chance to be there - and I recognise and acknowledge that good fortune.

In the USA many corporations have links with universities and provide particular support for scholarships, internships and other initiatives.  The practice is less common in the UK, but is growing.  Today we have had a celebration of one particular corporate partnership that really seems to hjave got off to a good start and can deliver some new things for the university.

The Spanish bank Santander has over the years created a university network in its main market areas - Spain, Portugal and the whole of Spanish- and Partuguese-speaking Latin America.  In the last few years it has extended that network to the UK, and Sheffield recently became the latest British university to develop a formal relationship with the bank.  Latin America is a very significance global region, but one in which we have been weakly represented.  Funding from the bank has enabled us to develop a scholasrhip programme to attract students from the region, and also to create a set of mobility funds to support short visits to Spain, Portugal and Latin America by staff and research students here who might be able to forge new links.  Today the President of the Santander Universities network came to hear how we are getting on, to meet the supported incoming stduents and those from Sheffield who have benefited from travel monies, and to discuss next steps.  The enthusiasm shown by all the recipients of financial support was considerable, and it was clear that without the sponsorship of the bank we could not have supported what has in fact happened.

But we have also used the support of Santander to create a series of prizes for the best portfolios and activities reported by students undertaking the Sheffield Graduate Award.  This is close to my heart, as it was me that pushed for the creation of the Award back in my early years as Pro-Vice-Chancellor.  This year over 400 students will be receiving the Award at the graduation ceremonies later in the month, and that is a notable achievement.  We have set up a scheme for this volume of activity using only shoestring funding to do so.  The support of Santander in awarding prizes for the best award winners is special, and I was delighted to meet all but one of the winner today - and they are an outstanding group who will bring credit on themselves and the university.  (And as is the way with corporate sponsorship, no doubt on Santander Bank as well!  Hence everyone wins.)

(Apologies that this posting is several days late, although it does refer to the appointed day. I have no excuse for late delivery other than pressure of work and a series of evening engagements over the past week.)

I was lucky enough to secure a lectureship direct from being a doctoral student.  The early 1970s were the last years of the Robbins expansion of higher education and the number of posts was still growing to match the growth in student numbers - both in the new universities that had recently been created (York, Sussex, Essex, Lancaster etc.) and through the expansion of older foundations.  Most of my fellow doctoral students who wanted academic posts similarly moved straight into them - at Keele, Kent, Queen Mary, Newcastle, Loughborough and elsewhere.  But then expansion came to an end, and after 1979 and the election of Mrs Thatcher's government there was retrenchment: I was the youngest lecturer in my department until I was in my early 30s.

The situation today is very different.  The newly completing PhD student rarely gets offered a lectureship.  Much more common is the route that involves a research assistant position - generally on a project devised by someone else - possibly then followed by a postdoctoral fellowship of some kind (which may have the advantage of being on a project designed by the individual concerned).  The lectureship comes up only at the end of some years of this hand-to-mouth existence - if it comes up at all.

This morning I was at a meeting of our Doctoral and Researcher Development Committee - a group charged with enhancing the skills development of postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers, and with their training so that they improve their chances of real career development and the fulfilment of their employment goals.  It is a difficult task.  For many bright young academics the role model they aspire to is that followed by their supervisors - into a full academic job.  Yet in many areas this involves at best waiting to fill 'dead mens' shoes' as there is no expansion taking place.  We have researchers who have been in the same career position for over 10 years, often on a sequence of projects and contracts that does not really lead anywhere.  As someone today said, it is very tough to tell an aspiring young academic that they might be much better off looking for a research career outside academia - or even a career outside research altogether - but we need to be honest enough to do so. The problem is really that we who have made our careers in universities are not best placed to point such individuals in alternative directions - we lack the experience of what other sectors are like.

I have supervised over 20 research students to successful completion, and a number are now employed in a variety of universities: among them Sheffield itself, Kwansei Gakuin in Japan, Greenwich, Southampton, Oxford Brookes, City and elsewhere.  But a number of them have not actually made great use of their research training and high level analytical skills and expertise. I am left wondering whether during their PhD studies more could have been done for them to develop alternative career options.  Many of those students graduated some time ago.  I hope that through the work of today's Committee we can provide a more positive outlook for those of today's research students who will not (or do not want to) enter the academic profession.