'A university for the world': Anton Muscatelli's proud legacy

“It was much more of a local university,” he reflects. “It was smaller. The majority of the students were Scottish, and it felt more traditional. There weren’t the same opportunities in terms of clubs and societies, and it wasn’t as international.”

Having graduated from Glasgow University just four years after Muscatelli, I, too, have witnessed its transformation, albeit at a greater distance. Today, a daunder through the old Western Infirmary site and along University Avenue takes you past spanking new buildings  — the Adam Smith Business School, the Mazumdar-Shaw Advanced Research Centre, Clarice Pears Institute of Health and Wellbeing, the James McCune Smith Learning Hub; and the whole campus is thronged with students from across the globe.

To reach the office where the interview is to take place, we chart a more traditional course through the Gilbert Scott building: past the Adam Smith statue, where visiting economists pause to have their photograph taken, and up the staircase with its stone arch windows and its cacophony of patterned wallpapers. 

Muscatelli loves showing the place off. “When Mike Bloomberg was in the Bute Hall during COP26, he said this was the most beautiful university he had ever seen,” he says. But, for all his grand titles and high-flying roles  (consultant to the World Bank; adviser to the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee; chair of the independent expert group for the Calman Commission on Devolution; chair of the Russell Group) he is down to earth and lacking in bombast.

Professor Sir Anton Muscatelli in conversation with Dani Garavelli (Image: Gordon Terris)

Born in Mola di Bari in the south of Italy, he arrived in Glasgow at the age of 12, his late father Ambrogio, a shipping manager, having moved the family to the city after several years in the Netherlands (and several months back in Italy). Muscatelli attended the High School of Glasgow. “It was a bit of a culture shock at first,” he says. “I had experienced a liberal primary education in the Netherlands, where you were encouraged to speak about current affairs in class, and it was more regimented here.” 

The city clearly cast a spell, though; on the couple of occasions Muscatelli has moved away, he has soon been lured back. His first departure, straight from school to study physics in Imperial College London, was cut short when he realised he wanted to be an economist. Glasgow University offered him a place, and a chance to start again.

His second departure in 2007, to serve as principal at Edinburgh’s Heriot-Watt University, ended two years later when Muir Russell retired as principal of Glasgow University and Muscatelli was appointed his successor. In between, he had risen through the ranks of his alma mater, as lecturer, professor, dean of the faculty of social sciences and vice-principal.

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European to the core, it is not surprising Muscatelli put internationalism at the centre of his mission for Glasgow University, nor that the UK’s decision to leave the EU - seven years into that mission - left him gutted. Later, he branded a hard Brexit “the most unhinged example of national self-sabotage in living memory”. He sat up on the night of the referendum, writing a message to be sent out early the following morning. “I wanted to reassure colleagues that, though Brexit was going to change many things, our stance as a European university would not change.”

So what has he done to mitigate its effect? “Let’s start with the bits we have not been able to do much about,” he replies. “Before Brexit, undergraduates from EU countries were classified as home students and were able to study here for free. Because of this we had a large number of students from small countries like Lithuania, Estonia and Slovakia who wouldn’t otherwise have thought about studying overseas. That’s gone. The number of undergraduates from the EU in Scotland is down by roughly 80%. And, because they have to pay international fees, those who come now are from richer parts of the EU or those parts that don’t have enough higher education capacity themselves.”

On the upside, a year or two before Brexit Glasgow University had helped set up The Guild of European Research Intensive Universities, which aims to influence EU policy on research and innovation. “With the Guild, we have been able to work with the African Research Universities Alliance,” he says, “setting up clusters of excellence around non communicable diseases, climate change, infection and immunity.” Then, during the Brexit negotiations, Glasgow was encouraged to join CIVIS - 11 universities based in European cities. “These universities work together to maintain exchanges, waiving fees if necessary.”

This is important because the UK’s post-Brexit withdrawal from Erasmus has affected those students who want to study in the EU as part of their course. “The Turing scheme [which the UK Government launched in 2021 and which supports students to travel anywhere in the world] is helpful but only in terms of outward mobility [because, unlike Erasmus+ it is not reciprocal],” Muscatelli says. “For many decades, we sent students to study law in Strasbourg and Brussels, but all of that is having to be negotiated now.”

Glasgow University outgoing Principal Sir Anton Muscatelli reflects on his career and legacy (Image: Gordon Terris)

By coincidence, I had spent the day before with my son in the stowed-out VFS Global office in Leith, and paid a hefty fee for the residence permit required for him to spend a semester in Finland. Eighteen percent of Glasgow University undergraduates still study abroad. But Muscatelli is worried about the impact of the increased costs on “widening access” students “One of the things we have tried to do is to increase the number of shorter placements and virtual networks with our partners in the Guild and beyond,” he says.

Now consistently ranked in the top 100 universities in the world, Glasgow University keeps growing - from 25,500 students in 2015/16 to 33,736 last year;  but the number of fee-paying EU/international students is growing at a faster rate than the number of Scots. Last year, EU/international students accounted for around 40% of the total student population.

Muscatelli points out international students make the university more vibrant and widen the horizons of the home students. But the dependence of universities on their high fees to cross-subsidise the system is controversial. Some Russell Group universities - not Glasgow - have been accused of lowering entry standards to boost numbers, and there are concerns about the potential impact of geopolitical changes or dips in the market.

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In Scotland, it is particularly fraught because free tuition - funded by the Scottish Government - means the number of Scottish students is capped. Critics seize on this cap - which means some courses are over-subscribed - to argue for the scrapping of the policy.

Muscatelli says it is up to society to decide the way forward on tuition fees, and that, for the moment, there appears to be a consensus in favour of the status quo. But he points out that, for every £1 it costs the university to teach and support home students, it receives just 85p in public funding.

“This isn’t sustainable,” Muscatelli says. “If we want our home students to have a quality higher education, and we’re committed to publicly funding it, then we need to properly fund it, and not just rely on ‘the kindness of strangers’."

Though Keir Starmer recently increased English tuition fees by £285 a year, there is a shortfall across the RUK, too.  “At the very least, the UK and Scottish governments need to plug the gap for publicly-funded teaching of undergraduates because that’s what we do as a country for our own kids. That’s the bit we need to fix.”

Talking about Starmer reminds me of another of Muscatelli’s initiatives: the university’s commitment to investigating the extent to which it benefited from the proceeds of slavery. Not only did it publish its findings, but it went on to set up the Beniba Centre for Slavery Studies and a £20 million research partnership with the University of the West Indies.

Professor Sir Anton Muscatelli pictured at the statue of Adam Smith, considered to be the founder of modern economics (Image: Gordon Terris)

Does Muscatelli have any advice for the Labour leader who is currently under pressure over national reparations? ”I think the forward-looking nature of what we did was right,” he says. “It’s not simply about figuring out [how we benefited] in the past and saying: ‘Here’s some money’. It’s about reparative justice. It’s about going forward with our partners. Because, as a university, what is it we do? We have convening power, we can bring together people from across the world to do good for others.”

Muscatelli says the university is also trying to better understand the impact it has on the planet, and is now ranked 12th in the world against the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals in the Times Higher Education Impact Rankings. 

“The fact we have established this strapline - that we are a university for the world - is something I am proud of,” he says.

If this is Muscatelli’s social legacy, then his physical legacy is his £1.5bn campus development plan. Back in the 1990s, the institution had run its assets down so much it was forced to sell its residences into a joint venture vehicle in order to extract cash. Muscatelli embarked on a restructuring and programme of cuts which led to tensions, but also put the university on a better financial footing.

“We were able to buy the residences back and are now in a position where, despite taking on some borrowing to develop the campus, we are one of the least leveraged Russell Group universities in the country,” he says.

The expansion of student numbers, and a legacy of 1960s buildings, meant redevelopment was essential. Muscatelli says they were lucky that, at precisely the time the university was looking to build, the Western Infirmary site was put up for sale, and that interest rates had been low, allowing for long-term borrowing.

Work has just started on the Keystone building which will house the engineering school, science labs and teaching space.

“[This whole development] has allowed us to grow,” Muscatelli says. “In 2015, our income was £570m, and in 2023 it was £952m. Our total research is now over £220m per year, we have almost 12,000 employees and, in 2018/19, our economic impact on the city was £4.4bn.”

The university Muscatelli will hand to Schofield is in better nick than the one he inherited. But what will he do with himself once his time here is up? He isn’t short of hobbies; opera, poetry, cooking and his beloved Inter Milan. In 2018, the team he has supported since he was four made him an honorary member - a career high to rival being knighted in 2017 and Glasgow being named the Scottish University of the Year 2024 by the Times & Sunday Times Good University Guide.

He doesn’t want another chief executive type role, but he won’t stop working. When I suggest he might be offered a seat as a crossbencher in the Lords he doesn't baulk.

“I wouldn’t get involved in party politics, but I am genuinely interested in good policy-making.  That’s where my interests lie, not in a particular honour or position,” he says. “It’s more a question of: ‘What can I do that might be helpful?’”