Can Oxford’s new Vice-Chancellor fix the university?

There’s a new Vice-Chancellor taking over at Oxford later this year. She’s Irene Tracey, warden of Merton College, and an expert on pain. Rather brilliantly, she wrote a Ladybird book about it, as well as specialist research, so she’s good at communication. More importantly, she’s an Oxford person all through, with only a postgraduate stint at the Harvard Medical School as a break from the university and the town. That sets her apart from the present Vice-Chancellor, Louise Richardson, whose specialist subject was terrorism and who didn’t have much to do with Oxford before she arrived in 2016.

Irene Tracey is, in fact, a welcome return to the old sort of Vice-Chancellor; a distinguished academic and college head. It would be good if she were also the kind of Vice-Chancellor who doesn’t see herself as the chief executive of some global corporate brand and with a salary that’s not actually insane.