Deborah Prentice: Cambridge University's new Vice-Chancellor

Chris - Deborah Prentice was born on the 14th of November, 1961 in Los Angeles, California. Her parents were from the San Francisco Bay Area and she spent just a few years in L.A. while her father was writing music for television, and her mother worked in insurance. Debbie attended state schools and spent much of her time playing the piano for fun, and also for money. She did well academically, especially in maths and science. Went on to study at Stanford University, graduating with joint honours in human biology and music. And it was at Stanford that she discovered her interest in psychology, which became her lifelong passion and academic calling. After Stanford, she attended Yale and then Princeton, where she would stay for another 34 years, conducting pioneering work on alcohol abuse and ultimately serving as the provost between 2017 and 2023. Professor Prentice became the University of Cambridge's 347th vice-chancellor as of the 1st of July, 2023. And I'm delighted to say she's welcomed us to her home. Hello.

Deborah - Hello.

Chris - For people who don't know, what is a vice-chancellor? What does it say on your job description?

Deborah - The vice-chancellor has operational responsibility for the university, sort of like being a president of a university in the United States, but actually the vice-chancellor is a very distinctive role. It's kind of a president and provost combined. It's the outward facing representing the university, and the inward facing trying to make it work.

Chris - You are the first American to do this job, aren't you?

Deborah - I am, I am. There have been others who came out of the American Academy, as I did. Alison Richard, for example, who spent many years as provost of Yale and did her career in the United States. But I'm the first American-born vice-chancellor of Cambridge.

Chris - So how does the American University system differ from here?

Deborah - It's actually very different. The system differs a lot. The aspirations of Cambridge and the universities where I was educated and worked are very similar. They're about world-class research and education for societal and world benefit. They're very similar in their mission. They're very different in the way they carry it out. The education system is very different and the relationship to government and to society is very different.

Chris - How did you get the job?

Deborah - It's funny you should ask that because I met King Charles shortly after his coronation, and that was his question for me. He said, 'how did it happen? Did you apply?' <Laugh> Which is, I think, a natural question to ask. I did apply actually. I was contacted by a headhunter and I applied, like one would for any job and went through an extended process in which the university could decide if I was right for them. And I got to know the university well enough to decide whether this was the next step for me.

Chris - Did they ask you where you see yourself in five years?

Deborah - They did not ask me where I saw myself in five years. They didn't. And it's very interesting. I mean, I actually don't officially know why I was chosen, but obviously being an American, being from the American system and being able to bring that context and that sensibility, must have been part of it.

Chris - I'll come back a bit more to what you're going to do during your tenure here in a moment. But I'd like to sort of go back to the beginning of your life and start really by asking, if I presented your CV now, the person who's sitting next to me, to, say, the 18-year-old you, as an anonymous CV. Would you recognise the person that's now sitting next to me? Would you say, 'yes, I can immediately pick myself out of the pile.'

Deborah - No, not at all. In fact, I would think, 'who is this strange person?' But, you know, I'd be delighted. I didn't have a strong sense of where I wanted to go when I was 18 years old, just that I wanted to go somewhere interesting. And I've had such an interesting career. I would've been thrilled to see that that was how I turned out.

Chris - Tell us about the early days then.

Deborah - I was raised by my mum alone, really. And so I was always on the lookout for opportunities to make money. A natural entrepreneur, you might say. I had taken music, I'd taken piano since I was four years old, and by the time I was a teenager, I realised that, in fact, this was one of my better developed skills. And that as an accompanist, in fact, I could make quite a bit of money. As an accompanist in a church, as an accompanist for choirs, as an accompanist at musical theatre. It was actually where I could in fact make the best hourly rate. And so I took advantage of it.

Chris - And clearly you didn't want to walk away from that because you went to Stanford and did biology because you'd done science at school and you were good at it, but you hung onto the music.

Deborah - Yes. And actually one of the great virtues of the American system is that for kids like me, like I was when I started college and didn't really know what I wanted to do, you can find yourself along the way. That's much harder in the British system. It's all over more quickly, and you've got to slot yourself into your course of study from the get-go. I started out in science knowing that I loved science and was interested in science, but then picked up music because I missed it and realised that I wanted to do that in a very serious way as well. And then along the way found psychology and that was possible because the system was very open-ended and I had a lot of opportunity for choice. So I was developing along the way and figuring myself out. It was really a good system for me.