“Money and finance are not an end in themselves but an enabling factor”

Today marks the beginning of a new chapter for Robert Perich at ETH Zurich. For 20 years, he shaped the university’s financial system and, with his characteristic straightforwardness and openness, developed it into a modern instrument of university management together with his team. Last Friday, his term as Vice President for Finance and Controlling ended. After a stay in Cambridge, he will take over the leadership of the Swiss School of Public Governance and act as Professor of Practice at the Department of Management, Technology and Economics (D-MTEC). “I’m looking forward to being able to take things a little easier now. But I will also relish tackling something new again in this final phase of my career as well as sharing the experience and knowledge I have accrued in my many years working in university management.”

In the two decades during which Perich was responsible for Finance and Controlling at ETH Zurich, first as Director and then as Vice President, the complexity of university management increased. Moreover, the various stakeholder’s and recipient groups’ demands on the planning and allocation of funds have grown, as has the transparency in the use of funds. ETH itself has grown substantially during this time. For example, the number of students has doubled since 2003, while the number of employees has increased by 80 percent and the number of professorships by 70 percent. At 1.85 billion Swiss francs, ETH’s annual budget is also a good 70 percent higher than it was in 2003, reflecting the disproportionate increase in project-oriented third-party funding and donor funds due to targeted diversification.

Finance in the service of strategic decisions

“Money and finance are not an end in themselves but an enabling factor for intended development,” Perich says. “Financial planning has never been a purely technical matter for me. I wanted to give ETH room for manoeuvre in its teaching, research and knowledge transfer activities through financial planning stability and transparency.” Part of this conception of Finance and Controlling is to underpin goals and strategies with facts and thus to present the benefits and value creation of science in concrete terms (see “How ETH creates value” in the 2022 interactive annual report).

In fact, ETH’s financial system has changed thoroughly under Perich. This is manifest in the annual financial statements in the ETH Annual Report, which have been issued fully in accordance with International Public Accounting Standards (IPSAS) since 2017. Perich is pleased to say that “ETH Zurich is one of the few universities in the world today to hold a full IPSAS audit certificate. The quality of our financial management and the transparency of our use of funds are in no way inferior to the standards of private-sector organisations.”

Clear governance structures, efficient administrative processes

Perich laid fundamental milestones early in his career at ETH Zurich. Even if they sound rather inconspicuous, the ETH financial regulations, introduced in 2005, and ETH’s information and support system, introduced in 2008 in conjunction with the ETHIS portal, were of great significance. They formed an indispensable foundation upon which the basic administrative processes in finance, human resources and procurement at ETH Zurich could be handled efficiently and increasingly digitally on a day-to-day basis.

Both the financial regulations and ETHIS take into account the peculiarities of how ETH functions as a university. This includes the fact that the ETH Executive Board and the departments and professorships share responsibility for university management (shared governance), with as much responsibility as possible being delegated to the individual academic units in a manner appropriate to their level (subsidiarity principle).

Perich doesn’t compare ETH to a company that can be run tightly from the top; rather, he sees it as a “holding company” consisting of a diverse network now comprising 560 professorships, each largely acting independently like small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This generous room for manoeuvre and its responsible use “on site” are a key success factor in global, dynamic scientific competition.

As Director of Finance and Controlling, Perich already took part in the relevant Executive Board meetings – but without voting rights. He joined the ETH Executive Board in 2008. At the time, Perich was the first Executive Board member not to come from among the professors: “I was accepted from the start,” Perich recalls. “The key was to bring a professional management perspective to the table and combine it with the necessary understanding of the needs of the academic environment. In this respect, I was certainly able to help strengthen the board’s diversity, which was necessary.”

Are the lean years coming now?

In total, Perich took part in some 550 Executive Board meetings and worked with fully 18 Executive Board members (including six Presidents). What he appreciated about his work with the Executive Board was how the members discussed controversial dossiers with dignity and respect and with a focus on facts: “We weren’t there primarily to represent our departmental interests, but instead we always had the good of the organisation as a whole in mind.”

Handing over ETH’s finance department to his successor Stefan Spiegel (see ETH News, 10 March 2023), Perich leaves behind a financially solid ETH. But how does he assess the prospects for the future? Since the Swiss Confederation has already announced cost-cutting measures that will also affect education, research and innovation, will ETH soon have to tighten its belt? Public finance is always subject to economic and structural cycles, Perich says. When he first came to ETH in 2003, it was also a period of increased pressure to save money.

However, he points out that the stable growth prospects, which everyone had grown accustomed to, have been clouded since 2020 by the coronavirus crisis, the war in Ukraine, supply bottlenecks, rapidly rising inflation rates and rising prices for energy and raw materials. “It’s going to take some time for the situation to ease up. Against this backdrop, everyone at ETH will have to economise in the near future. Nevertheless, I’m convinced that ETH will emerge stronger from this.”

And finally: Perich’s mandates also included catering, academic sports (ASVZ) and the ETH store, which he “especially enjoyed” – that’s why his colleagues surprised him with a special pink ETH jumper as a parting gift.