Dr Mike Goldstein CBE

Michael (known as Mike in later life) Goldstein was not yet six years old when he heard of his father Jack being ‘missing’, later killed in action in WW2. It was a huge struggle for his mother, Sadie, bringing up Michael and his sister, Leila, just five years older. With no capital, and very little income, she re-married three years after losing Jack, giving her children the stability they needed, but grieving for her first-love until the day she died. Life was still hard, but she was determined her children would have a better life than she had, seeing education as the means for her children’s development.

Mike responded to his mother’s determination and her sacrifices and was fortunate in being able to progress his education. From modest beginnings, entering the Polytechnic movement as a chemistry student, and in due course gaining two doctorates, he began his career as a teacher and researcher. Moving into more and more senior roles, he became Director of Coventry Polytechnic and later the first Vice-Chancellor of Coventry University. His personal experiences of overcoming disadvantage and achieving through education were the driving force of his commitment to encouraging and facilitating genuine access to higher education by people from modest and deprived backgrounds. He actively engaged with a wide range of public, private, and voluntary section organisations on local, regional and national levels. He achieved several high profile positions, and was the first recipient of the Godiva Award for "Outstanding Contributions to Coventry and Warwickshire. He was awarded the CBE for services to higher education in 1997.

Since retiring from University life in 2004, he has undertaken several consultancy assignments, including for the Government of Jersey, and held leading positions with a range of public/private organisations at national and local levels - chairing a marketing company, an NHS Trust, and a professional registration organisation. He has been a Panellist for the Judicial Appointments Commission, an Independent Interviewer for Independent Monitoring Boards of prisons (as well as being a member of an IMB himself), and the Independent Adviser for Postgraduate Bursaries of the Government of Jersey.

After publishing numerous scientific papers and review chapters in books, he wrote a series of essays about his early life, culminating in a joint autobiography with an aunt (Jean Lawrence) and a cousin (Susy Stone): “Three Lives in Education – reflections of an Anglo-Jewish Family” (Clio, 2009 and 2011 – ISBN 978-0-9556983-1-6). He then published (with Cyrrhian Macrae) the biography of his co-author’s stepfather: “John Hibbs – His Journey by Bus, Coach and Train” (Twigg, 2015 – ISBN 978-1-907953-63-7). His pride is publishing the biography of his father, "Shalom, Jack" (Twig, 2018 - ISBN 978-1-907953-70-5), which includes the amazing story of discovery of how Jack was killed and by whom; this forms the basis of his talk.