future thoughts

The AHRC – again

2011-06-22T02:24:00.000-07:00

The English Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) is back in the news once more, attracting more unfavourable and damaging attention for no necessary reason.

There is now a very real possibility that assessors of research proposals will shortly begin to resign en masse to protest against its policies; opposition Labour party politicians are, finally, beginning to badger the government about interfering with research, and the minister in charge of universities, David Willetts, has signalled that he is unsupportive of the Council’s approach.

A few months back the council, which distributes research money to academics in the humanities, became the subject of controversy. It badly mishandled press reports about its intention to pour some of its limited resources into a specifically political area of research, using public funds to flesh out the Conservative party’s “Big Society” slogan, and turn it from a catchphrase into something which had meaning.

One of the reports overdid it and said that the AHRC had been pressured by the government into this action. A mistake such as this is regrettable, but in this case it proved to be something of an unintended blessing. The authorities in English higher education have a general policy of never replying to any criticism; for the most part they do not even acknowledge its existence, and the funding structure is set up in such a way that they do not have to.

But in this case, the AHRC spotted an easy triumph: it put out a tetchy statement (rumoured to have been written by the chief executive, Rick Rylance, and presumably at least authorised by him) denouncing the suggestion, and assuring academics that the decision to back a party-political slogan had been entirely voluntary.

It says a great deal about the people who now rise to positions of influence in the education system that it never occurred to the AHRC that this would make things even worse, that there is a difference between enforced compliance, and voluntary collaboration. Indeed, they seem to have expected congratulations for a cunning ploy to win favour from the new administration.

Many academics did not see it that way. 4,000 of them signed a petition in protest; more than 30 learned societies issued a statement backing the petition, and the AHRC was deluged with hundreds of letters and emails. There was no upsurge of support from the ranks defending the AHRC's policies.

The protests had not the slightest effect, so now some of those who assess projects are planning to resign, a move organised by Thom Brooks, to indicate that this is a serious matter of academic integrity, not a temper-tantrum that will blow over if the AHRC sticks to its guns.

Equally, the Labour opposition is demanding to see correspondence between the Ministry of Business and the Council to find out what actually happened – probably not in the expectation of discovering anything truly sinister, but to cause annoyance and keep the issue bubbling.

For the government, this is a nuisance it can do without at a time when its policies on Higher Education are mired in controversy. It has already been forced to retreat on a raft of measures – selling forests, prison policy, the National Health Service – and it needs a display of resolve if it is not to be deemed weak-willed and spineless. Higher Education, unfortunately, looks as though it will be the sector called upon to provide that proof.

The government does not need its position weakened by a controversy for which, for once, it is not responsible -- although when the AHRC presented its plans, it could easily have told the council not to be so silly. The move to back the “Big Society” does indeed seem as though it was little more than a piece of amateur manoeuvring of the sort normally associated with student politics. It was neither necessary, nor required to gain funding – the ESRC won its money without a display of servility -- and it is now a political liability.

So David Willetts signalled as clearly as politicians ever signal anything that he wants the AHRC to close the matter down. In an article the Times Higher Education Supplement at the end of May, he wrote:

“Our commitments on teaching and research also respect the autonomy of universities and have avoided any pernicious temptation to steer the money towards ministers' pet priorities (although the research councils will doubtless want to reflect on the hazards of referring at all to current political slogans!).”

Only the head of a research council could fail to take the meaning in Willetts' remark -- not least because if one of the architects of the "Big Society" can refer to it as a political slogan, it becomes that much more difficult to maintain that it is, in fact, a serious subject for academic research.

The AHRC duly demonstrated its limited ability to interpret texts. Professor Rylance announced that he didn't really want to reflect on it at all: the council had no intention of removing the references to the Big Society in its plans. The Chairman, Sir Alan Wilson, added that he didn’t see why people were getting worked up about it – although I assume that, if he asked, they would have been happy to explain.

The main reason given for this stance is that it would be a bit of a bother, and involve discussions with the ministry. There is, however, no particular reason to think that these could not be disposed of over morning coffee, as it is clear that the government wants the tiresome business brought to an end swiftly.

It needs more controversy like a hole in the head at the moment. Several ministers – including the heavyweight justice minister, Ken Clarke – have learned that it can be quite ruthless about slapping down people who cause it problems.

Professor Rylance – who was not elected, is not a political heavyweight and was not even appointed by the Conservative government -- has little reason to expect political cover for decisions which are causing embarrassment, and which increasingly look like little more than a collective reluctance to lose face. Indeed, there is a growing risk the AHRC will end up causing the very damage it was trying to avoid.

-- Iain Pears

note: Simon Jarvis, Professor of Poetry at Cambridge, this evening wrote an open letter calling on Rick Rylance to resign. He said Professor Rylance was an "inappropriate person" to be head of the AHRC because of his conduct over the Big Society business, and that, if the references were not removed, then resignation would represent his "only legitimate course of action."

note 2: 23. June: 42 academic members of the peer review panel did say that they would resign from their positions on Monday if the AHRC did not change its mind. They will join two who have already done so. The idea is, I believe, that if this produces no result, then another group will resign, and so on.

Private Virtues?

2011-06-17T06:25:00.000-07:00

There has been a great deal of fuss in England over the past couple of weeks about proposals by the philosopher A.C. Grayling to set up a private college, the New College for the Humanities, to teach fee paying students and, he maintains, defend the humanities in an age when they are under attack from governments obsessed by economic growth.

The disdain subsequently heaped on the heads of those who originated the scheme has been remarkable. Terry Eagleton, a literary critic and erstwhile Marxist theorist, described the plan as odious. A large portion of academics from Birkbeck college, Grayling’s own institution, wrote to denounce it. The head of Royal Holloway College put out a statement of disapproval about the courses, the head of New College, Oxford, put out another disapproving of the name. A meeting to discuss the idea was disrupted by a miniature riot, complete with smoke-bombs. Arguments in favour have appeared in the Financial Times and from the (conservative) Mayor of London; arguments against primarily in the Guardian.

The locations indicate the political split of the argument: so far it has been along almost classical left/right lines. Grayling (who rather regards himself as a pinko) was clearly taken aback by the response, but then took to the comments pages as well to mount a defence.

His point about the need to protect the humanities, for academics to get back to their knitting and pay attention to students has some considerable merit, of course, although he is scarcely the first to make it.

The humanities have indeed been targetted as economically unproductive; the vital freedoms to research have been undermined; government policy is to force academics into devoting more time to research because of the funding structure, then to criticise them when they do so. Pressure (real and implicit) has been put on research councils to divert money into government approved projects. And the new, complex fee structure based on loans is to be accompanied by a staggering new level of regulation which will extinguish most of the remaining autonomy that universities possess.

There is thus a case to be made that the biggest danger now to academic freedom, and the continued surivival of the humanities, is the government itself, which has switched in the past 30 years from being the acknowledged guardian of intellectual freedom to its greatest and most powerful enemy. Unless the humanities – or a section of them – break the stranglehold somehow, then the prospects will be bleak indeed. Some form of autonomous status does, at least, need to be thought about as a component of any solution -- although universities, of course, are already supposedly private institutions.

So far so good; or at least defensible. Up to this point, Professor Grayling scarcely deserves the intensity of the assault which has greeted his actions. Nonetheless, there are deep flaws in the idea behind NCH, and these seriously compromise the validity of the whole scheme.

From a perfectly reasonable starting point, the arguments rapidly become less appealing. In his Independent article, for example, definitions seem a little loose. Professor Grayling also insists that his critics argue to his strengths, rather than their own, which is rather disingenuous of him. It is only a legitimate plea if he, in turn, is prepared to argue on his critics’ strong ground as well, and this he does not do.

To bolster the case for the new college, two main comparisons have been deployed; one is the example of private American universities, the other Oxford and Cambridge. Both have their problems.

Nobody doubts, of course, the impressive nature of the American private universities. The big seven have been staggeringly successful, and the many private liberal arts colleges also have an exceptionally high reputation. Were NCH to emulate them it could make a significant contribution – although the vast cost, the continued social exclusivity and the consequently unhealthy concentration of resources into a few places (more even than the Oxbridge/the rest divide here) would be hard for the more collectivist British ever to accept.

But NCH is not going to be another Amherst or Williams – even geographically, as a metropolitan bias is likely to impose crippling overheads before it is even off the ground. Most of the American liberal arts colleges are buried deep in the country for a reason: it is cheaper there. NCH will be competing for space in some of the most expensive real estate on the planet. Financially, a small market town in the north of England would have been more sensible – although less chic.

Nor will NCH provide an intellectual community, its own facilities or even its own degree course: it will be teaching bits of the London University external degree syllabus like any tutorial college. Swarthmore and Bryn Mawr do not, I think, download their curricula from the internet, nor do their students pop off to the local state university if they want something to eat.

Rather than being a high-end liberal arts college, NCH as currently set up is a bare-bones profit-making company, and in this sector the record of equivalent organisations in the U.S. has been both dismal and, recently, mired in controversy. NCH has shareholders, investors and all the rest of it, and I know of no example anywhere or at any time when such an organisation has achieved anything of note. Obscuring the distinction between non-profit and for-profit in the general term “private” is not helpful.

Equally, the college has been decidedly vague over what the "profit" bit actually means: is it a merely legal convenience, or are they seriously expecting to extract revenue? The lack of precision here leaves the entire venture open to suspicion as to the ultimate motives. Indeed, in his article in the Guardian, and another in the Independent, Professor Grayling never even mentions the word "profit," let alone deals with the very real issues aroused by a profit-seeking educational company.

The second comparison – to Oxford and Cambridge – is also dubious. This is not entirely Professor Grayling’s fault; he at no time suggested that he was going to try and rival the two universities; that was the gloss put in it by the newspapers. Nonetheless, he did rather bring it on himself by saying the NCH would emulate the experience of the students with the one-to-one tutorial which is the jewel in the crown of the Oxbridge system.

I am doubtful about this aim, not because it is unworthy, but because I think that it misses the entire point about the tutorial system and why it is both so successful -- and so difficult to reproduce anywhere else.

The tutorial system is both expensive and time-consuming. Fellows of Oxford colleges typically teach 12 to 15 hours a week, and in addition give lectures and seminars, so that there is a basic load of around 20 hours teaching, plus marking plus setting exams. They have no secretaries and so do much of the administrative work themselves, and matching up teachers and students individually can take large amounts of time.

On top of that they spend much time in meetings of both college and whatever faculty they belong to, take their turn at college offices (Dean, finance, admissions and so on) and, finally, produce research to satisfy government requirements.

This is an unusually heavy load, and is not significantly better paid than jobs anywhere else in the Higher education sector. It is maintained primarily because of a sense of ownership: fellows are members of the governing body of the college, and are the trustees of their organisation. Even heads of house have very little power in comparison. The decision to work harder than they need is theirs alone, despite the best efforts of government and university to take that power away.

The point is that only an extraordinarily powerful collective spirit can maintain a system which is wearisome and frequently subject to outside attack, and it is this which is likely to be absent from the New College of the Humanities. How could it be otherwise? The grand figures who are the shareholders will not, it appears, be getting down and dirty with undergraduates day after day. The teaching staff equally will have no sense of ownership or control – because they will have neither.

Even junior research fellows in many Oxford colleges are on the governing body with an equal vote to everyone else. Will NCH emulate this egalitarian practice? If it does not, any comparison to the "Oxbridge experience" will be ephemeral window-dressing, and although the documentation is so far hazy, it appears that all effective power will in fact be concentrated into the hands of founders and investors, with little going to the people doing the work.

Professor Grayling suggests that his college will, in the long term, be able to sustain a financially (though not educationally) inefficient teaching system in a structure designed to maximise profit, and also be able to attract teaching staff who will be simultaneously high quality and mere employees.

It may be that some ingredient has not yet been mentioned, but as it stands I do not see how this can work, especially in an organisation with unnecessarily high fixed costs and no endowment. Tutorials are sustained by the underlying structure of the colleges: it will be exceptionally difficult to graft them onto an entirely different format.

This points to a further problem underlying both the outraged response to the proposed college and the bemused failure to understand that response. It was presented, from the start, as a celebrity venture: rather like a fantasy football team, heavy emphasis was placed on the high-profile figures involved. The first thing a visitor to the website sees is a large photograph of Professor Grayling; click a link, and there is another one...

This was a terrible mistake. The English have a profound distrust of such people – celebrity academics, I fear, have not the slightest idea how much they are disliked almost on principle. Much of the new professoriate is based in the U.S., which is even worse, and collectively made the error of assuming the venture would be well-received because of their participation. In fact, it was the main reason for the violence of the reaction.

This may be a national failing, but not taking it into account was very foolish: on its own it guaranteed that the new venture would be perceived as an initiative by a bunch of grandees dismissive of their erstwhile colleagues and ready to profit from their misfortune.

Subsequent reports that some of the partners would only be jetting over from the East Coast to give a couple of lectures every year did not help either: paying £18,000 to be taught in tutorials by the likes of Niall Ferguson is one thing; paying that amount of money to see him a couple of times at the far end of a lecture theatre when you can watch him on the telly for nothing is another.

The founding fathers of NCH, in fact, lack the collective spirit which a venture like this must have if it is to succeed in the long term. Many of them were, at one time, fellows of Oxbridge colleges; nearly all left, often enough because they were not suited to the (very real) constraints on their own liberty that being a tutorial fellow involves.

Equally, they are, for the most part, old men – only Ferguson is under 50, most are over 60, and one is 80. Three decades of feminism has resulted in one woman being involved. There is nothing wrong with the wisdom of age, of course -- indeed, I find it more compelling with every year that passes -- but I doubt they will surprise their students with new ideas. And it does pose the problem of what happens next.

Even if founded with the most honourable intentions, what about their successors? How is that transition to be made? If a shareholder wishes to sell up, what is to stop the institution falling into the hands of people who are seriously keen on the idea of maximising profit? Members of the governing body of an Oxford college are not there, after all, because they buy their seat, and do not expect a return on any investment.

Good will and intentions are rarely, in the long term, a match for money, and he who controls the money, controls the organisation. The idea that academic freedom can be maintained without an overwhelmingly powerful mechanism to limit the influence of outsiders is a naive one – as, indeed, the fate of public universities has demonstrated in the past 30 years.

A simple point illustrates this: several of the leading figures are evangelical atheists, with a highly contemptuous view of religion. How will NCH teach history, which cannot be understood without an extremely sophisticated understanding of the phenomenon? What place, and what guarantees, will there be for any young, untenured, historian with a more nuanced view?

The professoriate presents, in any case, an unusual view of the humanities: a quarter of them are scientists, but there is no-one who has much interest in anything other than the Anglo-Saxon world. There will be a compulsary course on scientific awareness, including evolutionary biology, but, it seems, no art, no languages, only a superficial glance at the classics and ancient history and no literature except for English. Nor, of course, is there to be even an optional module in understanding religion.

If the cultures of France, Italy, Germany, Russia and Spain scarcely exist, the rest of the world is entirely absent. Of the three historians on the board, two write only about England, one writes predominantly on England. The subject convenor is also an English historian.

It may be that a system of checks and balances has been concocted and its profile will become less parochial as it evolves. But it would have been a good idea to highlight this from the beginning, rather than giving the impression that the students would be primarily taught by a bunch of labourers controlled by absentee landlords.

A venture set up by a younger generation of academics, with Grayling et. al discreetly in the background acting as godfathers, might have received a warmer reception, and might have been demonstrably stable institutionally. But it is not a characteristic of many of the founders to shun the limelight.

And that, perhaps, is the final, and greatest, problem with the new venture. Professor Grayling is acting because he considers the battle within the national university system to be over. But for many in that system it has only just started, after a long and shameful delay.

It was the duty of his generation to fight that battle, but it did not. Had serious opposition been mounted 10 or 20 years back then there would have been a very much better chance of success.

But collectively, his generation let it happen, and fell back instead on gaming the system. A few took the opportunity to get as much celebrity as academics can in a culture which cares little for scholarship.

Such people should not now be delivering lectures about saving the humanities: they had their chance to do so, and they blew it. It is time they stood aside. A little more activity when they were in their prime and the humanities might not have needed saving; a little more humility now and the reception given to their proposal could have been radically more favourable.

Indeed, their response is still that of their generation: a world weary belief that nothing, really, can be done. Government policy can never be changed. No effective argument to defend the humanities can be made, and the only thing to be done is to cocoon them in a setting where no defence is needed. You have to adapt to power, not challenge it, for there really is no alternative, as Mrs Thatcher said all along.

It is a fatalistic, and gloomy outlook. And the greatest problem with NCH is that it is a monument to that belief.

-- Iain Pears

Note: it is a pity that the NCH website has already adopted the tendency of businesses to report only good news about themselves. "NCH in the news" http://www.nchum.org/who-we-are/nch-in-the-news does have a somewhat selective account of its media representation -- despite the widespread criticism, not a single link implying any negative reaction has been put up. This is not the best way of establishing your credentials as the defender of open debate.

23rd June: Credit where credit is due; the website now has a much fuller list of news comment, and includes a few of the unfavourable ones.

29th July -- no; they're gone again. Now only neutral or positive comments (or complaints by Professor Grayling at his ill-treatment) appear on the web page.

Willetts Speaks; so does the AHRC

2011-04-01T05:00:00.000-07:00

David Willetts, Minister in charge of Britain’s universities, commented on the AHRC affair in a written answer to the House of Commons.

The Labour MP Tristram Hunt had also tabled a question, but this was not called. Willetts instead answered a friendly lob from his own side, a gentle question posed by Julian Huppert, a Liberal Democrat member of the coalition who has been tweeting recently to publicise the AHRC’s defence.

Huppert’s question was an invitation for Willetts to ignore the substantial issue, and Willetts duly accepted. He reiterated the AHRC’s response that it had not been pressured by the government to include the “Big Society agenda” as a research priority. Apart from the Observer, however, no-one has ever said it had been. He did not deal with the question of whether it was appropriate for a research council to align itself so closely to party doctrine; nor did he mention the very real pressure that was put on the British Academy to abandon its highly effective small research grants.

Separately, the AHRC itself has decided to go for the same tactic. Research Fortnight quotes an email exchange with the AHRC head, Rick Rylance, saying it will not consider removing the "Big Society" from its delivery plan. Like Mr Willetts, he concentrated on the "confusion" caused by the Observer article which, he implied, was the only reason there had been protests.

He also said that the "Big Society was not a research priority."

It is hard to see how this statement can be made. The BIS booklet (Allocation of Science and Research funding) specifically states "AHRC will direct a significant part of its funding into six strategic areas:... communities and big society..."

It continues: "AHRC will systematically address issues relating to social cohesion, community engagement and cultural renewal contributing to the "Big Society" initiative."

-- Iain Pears

The links are here:

http://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2011-03-31a.50063.h

http://exquisitelife.researchresearch.com/exquisite_life/miriamfrankel.html

More on the AHRC

2011-03-30T06:56:00.000-07:00

Protests against the willingness of the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s decision to join up to the Government’s Big Society idea in order to safeguard funding are gathering pace.

A petition against the AHRC’s idea of research priorities has received more than 1600 signatures in less than a day, including some of the most senior figures in British Academia. Not only members of the AHRC’s peer review panels – who would have the job of apportioning money according to the Council’s priorities -- but also several Fellows of the British Academy, Fellows of the Royal Society and Professors from many universities have signed.

Such signings indicate considerable disquiet at the AHRC’s policies. The question is, how will it respond? It has three choices. The first, and most likely, is to take up the usual defensive crouch of all embattled institutions: go silent, ignore all protests and wait.

The second option is to put out another obfuscating statement: the AHRC notes the protests but, sadly, feels that all the signatories are misinformed. As it has explained, it did not cave in to government demands...

This option would take the line that the signatories are just too ignorant to know what is going on, and so their opinions can be passed over. Whether it is possible to accuse all these Academicians and Professors of being gullible and get away with it would be an interesting experiment.

The point of such a tactic would be to deflect concern away from the fact that many people feel that voluntarily signing up to an ideologically-inspired government programme is, in many ways, worse than being forced to do so, that there is a difference between active collaboration and passive acquiescence.

The third option is actually to do something: this is the least likely, as it would not only involve the AHRC saying it had a mistake, it would probably result in a lot of awkward conversations with the government. Also it is difficult to see how the head of the AHRC, having at least signed off a defence of the Big Society business, could possibly reverse position and remain in post.

So why are people so upset? Judging by the comments attached to signatures, it is partly because the sight of one of the most important institutions in the Arts and Humanities prostrating itself before power is embarrassing and undignified. The AHRC should at least have put up a show of independence, if only to demonstrate that its councils remembered something about the nature of academic research and what it is supposed to be.

Partly it is because it is acquiescing in academics being seen, and treated, like servants: the government coins the phrase “big society,” but hasn’t got the faintest idea what it is. So the AHRC volunteers to toss a few coppers at academics, and tell them to come up with something that sounds convincing.

Partly it is because relying on the fickle nature of a politician’s attention-span is a dangerous tactic. Most remember perfectly well that Tony Blair got himself all enthused about the “Third Way” when he came into office, then dropped the whole idea after a year or so. How will academics fare if they sign up to “Big Society” research programmes and then find that this government has lost interest, or has found a new slogan?

Not only would their funding be at risk in mid-project, no-one would then be interested in their results. Research done under the aegis of the Big Society will have a shelf life of a year or so – as temporary, disposable and as forgettable as the concept which gives it birth. Academics should not be, and do not consider themselves to be, cut-rate consultants for hire, but this is how the AHRC’s stance appears to cast them.

But most importantly it is because of reputational damage.

There is not much left in Britain that is world class – the car industry, shipbuilding industry, steel and cotton and machine tool industries are all gone. Our Navy will shortly be going into battle with an aircraft carrier, but no aircraft to put on it. Our soldiers have had to buy their own boots. Heathrow is a disgrace, the public transport system is Third World and the banks are bust. Even the House of Commons has been mired in a squalid scandal.

But the universities, and the academics who inhabit them, are world class. A lot of this depends on reputation: British universities, and academics, enjoy a higher reputation than the actual level of funding should warrant. Despite spending much less than other advanced economies, Britain produces a disproportionately large number of universities in the lists of the top 100 higher education institutions – more than the rest of Europe combined. They are highly thought-of, and this sustains their ability to attract the best academics, the best students and external research funding which can then be turned into real achievement.

Reputation is a delicate business, and has been built up over the decades and the centuries. It needs to be nurtured and protected, but has instead taken several hard knocks of late: the unedifying debacle at King’s, London, the Ghaddafi money saga at the LSE are only the most prominent. When reputation is lost it is hard to retrieve, and the antics of the AHRC are another blow. An academic or institution whose research is no longer clearly and unimpeachably objective will be damaged. Remember Caesar's wife.

Jane Austen might have said (had she been an academic or a blogger) that “loss of virtue in a university is irretrievable -- that one false step involves it in endless ruin -- that its reputation is no less brittle than it is beautiful, -- and that it cannot be too much guarded in its behaviour…”

The AHRC has not been guarded at all in its ill-considered willingness to court political favour. It has, instead, been behaving towards the universities with all the cavalier recklessness of Mr. Wickham to one of the more vulnerable members of the Bennet family.

And that is why people are signing petitions.

-- Iain Pears

The AHRC, The Observer, and Mr. Haldane’s Principle.

2011-03-28T10:36:00.000-07:00

The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) today issued what it terms an important statement about an article that appeared in the Observer newspaper on 27th March. (http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/News/Latest/Pages/Observerarticle.aspx)

The statement is unusual, in that it is rare for anybody connected to Higher Education in Britain to respond in any way to public criticism. In this case it issued a vehement denial of suggestions that it is falling into line with a politicisation of research in the U.K.

As I have also written of similar things, most recently in the London Review of Books, and the next Observer doesn’t come out for another week, I thought it would be a good idea to look at this response. The main difference between the Observer article and my own is that, while I note the AHRC directing funding into the “Big Society,” I do not claim this was the result of a direct government order. Nonetheless, the Observer's proposition is defensible: even though the AHRC may have volunteered to adopt the Big Society as one of its own in negotiations, by the time the commitment was put in the BIS directive it had indeed become something of a contractual obligation on which funding depended.

(One detail which should be mentioned in passing is, yet again, the habitual mangling of language which seems to be compulsary amongst educational administrators these days. The statement does not, as it says, "refute" the allegations made in the Observer: to refute is to convincingly disprove, and the AHRC offers no evidence to make its case. It merely rejects the allegations, which is a different matter.)

The first thing to note is that the AHRC attacks only one of the points made in the Observer article, and passes in silence over everything else. It suggests that, by simple good fortune, the government’s discovery of the Big Society merely happened to coincide with its own interests, which are of longer standing.

Left entirely untouched is the fact that the AHRC is increasingly becoming the executive agency of government whim, and that even the poor sums given to the Humanities now have to be harnessed to central priorities. There is not the slightest suggestion in anything that the AHRC has ever said to suggest that it might consider this to be detrimental to independent, internationally-esteemed research: indeed, the idea never seems to have occurred to it.

The response continues to say that “If academic peer reviewers do not feel the research is excellent, and of sufficient importance and value for money, it does not get funded.“ The implication of this is that the Arts and Humanities Research board, without any prompting, decided off its own bat to “focus the main thrust of its impact strategy on the creative economy,“ as the document on its funding settlement states. This decision means, as it also says, moving funding away from what is normally considered to be arts and humanities into “new media, computer games...fashion...and television.”

These protestations are unconvincing. The AHRC funding document refers to “the Big Society” in a way which can only mean government ideology, as no-one but the government has ever used the term to any great extent. Moreover, it describes it as one of the “highest priorities in the arts and humanities.” We are asked to believe that its reaching this conclusion, and the arrival of the new government, were entirely coincidental events.

The funding document – which originates in the Ministry of Business, not the AHRC -- then goes back in the next paragraph to refer specifically to the task of “contributing to the ‘Big Society initiative’” in a way which can only mean fitting in with party political concerns.

Does the AHRC really think that such an initiative would remain one of the highest priorities in the Arts and Humanities even if the Labour party came back into power? How long after Ed Miliband became Prime Minister does it think it would take for this long-standing interest to be quietly shelved or rebranded? Would the AHRC defy a Labour Business Minister and insist on continuing with Research into the "Big Society?" The question merely has to be posed; no answer is really necessary.

For all that, there does seem to have been a mistake in the Observer article, which the statement exploits for the purpose of shading over the other points it contains. It does confuse the AHRC with other organisations that did indeed come under considerable pressure to toe the government line.

In the case of the AHRC, little pressure was necessary: its leadership was all too ready to indulge in sycophantic pandering. Whether that makes the matter any better is for others to decide. It should be noted that the ESRC – whose work in the Social Sciences is a much more obvious place to locate research into the “Big Society” – managed to get its funding without being so ostentatiously obliging. Its settlement refers to “A Vibrant and Fair Society,” without feeling any need to signal its subservience in quite such a conspicious manner.

-- Iain Pears

The AHRC's "Delivery Plan 2011-15" (see its website) contains the following statements:

...Connected Communities will enable the AHRC to contribute to the government’s initiatives on localism and the ‘Big Society"...

...recent speeches on the ‘Big Society’ have made use of key behavioural or evaluative concepts that can be difficult to pin down...

... We will focus on issues such as the ‘Big Society’...(and) national security (with the Security Services)...

... The contribution of AHRC plans to the ‘Big Society’ agenda are described in section 2...

...In line with the Government’s ‘Big Society’ agenda....the AHRC will continue to support...

*********************

NOTE: There is now an on-line petition to remove "the Big Society" from the AHRC's priorities. If you wish to sign, the web address is here:

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/thebigsociety/signatures

*********************

NOTE: The Times Higher Education Supplement has reported that Bob Brecher, Professor of Ethics at the University of Brighton, has resigned from his position on the AHRC's Peer Review College in protest at what he termed the AHRC's "collaboration" with the Government.

How the Humanities -- a talk given a Birkbeck, November 2011

2010-11-30T01:48:00.000-08:00

I feel that in addressing this meeting I am preaching to the converted. I doubt there are many people here who do not believe already that the arts and humanities are worthwhile, and that they deserve their place in British Higher Education. Many other people here have spoken and given their reasons. I would like in my alloted time to speak from the standpoint of someone who spent many years analysing corporations, and a fair amount of time in the last few months looking at universities and their often strange ways. Then I wish to put all of that into the context of what is going on all around at government level. Not Why the humanities then, but how the humanities.

The first point to bear in mind is that there is a certain futility in talking about education when discussing Higher Education policy, as that has long been of only minor importance. Politics and power have, for the last 30 years, been of much greater significance. It was not out of a desire to improve universities but to discipline them that the Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher in the 1980’s chipped away at tenure and university autonomy. John Major’s decision to double the number of students without funding them in the early 1990’s had more to do with massaging down youth unemployment figures than producing an educated population. The abolition of the binary divide was more concerned with driving down costs and exploiting the opportunity to corporatise the polytechnics than to give university degrees to all. The Lambert report under Labour was primarily occupied with making universities more useful to business. And the creation of the likes of hefce had as much to do with strengthening central control as it had with ensuring that the best research was funded well.

Now universities are to be hit by another tsunami of reform, and all the signs are that it is a worthy successor to past initiatives in the sense that it is ill-conceived, will be badly executed, and has little to do with the question of educating the population. This is perhaps inevitable for a review conceived by Labour as a means of securing more funding for universities without paying for it, modified by the Conservatives to be a means of facilitating cuts, and modified again by the Liberal Democrats to appease their backbenchers. In such a scramble, educational priorities slipped down the rankings, and the question of precisely how English universities are to maintain their remarkably high level of achievement has been largely forgotten. The result seems to be an actual cut in universities’ income instead of an increase, delivered in a complex and inefficient fashion, and laden down with so many conditions that any benefits will be more than offset by new burdens and obligations. One thing seems clear, and that is that although the government might not be willing to pay for the humanities, it will not, as a result, be surrendering any of the power it has over them.

The general incoherence is, this time, on an epic scale. For the last few years, we have been told that our great problem is that we have individually taken on too much debt, so the government is adopting a policy which will make a larger proportion of the population take on higher debts than ever before; this is known as choice. We are told the country’s future depends on a well-educated workforce, and then the government takes measures to reduce the appeal of that education by tripling its cost.

And above all, we are told that market disciplines will be introduced, but the result is to be a system of such tangled complexity that market forces are the very last thing which will apply.

In the grand scheme of things, a overall cut of 10 per cent or so to the total budget might not be so bad. Most companies, after a decade or so of interrupted growth could deal with such a thing relatively easily. Costs invariably can be reduced; it is in the nature of organisations to become a little flabby over time. It is where those cuts fall which is crucial. A well-run company will go after unnecessary overheads first of all. Management structures are simplified, expenses squeezed, all to protect the core activities which are the essential engines of growth and profit when the economy turns.

With the universities, much could be done here. Vince Cable could do more than issue limp begging letters asking vice-chancellors’ nicely if they wouldn’t mind being a little bit more restrained on the pay they give themselves. His department could ban daft schemes which divert funds into Ozymandias-like ventures into the sands of Araby. It could insist that all peripheral activities, like sponsoring rugby teams, building sports centres, acquiring palaces, stop immediately. Universities could do away not only with the fatuous mission statements and glossy strategy documents, but also with the people who write them. They could accept that employing about a thousand people in public relations departments might be a misuse of funds. The government could demand that the central administration budget be cut down drastically and immediately. It has instead been notably silent on the issue.

Not to be too polemical, King’s College London this week launched an appeal for £500 million. If treated as endowment at the usual yields, this would produce about 16 million a year, not even enough to cover the increase in central administration costs since 2002. Whether prospective donors will be told what they will be in effect paying for remains to be seen.

At the same time as revenue will drop, even with the rise of student fees, costs will also be driven up inexorably. Universities are charities, and do not pay tax, but they do pay VAT, and this is going up to 20 per cent next year, enough on its own to blow a hole in the budget. There is talk of a compulsary employers’ levy to make up a deficit in the pension fund, which will also be expensive, and possibly very expensive. Many universities are going to be forced into spending more on fund-raising, but with no change to the tax regime for donations, they will all be competing for the same pot of money, spending more in an expensive beggar-thy-neighbour policy. Nor is sending alumni out into the world laden with debt going to increase their generosity in later years. Equally, costs will be driven up by the business of administering a complex fee structure, and complying with whatever directives come from the new super-quango the government sets up. Best of all, perhaps, it seems as though the government is going to cut the teaching grant before the increased revenue from fees starts flowing, risking a quite unnecessary short term funding crisis that could well doom many courses, and even institutions, that might otherwise be viable.

Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of British Higher Education policy.

Why is this happening? One reason is that, if you commission a report, the answer you get depends on the question asked, and the person you ask. The question was limited to that of student fees, and so the answer did not touch on the greater structure of university funding, much of which comes from research monies. The remit of the committee was carefully designed so that it did not look at why it was reasonable to stop subsiding students, while continuing with much larger subsidies to businesses by allowing them to get a great deal of research on the cheap. It did not ask whether, if it is fair for students who benefit to pay for their education, it might not be reasonable to ask companies, who benefit from an educated workforce, to pay more as well. It did not deal with the question of why, if bankers can threaten to leave when their finances are threatened, the best and brightest students might not adopt the same reasoning, and go abroad if their education can be had under better circumstances elsewhere. Nor did it deal with the consequences for the much-vaunted “knowledge economy” if these students don’t come back again.

And the question was asked of Lord Browne, whose successor carried the can for the Gulf of Mexico disaster while trying at the same time to strip out “the unacceptably high overhead costs” “arteriosclerosis and bureaucracy” which weighed BP down during the period Browne was in charge of it. Lord Browne was a highly successful businessman, but he came to the task of reviewing fees with predictable ideas, attitudes and responses. Putting a question to a man wedded to “flash and fluff,” as the Economist phrased it, guaranteed that the one thing that would not be part of the answer would be a critique of the hugely expensive bureaucratic structure that has grown up over the past few decades. Indeed, he ended up recommending a system which will require much higher administrative costs.

All this will happen under a programme billed as introducing market forces into higher education. It would have been preferable if it had done so. I am, in general, quite keen on market forces in their proper context, and have a high regard for well-managed companies. But I do not believe that market forces have much of a role in situations where the market has to be artificially created, and is then interfered with before it even starts operating. With markets, it is all or nothing, and in the case of universities under the current arrangements, it is not going to be all, so would be better if it were nothing.

In a completely free market, the humanities would clean up. Faced with a choice between an arts degree costing £8,000 a year, and one in science costing upwards of £30,000 a year, then history and philosophy would suddenly become very popular for everyone except those determined to work as scientists. But it is not to be. The natural cost advantages that the humanities enjoy will be erased by continued subsidy to the sciences, while the natural disavantages of the humanities – their lack of access to research money – will continue unchanged.

Charging for what used to be free is not going to be balanced by an ability to become more flexible. Universities will be exposed to some of the pressures of a market system, but their responses will be limited by government directives. To put it simply, many departments may well close not because there is no demand for places, and not because students would not pay higher fees, but because the government will not let supply and demand meet up in a market driven fashion. This would be fine if it was prepared to pay to make up the difference, but it won’t do that either. It is after all possible that greater access and stability could be achieved by increasing fees still further. Personally I would disapprove strongly, but if a university could charge £15000, and divert a large portion of this into a needs-blind admissions policy in the Harvard manner, this might work for some institutions. But we will never know. Rather, universities are to be forced into an ill-fitting straitjacket designed purely to triangulate the political needs of the governing parties.

The market to be introduced is so rigged that, were it to be implemented in the City, the fraud office would soon enough be fingering the collars of the perpetrators. Every reference to market forces is disingenuous in the extreme. Universities will not compete against each other, but will rather operate as a cartel, or a series of cartels targetting different market segments. The normal market disciplines on managements will not apply, as there is no means left of effectively challenging or criticising their decisions. The choice available to students will be converted solely into what level of debt to incur. Internal costing of departments will remain opaque, random and arbitrary.

One thing that those in the arts must beware of is being bamboozled by arguments that their subjects are non economic, loss-making, sub-critical or whatever term may be in fashion. People in the humanities are not generally very good at reading balance sheets and financial statements, but they really should get into practice. As pieces of creative writing, the average university accounts are marvels. For exercises in the analysis of texts, they offer perfect study material. What they say, what they do not say, what they emphasise, what they hide away in dank little corners on page 23 are wonders of obscurantism. They should be read carefully, not least because of the pleasure that can be derived from sending in Freedom of Information requests to get the information left out.

The most important thing to remember is that however many numbers and statistics are deployed to give an impression of precision and rigour, these are all fiction at departmental level. A decent accountant could make any faculty show a profit or a loss simply by juggling the figures to get the result desired. All the highly complex and sophisticated accounting techniques brought in over the past decade or so are essentially fraudulent, because they are based on entirely subjective assumptions. To take an example, the philosophy department at Middlesex was closed because it made a loss, and this fact was dutifully reported in the newspapers. But it only made a loss because the university creamed off more than 50 percent of its revenue in central charges, and those charges were not only set more or less at random, they were beyond the control of the department to influence. An entirely independent faculty, which could negotiate a fair price for use of rooms and libraries, and which had some control over other outgoings – like a say in the vice-chancellor’s magnificent salary – could easily have managed to show a profit. The sin of Middlesex philosophy was a failure to meet an arbitrary internal benchmark determined by the needs of the administration for funds, not being a financial basket case.

Another thing to note is the extraordinary nature of the loans system being proposed, which is that students will be charged at 3 per cent plus inflation for a very long period of time once they hit a certain level of income. This is sheer profiteering disguised as fairness. Essentially, the government will be requiring individuals to issue 30-year index-linked bonds on their own balance sheets, rather than do it itself. A few sums shows what this might mean. For the government will raise the money to advance the loans on a flat rate basis. It will, in other words, borrow the money at about 2.5 per cent, and lend it out at 6.1 per cent, more if inflation increases. While it will enjoy the benefit of seeing its real debt eroded by inflation, the student will not be permitted the same escape route. If only half the total number of students take out a loan of £7000 every year, then that would amount to a transfer from the state’s balance sheet to those of individuals which stabilises over 30 years at about £110 billion. The government would pay a peak £2.75 billion a year in interest for this, and receive peak income of £6.75 billion back, as wage inflation will ensure within 12 years that most graduates earn over the £41,000 benchmark which triggers the maximum levy, and there seems to be no provision for this to be index-linked.

Even Barclaycard would applaud such audacity, not least because there are measures to guarantee this income stream by imposing financial penalties on anyone who wishes to pay off their debts early – a unique and almost feudal arrangement, where individuals are going to be forced to remain in debt, effectively to provide the government with cash flow, for most of their working lives. I know of no other case of a government requiring its citizens to be in permanent debt. The argument that this is just like a mortgage is specious, as mortgages are not index-linked, there are a wide variety of different time periods available, individuals have a choice of which ones to take, and they are secured on hard assets which have traditionally risen in value over time. None of these conditions apply to student loans.

It should be noted that this does nothing for total debt levels; it merely shuffles them around, massaging down the government portion by increasing the private portion. It is financial jiggery-pokery similar to that of the Private Finance Initiative. And already there have been suggestions that this be taken one stage further, that the government might try to raise money by selling off the student loan book -- George Osborne mentioned this as a long-term aim in his last budget (Guardian 22 June 2010).

If such a thing happens, then we will at least be able to console ourselves with having witnessed a stupendous feat of financial wizardry. Having transferred liabilities from banks’ balance sheets onto the public accounts because of the financial crisis, student loans will progressively transfer public debt onto individuals. If the loan book is then sold to financial institutions, the banks will have successfully transmuted their liabilities into assets in a way which makes turning dross into gold seem almost commonplace.

For all that, the changes that are coming need not be bad for the arts and humanities, although the dangers are so clear and considerable that they need little elaboration from me. All crises present opportunities, but the ultimate outcome depends on who siezes those opportunities. The rise in student fees is a devious manoeuvre which is fundamentally unfair and profoundly inefficient. But it will inevitably switch more attention back to teaching and away from research, which will play to the humanities’ strengths. For the past 30 years, the desire to squeeze the arts into a scientific research-heavy model of funding has forced them to compete on a field where they cannot win. There is no way that they can raise the sorts of money in research grants that the sciences can collar, no way that they can justify themselves in terms of direct and measurable contribution to economic growth. Nonetheless they have been required to try, and have been all too easily depicted as a redundant indulgence as a result.

Training the minds of the young effectively and efficiently is another matter, and the area where the humanities excel. With luck, the whole system may begin to be rebalanced, and teaching may come back to enjoy equal status once more. In this, the students are natural allies, quite likely to join any protest against the idea of their fees being diverted to other things. They may be willing to stump up for their own education, they may not be quite so keen to fund a vice-chancellor’s pay rises. They may want to know where their money is going, and how it is spent. As most humanities departments operate on a shoestring, this natural curiosity in the young is a characteristic which should be encouraged.

Many years ago, the historian Alfred Cobban gave an interview in which he talked about getting his Professorship at UCL. He was taken aside by the head of the college and told that, while UCL would be quite happy if he wanted to do any research, he must realise it would be in his own time. He was being paid to teach, and nothing else, and would he please remember that. This did not prevent him from producing a large number of high quality books and articles, and indeed his entire generation produced vast amounts of research without having to be bullied or bribed into doing so. Very few people now can even imagine how such a system could work, so used have we become to managerial insistence that without incentives and penalties, league tables and assessments, nothing would ever get done. But it did, and I suspect it would work just as well now. When academics have something to say, they rarely have to be forced or cajoled to say it.

But they can only do so if they have time, and in the humanities time is often more precious than money. Many research grants in fact are used up literally to buy time. A proper response to the changes coming down the line would be to begin the process of stripping out the vast amounts of busy work that have accumulated over the past few decades. It would abolish the RAE for the humanities, dispose of the constant internal assessments, cancel huge numbers of committees, get rid of professional heads of departments and return them to the ranks where they could pull their weight as teachers – in short, dispose of everything which was not immediately and directly related to teaching, leaving more space for doing research at other times. Linked to an administration that was genuinely committed to stripping out other unnecessary expenses, then the humanities could live under the new regime and even prosper in a world that was simpler and less subject to random manipulation. It will never be easy to deliver a high quality education on a quarter of the income per head that a major American university gets, or a third of the amount that Eton charges, but it would then be do-able, just about. At least there would be the possibility of surviving until some future government comes along and launches yet another review to unravel the mess made by the last one, as will inevitably happen. But my concern is that unless a very real amount of genuine soul-searching is undertaken by everyone from government down – a reexamination far more substantial that the superficial tampering of the Browne report – then by that stage irreparable damage may have been done.

-- Iain Pears

On the Workings of Groups

2010-08-09T04:48:00.000-07:00

The supporters of the management of King’s College have been advancing the line that setting up a working group on Palaeography – which recommended a new post in “palaeography and manuscript studies” demonstrates the purity of the college’s motives over the eviction of the current incumbent, Professor David Ganz.

Under this reasoning, the removal of Professor Ganz is compensated for by the fact that King’s is willing to give house-room to a replacement as long as someone else picks up the tab. King’s commitment to palaeography is on the condition that it cost the college not a penny.

Left unexamined are the questions of how much time the College will devote to the matter of fund-raising, considering it already has some £200 million in debt that needs to be dealt with; why anyone would want to give money to a college that has acted in such an unusual way; and why palaeography cannot be subsidised while managers, sports facilities and palaces next door can be.

The argument in favour of King’s – most cogently and reasonably advanced by Mr Steven Rhodes, a former member of the King’s council, in comments to the THES – is that the question of Professor Ganz, and the question of Palaeography, are two entirely different matters. That is, getting rid of Professor Ganz has nothing to do with the issue of replacing him.

From an outsider’s point of view, it is difficult to see how anyone can think that Professor and Professorship can be separated, but that seems to be the line of argument. So let us look at the working group -- composed mainly of senior academics of some considerable distinction -- which accomplished this separation. It was set up by management after the storm of protest caused by the College’s announcement that the subject was going to be axed.

One of the most striking things about the report it produced is that, in 11 pages devoted to the subject of palaeography at King’s, Professor Ganz is mentioned by name only once, and then only in passing. The state and nature of palaeography as it currently exists at the College is scarcely mentioned; indeed the committee writes almost as though there were a blank slate, and that the subject was being called into existence for the first time. There is much on what courses might be offered; all but nothing on what courses currently are offered. There is no sense that they would be building on the efforts of the Professor – who, after 13 years in the post, must have had some impact on the subject.

The report (published on June 30th) says that "members agreed to serve on the understanding that the Group's work could proceed only when issues surrounding the current post-holder had been negotiated and resolved" – which presumably means when the fate of Professor Ganz was decided one way or another. This makes perfect sense, as there would have been no point worrying about his successor if the current Professor was, after all, going to stay put.

However, it then goes on to state that it proceeded -- with the first meeting of the group -- on 31 March 2010, (page 2 of the report) which suggests that at this point, presumably, the members considered that the issue of Professor Ganz had indeed been “negotiated and resolved.”

Except that it hadn't. Professor Ganz only signed his voluntary severance agreement shortly before June 7, two months later, and his letter of April 17, posted on Facebook, clearly suggests that he, at least, thought there was a possibility of keeping his job – the letter refers to axeing palaeography being still a proposal, albeit management policy. Even had he known that was how it was going to end, up until the moment he signed he could have decided to put up a fight and dig in his heels.

He may, as I am told, have been presented with a severance contract on March 31 -- coincidentally, no doubt, the same day as the first meeting -- but he had not signed or agreed to sign it: his position had been neither negotiated nor resolved, except, perhaps in the collective mind of management, which seems to have developed a sort of idee fixe on the subject of getting rid of him. But an argument that an issue is resolved when one side of a discussion decides it has been is scarcely tenable, not least because it would cast doubt over the nature of the consultation process which lasted until May 18th.

Even more strangely, the statement put out on May 18th to mark the end of the consultation said:

“The working group made its initial report to the Head of School on 31 March 2010 (my emphasis) and confirmed the continuing need for the study of Palaeography at King’s. The working group indicated that it would be recommending a re-defined Chair of Palaeography, incorporating Manuscript Studies, with a wide remit…”

Which is to say that -- if you compare report and press release -- the committee not only began work before the fate of Professor Ganz had been resolved, it effectively finished it the day it started -- for that was the major recommendation and everything else was merely filling in the details. March 31, it appears, was a busy day all round. This suggests -- the press release presumably means what it says -- either that the recommendations weren’t very deeply thought through, or that the groundwork had already been done elsewhere and in advance.

The final report defines the new post in a way which fits Professor Ganz’s skills to a tee (p.4) – languages, with latin as a core; a remit covering documentary and archival material (an odd distinction: what do archives contain except documents?) and medieval vernacular; meeting demands from a range of constituencies and “engaging with the digital environment” – (a rare lapse into gobblydegook) all of which Professor Ganz has been doing with great distinction, if little ostentatious fanfare.

The report never even considers the possibility that the current Professor might be the ideal person to do the job, even though he was actually doing it while the working party's meetings were taking place. Equally, the statement that palaeography cannot pay its way and must be endowed omits any discussion of why, in that case, the college needs to found a new chair at all, and could not merely seek an endowment for the existing one.

The periodic excursions into managerialese suggests two hands at work: when talking about Palaeography, the report appears to have been written by academics, as it is for the most part clear and straightforward. Elsewhere it lapses into puffery, unable to resist a boosterish adjective or two: thus scholarly traditions are of the highest, administrative departments are energetic. (p.6) And Vision makes its usual cameo appearance.

While the report finds space to praise managerial energy, it does not, however, trouble to define what “manuscript studies” actually are, although the implication on page 5 is that it is palaeography for people with no language skills and who cannot, therefore, read the manuscripts they are studying. Another hint comes from the mention of ivy league summer school students, which suggests that the new requirement will be for someone who can entertain high-paying preppies, a group university administrators in the UK now regard as the ultimate cash-cows. (p.5) If this is th case, then it may well be that Professor's Ganz's real sin was to be too serious a scholar, and the fact that there was no palaeographer on the committee would not have helped.

A further hint of the purpose behind all of this comes from the frequent references to computing – another area where the managerial style becomes dominant (“London offers a robust infrastructure …connections to Super JaNET…” and so on p.7). This connects to the current main squeeze of management, which is the idea that by changing from using computers as a tool, to seeing information processing as an end in itself (the digital humanities) King’s can not only seem cool, but also lay claim to the sort of hefty grants that normally go only to scientific subjects.

So how does leave this working party? Its achievements should properly be assessed by the choices it made; by what it did not do, as well as by what it did. Its schedule implied the assumption that Professor Ganz would leave long before he agreed to do so. It could have said – hey, why not keep Ganz? it’ll be cheaper – but didn’t. Individual members could have refused to serve unless they could shape the remit, but didn’t.

They could have protested at the treatment of a colleague, but chose not to do so. They could have acknowledged the Professor's contribution to college and discipline, but did not. They could have tried to link the cost of palaeography to other areas of expense at King's, but didn’t.

They advanced the notion that there is some difference between manuscript studies and palaeography without explaining the distinction between the two. They defined a new job, but skated over the task of saying where it differed from the old one. They turned their back on the fate of an individual to concentrate on the preservation of a position.

They dutifully answered the questions set by management, but chose not to wonder whether different questions should be posed. The course of events illustrates the thesis I have advanced over the past couple of months, which is that control of universities in effect lies the ability of managements to set the agenda, and the unwillingness of academics themselves to challenge it. This is a perfect example of the process in operation.

Either way, the working party allowed itself to be put in the position of providing a distraction – by concentrating attention on the resurrection of palaeography in the future, it served to divert attention away from its untimely death in the present. Its report permitted the "palaeography saved" headlines which obscured the fact of Professor Ganz's eviction. It separated professor and professorship in a way that the management on its own could not have achieved.

And it allowed King’s to pass in lofty silence over the question of why it cannot find £25,000 a year to fund the shortfall in palaeography, but can find the £62,000 required to fund the Principal’s pay rises over the last couple of years.

It is, after all, a question of priorities within the university: and this is something which, it appears, is now much too important to be the concern of academics, however senior or distingushed.

-- Iain Pears

Note -- This account derives from reading the report of the working party side-by-side with the various press releases put out by management in the past few months. That is to say, if there are any errors of dates, then these lie in the documents themselves. If there are any mistakes, however, then I will gladly correct them, as usual.

Dissident academics requiring anonymity, by the way, generally go via Facebook. So, indeed, do recalcitrant managers.

A few numbers

2010-07-10T07:07:00.000-07:00

One of the curious aspects of the Palaeography Affair is that it all began because of the management of King's College's insistence that it had to make cuts, and that axeing Professor Ganz's job was the way to do it. Necessary, inevitable and vital.

Now, of course, they have changed direction and decided that Palaeography is indeed essential, and have produced a report on the matter. (http://www.kcl.ac.uk/content/1/c6/07/64/51/ThePalaeographyWorkingGrouppaper.pdf)

This report suggests (p.5) that employing Professor Ganz cost around £79,000 a year. However, this was partly paid for by interest from a sum set aside for Palaeography, which produced £29,015 in the year to July 2009. Of the remaining sum half was covered by research income from Hefce. The net cost to the college of the Professorship was thus about £25,000.

Axeing the post would presumably involve losing the Hefce grant, and there is a question mark over what might happen to the endowment fund, although I imagine the management will not be writing to the original donors to see if they want their money back.

Be that as it may, King's had a Professor of international reputation for a bargain basement price.

So they got rid of him, and now want another one so much they are prepared to pay more to to get pretty much the same. Page nine of the report says that getting a suitable person -- that is, one with the same level of reputation as the last one -- would cost £119,912 a year. This increases the shortfall to be made up from £25,000 to £65,000. That is a lot of money just to add a few bells and whistles to a job description.

In addition there will be £20,000 hiring costs. Added to this will be the unknown sums paid out to fund Professor Ganz's redundancy -- compensation payments, legal fees and so on. On top of that, there is a question of wasted time, and reputational damage to the college.

I would be surprised if the total cost of evicting Professor Ganz was less than £150,000, possibly more, based on his salary and length of service. If this guess is correct, it represents six years of the shortfall under the current arrangements. But Professor Ganz would have retired in six years' time anyway -- so the cost to the college, in excess of the endowment income and the hefce grants, would have been exactly the same. No savings there, in other words, unless the College intends to collar the endowment and transfer it to other things.

The solution proposed -- renaming a professorship from "palaeography" to "palaeography and manuscript studies" -- will however cost an additional £40,000 a year, plus the one-off costs of £170,000 already mentioned. The annual recurring cost (assuming a long-term average yield of 3.5 pct, which is reasonable) will require an endowment of £3.4 million; Professor Ganz required an endowment of £2.2 million, nearly a million of which was already in place.

(Assuming the Hefce grant continues, the figures would be 2.7 million and £1.5 million; that is to say a need to find £1.7 million under the new arrangements, and £0.6 million under the old arrangements if the current endowment transfers to the new post).

Did no-one in the accountancy department ever wonder whether keeping Professor Ganz, asking him to do a few different things, and launching a fund-raising campaign to raise the extra £0.6 million to complete the existing endowment in the years up to his retirement, might not be a cheaper solution, and one more likely to be successful than trying to raise £1.7 million quickly?

If the college indeed thinks that Palaeography is so vital, then such a procedure would have ensured continuity. It would also have lowered the long-term costs, as the risk premium it will have to pay to attract a suitable replacement would be lessened. I think it highly unlikely that any senior academic would risk his career by working at King's for the sums outlined in the report. Not ones with any sense of self-preservation.

Throughout this whole business I have done my best to understand both sides of this affair; on many occasions I have written critically of the management but with, I hope, some understanding of its predicament, even though it has tried very hard to make itself seem as unsympathetic as possible.

Most of the time I have been able to understand where they were coming from, even though I have often disagreed profoundly.

But this one foxes me completely. Given that the stated object was to save money, I can find no rational explanation why King's was prepared to spend so much to oust the Professor of Palaeography, when keeping him would not only have been a cheaper option, it would also have been much more effective in restoring the college's reputation -- for these latest shenanigans merely do more damage.

-- Iain Pears

On Statements

2010-07-08T12:32:00.000-07:00

The statement put out today by King’s college on the future of Palaeography at the college requires one more contribution on the subject.

The statement is remarkable in that the uninitiated would never know that King's actually has a Professorship of Palaeography already. With a true nod to historical example, the current post has been totally airbrushed out of the story. On the surface, it is as though Professor Ganz never existed.

Look more closely, though, and his ghost is everywhere. The college management states the need for the new and improved Professor of Palaeography to “work closely with teachers and researchers in mediaeval vernaculars.”

As no other reason is given for the replacement of the current incumbent, the clear insinuation is that he does not do this, once you rule out the possibility that the management of King's does not consider Professor Ganz's speciality of Carolingian scripts to be mediaeval. Why specialising in Latin rules out any possibility of working closely with a teacher of medieval French is not explained.

It goes on to state that the changes are required to provide “visionary intellectual leadership that takes full advantage of opportunities to develop teaching and research.” Again, the implication is that, at present, Professor Ganz does not provide such leadership.

Even by the standards of poor behaviour set in the past few months, such a statement is petty and churlish in tone, and amateurish in execution. It is also, as has been the habit of King's management actions lately, undisciplined and unnecessary: Professor Ganz has already signed his voluntary termination agreement. To allow insinuations of this sort to appear in a statement now carries a whiff of self-indulgent spite.

It might be pure carelessness, of course, but King's has a large and experienced PR department, and PR people are supposed to be good at making sure that public statements say exactly what is meant, and are not subject to misinterpretation. It would have been perfectly easy to write a gung-ho statement about the new arrangements without implying any criticism of others.

I assume that Professor Ganz, like the 100 or so others who have been pushed into voluntary redundancy, has signed a gagging deal, linking silence about the conduct of management to his redundancy payments. Personally, I find it appalling that a publicly-funded body should use tax-payers' money to stamp out dissent, but it seems now to be standard practice amongst managements who do not acknowledge that anyone has the right to criticise them in any way.

If this is of the standard variety, the wording will be something along the lines of both sides agreeing not to authorise the making or publishing of any derogatory or disparaging statement intended to or which might be expected to damage or lower the reputation of the other. This, at least, is the standard boilerplate wording offered on legal websites.

It would be interesting to get a legal opinion on whether this statement breaches that agreement, and what the consequences of any breach by King’s might be. Would King's, for example, be liable for loss of earnings if it was judged that the statement "might be expected" to cause damage by making it more difficult to get another job?

Professor Ganz, in contrast, has lived up to his side of the bargain; there has not been a peep out of him, either to me or (as far as I know) to anyone else. Many other people at King’s have a great deal to say on the subject of their managers, but have not done so.

It is a pity that some in the senior management of King’s lack this self-discipline and sense of decorum.

But if the management of King’s is voluntarily rendering this part of the redundancy agreements null and void, and effectively confirms this by not withdrawing the statement, then presumably everyone else will also be free to speak as they wish.

Finally, the statement says that it will look for philanthropic funding for the chair, although presumably it has occurred to someone that finding a donor ready to hand over the large amount for an endowment is a hefty task in current circumstances, not least because of recent history.

Equally problematic is the task of attracting suitable applicants when all will know full well about what happened to their predecessor. Few with a tenured job will be tempted, and most of the best practitioners do have that sort of security. Nor will it be that appealing to anyone who currently enjoys pleasant working conditions, or is free to follow the research of their choice without interference. Clearly someone specialising in mediaeval latin will be leery of the idea as well, and that is most of them.

Which raises an intriguing possibility: what if King's finds the money, advertises the job, and the only senior academic with an international reputation who applies is Professor D. Ganz?

-- Iain Pears

the statement can be found at

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/news_details.php?year=2010&news_id=1408

Symbols and Scholars

2010-06-25T00:47:00.000-07:00

My last post seems to have caused annoyance in some quarters, with people thinking I was unfair to those who had worked to oppose the cuts being imposed by the management of King’s College London. If so, then my profound apologies; I do not wish to undermine those who have gone into battle, nor do I want to minimise their achievements.

My concern, however, was a deep worry that an essential point was being missed – or at least it has not been aired in any forum I know of. That is that the effective expulsion of the Professor of Palaeography was not merely one sad defeat in an otherwise on-going campaign, but the symbolic heart of the matter. It was, after all, the issue which came to represent the crisis to the outside world.

It is, of course, good that threats of compulsary redundancies have been lifted. But it would be unwise to conclude that their removal is consequently permanent. You do not need to be an economist or an avid reader of the Financial Times to realise that the cuts imposed so far have only been an aperitif. Force Majeure is a powerfully useful concept in business; changed circumstances can be invoked to justify all sorts of things, and circumstances are on the brink of changing radically.

The entire public sector is going to be cut; universities will be cut harder and the humanities will be hit harder still. This much is clear. The numbers are uncertain, but the outlines can be estimated. If Higher Education as a whole is cut by 25 per cent (which seems to be a minimum figure) this will mean a real cut to universities of about 12 per cent, as much of their income currently comes from non-governmental sources.

But the sciences get the lion’s share of external grants and, in addition, the government is busily skewing the funding structure to put more public money into the STEM subjects, and less into the humanities.

This could very easily translate into an overall cut for the humanities of more than 30 per cent over the next five years, with the only help on the horizon (assuming government disdain for the humanities is not reversed) being higher tuition fees – which coalition politics means may be less useful than they might have been. Having given away VAT increases, it is quite possible that the Liberal Democrats will decide to take a stand on the issue, even though doing so would devastate university finances. Conservative cuts plus Liberal distaste for fees would be a potent combination.

It is unnecessary for me to spell out quite how nasty such an outcome would be. But such circumstances would give any management the justification needed to reintroduce forced redundancies – and to postpone indefinitely (or simply forget) any plans to, say, appoint a new chair of palaeography. Indeed, they may have no choice.

Nor is there much chance of building an effective coalition to oppose the cuts; the outcome of the last election was irrelevant, as all parties in effect have the same policies.

The cuts were formulated under the Labour government, the Conservatives have intensified them and the Liberals have gone along with it. There is a general consensus at the moment that they will happen and must happen. That will take several years to shift. And a public faced with falling benefits, increasing taxes and declining services is not going to be easily roused about universities.

You cannot easily reverse direction once you have started sliding down a mountain. All you can do is try to control the descent, and try to ensure you are in one piece when you come to the bottom. And this is where the fate of palaeography becomes important, because I fear it has tightened the hold of management on the implementation of future cuts.

At one level, it is a question of symbolism, which is as critical in management as it is in literature or art, even though its power is generally ignored. Public relations delivers the message; underlying symbolism shapes what that message is and how it is received. Many of the travails of the Chief Executive of BP come because he failed to grasp the symbolic aspect of the oil spill, his company and of his responses to the disaster. Bankers’ bonuses and the pay of Vice Chancellors have a significance far beyond the actual financial cost: it is a major reason why they get people so agitated.

The departure of David Ganz only makes sense when linked to the fact that none of the people responsible for the cock ups of the past few months has left their job. The management of King’s employed methods that were inappropriate and counter-productive. It made their institution into an international short-hand for a crisis of the British University. It alienated its own faculty members when unity was essential, and brought savage criticism from across the scholarly community. In many areas it then rolled back to a policy it could easily have adopted to begin with. None of this was necessary.

Had King’s truly wanted to repair the damage, then one of those responsible could have been invited to go. It would have saved more money than getting rid of palaeography and drawn a line under the matter. If that was unfair, then it would have been no more so than getting rid of faculty members. Managements are, after all, supposed to be quite enthusiastic about rewarding success and failure appropriately.

Instead, the situation evolved in a way which in essence protected those who had made the mistakes, by focussing attention on those who had made none. A committee was set up to “explore the future of Palaeography at King’s.” Broader issues were excluded from discussion and, although King’s management leaks like a sieve, I have heard no whisper that such an enquiry is under way elsewhere.

Cutting administrative costs, getting rid of inadequate managers and transferring the resources to scholarship seem not to have been on the table; the technique concentrated attention on palaeography alone as the urgent issue which needed to be resolved. The resolution was to redefine the incumbent out of the job, promise a new position at some unspecified date in the future and present this as the subject being saved.

Thus constituted, this solution tackled a very real need to repair the college’s reputation, but tried to do so by focussing on the symptom of the crisis, not the cause. It was not allowed to deal with the central reason why such repair work was necessary. It had a remit which excluded the one thing that urgently needed examining, the way in which the College management came to make such a series of mistakes. Palaeography was not, in fact, such an urgent question: whether or not it should go or stay or be redefined could have been postponed for some considerable time; the costs were fairly marginal. The urgency about settling the matter was essentially political, not academic or financial.

The methods used, of course, are common practice, one of the most fundamental of administrative techniques. In the long term, real power in any institution lies in controlling the agenda, in deciding what is discussed and how it is discussed – and in determining what is not discussed.

The matter of palaeography and its eventual resolution reified the administration’s grip on that agenda. It became an object lesson in who is still truly in control, and those who opposed the management never found a way of either challenging or changing the terms of the debate.

Which brings back the subject of future cuts. Bitter experience in the private sector long ago taught me that assurances count for little in a crisis, however genuinely they may have been given, and how solid they seem. Managements will, and must, operate within the realm of the possible, and a return to draconian methods will remain an option as long as they are not absolutely impossible.

The only way to ensure that any future job losses come in an orderly, agreed and constructive fashion will come if the management has no other choice but to proceed in such a way. That will only happen if the academics insert themselves into a truly meaningful and determining role in the design and implementation or any changes. The fate of palaeography suggests it is a battle that has yet to be won.

-- Iain Pears

Strange Defeat

2010-06-14T08:50:00.000-07:00

So, it is over, more or less. King’s College has issued a few statements, backtracked on a few trivialities, and everyone is happy, judging by the posts. The union seems pleased, and all is at peace.

Except, of course that it isn’t. The management of King’s has got its way in all essentials. It has won the right to reshape departments at its pleasure. It has adopted the shoddy tactic of forcing people out of their jobs at will and got away with it. The only difference now is that it operates through a committee with helpful academics who are prepared to “redefine” a post in order to force incumbents out. So much for academic solidarity.

So the stage is now set for the next round, for the real cuts, the ones that really hurt. The next time a head of department wishes to transfer resources from mainstream subjects into modish and unproven initiatives like the “digital humanities,” there will be a precedent and a model.

The next time a colleague of distinction doesn't quite fit in, the way will be open for his job to be redefined -- History of France changed, perhaps, to History of the French. That is all that is required, and then the job can be readvertised in a way which forces the offending clerk into voluntary redundancy.

Or perhaps, rather like Sussex, the management will decide that all of European history is of no importance and axe it. Or like Middlesex get rid of philosophy in its entirety. They can do so, now, whenever they want. And there won’t be an international outcry next time. Such a chance comes only once.

It is a pity. The Academics of King’s had a opportunity to defend more than themselves, more than their own jobs. Not enough wanted to. Some saw advantage for themselves. Some did not care. Some senior academics whose opinion counted preferred to make life easy for the management. Others felt that there was no point in carrying on, and gave up.

I fear they will regret it, senior and junior, not least because the management now has the measure of them, and knows how to get its way.

But all is well. No-one responsible for making King’s a laughing stock has been fired; indeed they will probably be rewarded for taking tough decisions.

The last Professor of Palaeography in Britain will lose his job.

Professor Trainor gets a knighthood for services to higher education.

No further comment is necessary.

-- Iain Pears

A Kingly word or two

2010-05-06T14:37:00.000-07:00

A short time ago I was most kindly invited to deliver a brief talk at King's London about the current circumstances there. As portions of it have popped up in the press, and inevitably give a slightly lop-sided account, I thought I might as well post the entire caboodle.

----------

It is normal when you begin a talk to say how pleased you are to be here. But in this case I am not at all pleased; I find the whole business of what has been going on at King’s in the past couple of months dispiriting. Only the reaction of those under threat is cheering; the fact that they have had to defend themselves is very much less so.

I am sure you are aware that the initial document which began all this – the Palmowski plan – sent shockwaves through the entire university system extraordinarily quickly. I live in Oxford, and people heard about it the evening of the initial meeting; in a business as densely networked as academia that was inevitable. The reaction was not; it was unanimous – people were appalled by the way this was being done and that it was happening at a place like King’s, which is one of that handful of institutions which set the tone and the standards which others follow. The way the letters and signatures have flooded in from all over the world suggests that this was a common response.

I became involved not simply because I shared that alarm, which other people could express better than I could, but because I was struck by the extraordinarily clumsy methods which caused the protest to erupt. My little side interest for many years has been how managements work, and this seemed a fine example of one that was malfunctioning. Indeed, it seems clear that, when this is all over, some of those involved should really consider how well suited they are to a managerial role.

I am a great admirer of managers, oddly enough. I spent years reporting on them, watched good ones succeed, and poor ones fail. I saw inspirational ones rescue basket cases, and bad ones bring large companies to ruin. Out of that I noticed one fundamental principle, which is that good management, if it wants to achieve its goals, must tailor style and method to the institution it is running, to the circumstances in which it operates. To try and mould either a company or a university in your own image, make it conform to abstract rules and generalised methods, wastes energy, and sets off disputes which are both unnecessary and distracting. It is inefficient, and leads to blunders.

The perfect example of this in the universities, of course, is Oxford a few years ago, where the now-departed vice-chancellor tried to impose a managerial structure completely at odds with the character and nature of the place. John Hood’s total failure in his one and only real policy is easily understood: he had no feel for the university, surrounded himself with a close coterie who also knew little about it, and in many cases had never even taught or done any research. The atmosphere of them and us was quickly established; from that point it was an easy step to seeing the body of the university as an enemy which had to be overcome, and an even easier step for many people then actually to become an enemy. The result was public brawl, a large amount of negative and damaging publicity, and a poisonous atmosphere which took a long time to clear.

At King’s now much of this dispute also seems to be because administration and institution have become detached, and the basic rule of management has been breached. More and more seem to have been drafted in from outside, or from outside academia as a whole; their pay mechanisms only increase that distance. Administration has become unnecessarily bloated because there are no external controls on its expansion. Worse still, there no longer seem to be any working structures within the college to channel dissatisfaction and facilitate a free argument about policy.

If you have an organisation which announces a plan drawn up in secret by people who often know little of the disciplines they are judging, which makes everyone reapply for their own jobs and so creates an atmosphere of threat, which has an emasculated Senate, an appeals procedure which cannot discuss matters of substance, departmental heads who function as line managers rather than intermediaries and if, as now seems to be the case, gagging orders are used to silence criticism, then an agreed policy which both works and is acceptable to all parties cannot possibly take shape.

Inevitably people are, in those circumstances, going to seek help from outside: it is the only option which remains if they do not wish simply to roll over in submission. An organisation which causes such a thing to happen is structurally unstable; in the quest for faster decision taking and fewer limits on management authority, it has sacrificed resilience, and its ability withstand stress effectively. Because of the pressures that are undoubtedly coming, this is a very serious weakness that needs to be corrected as a matter of urgency.

To put it simply, you cannot use the style and methods employed in something like an oil company on a small, fairly coherent group of people who must count amongst the most educated and articulate in the world, and who have a strongly developed corporate identity of their own. You certainly should not risk doing so in a sector like higher education, where reputation is of such importance and is so easily damaged. Nor should you do so in an organisation whose standing relies so heavily on the talents of its inmates: banks have to pay vast sums in bonuses to buy the loyalties of the best and the brightest; universities get that loyalty for free, and are foolish in the extreme to threaten it, because once it is gone it can only be bought back, and they could not possibly afford to do so.

This is not a moral issue, but simply a question of what will, or will not work, and how best to ensure the long-term health of the institution. In places like King’s – however annoying it must be to those in charge – the long slog of persuasion to win genuine consent is the only technique which can deliver stability. Rail-roading policies through is fast, sounds good, but is ultimately, and is always, counter-productive.

As far as I can see, the management of King’s can fire the whole lot of you if it wishes. But the methods being employed will inflict permanent damage if there is no change, and I retain my belief that all sides fervently wish to avoid such a thing. The desire to look after the College is a common factor, even if the definition of what that means, and how it is to be achieved, currently differs radically. If I am wrong in this, of course, then there is nothing to be done about it.

This brings me to my main point: sooner or later this dispute will come to an end, probably in some sort of messy compromise. My concern as an outsider who has a profound debt to the university system, and who has seen all of this before in the private sector, is that King’s will emerge weakened in terms of reputation, internal coherence and its ability to attract the best academics and students. This is important because, while I have no great opinion of the methods of your managers, I have no doubt that their fundamental analysis is correct. These are just the first stages of a long and unpleasant period which, if you are lucky, will last a decade but could easily go on very much longer.

The current funding cuts will be followed by more, and more on top of that. The bond markets and the government between them have decided it will be so. Public spending is going to fall, and in comparison to schools and hospitals, universities are a politically easy target, and are likely to be hit disproportionately hard. They have been expanding with only a few hiccups for more than half a century; most have forgotten, if they ever knew, that any other conditions can exist, and still seem to be assuming that happier days will soon return. I don’t think they will. The next few years at least will be ones of contraction, and may not be followed by renewed expansion for many years to come.

It may very well be that there will have to be job cuts, and a lot of them. That remains to be seen, but if enough money is withdrawn, sooner or later you will run out of room to manoeuvre. Cuts, as you already know all too well, easily become corrosive, eating away at an institution from within through fear, bitterness and in-fighting. This is why the question of how they are implemented is so important, why it is so crucial that the excess baggage of unnecessary expenditure is jettisoned first, why it has to be accepted that compulsary job losses are a last, not a first resort, and why those in charge are under an obligation to convince people through word and deed that they will do their damnedest to defend the essential freedom of expression in teaching and research that any decent university must have. None of this would cost a penny: that is why it is so disturbing that it has not been done, and that it does not seem to have occurred to your management that it might be necessary.

Now is really not a good time for a fight. Universities cannot afford to be divided and have no need to be, given a bit of sense. Certainly all interested parties have much common ground. Academics in the humanities have endured years of having their efforts belittled and ridiculed by people from government ministers down who think only in terms of economic growth. Many in the sciences are on short-term contracts which are little short of a disgrace. Students are being required to pay more and accept less, and sometimes seem to be regarded by government as an annoying distraction from research. And administrators have been overwhelmed by a tsunami of government interference which has burdened them with futile tasks and petty-fogging requirements for reasons which have nothing to do with education.

It is time to argue back, and with one voice, because all of these issues are aspects of the same problem. Above all, it is time to start changing the terms of the debate. Universities are not businesses, they are better if they are not, and it is time to say so more forcefully. The hierarchical management style advocated in things like the 2004 Lambert report is unstable and inefficient in comparison to more consensual methods. Universities serve society as a whole in many different ways and must not be defined solely or even primarily by their economic function. They cannot be burdened with the responsibility of stimulating the economic growth which businesses and governments themselves have failed to deliver. Ever dafter regulations from hefce achieve nothing and get in the way. Overbearing interference and contradictory requirements suck money and time away from teaching and research and are an unaffordable luxury in the straitened circumstances which are now upon us.

The next few years will be of fundamental importance, one way or the other: universities will either begin to free themselves from the straitjacket which constricts them or they will be subsumed as a virtual nationalised industry. The assault on academic freedom, the whittling away of universities’ autonomy has been going on for a long time now, underpinned by a sloppy version of free-market ideology which insisted on the need to see everything in financial terms. The basis of all that exploded spectacularly a couple of years ago, and there is now an opportunity to begin a different argument using different language. But only if people make that argument coherently and loudly, otherwise the process will continue.

You will not be able to do that if the stresses you face mean that your energies are dissipated fighting internal battles. From my perspective, that of an outsider looking in, the solution is not only obvious, it is easy and vital. Whether you are an academic, a student, or an administrator, you hang together, or you hang separately. And hanging together depends absolutely on an honest search for agreement amongst equals, not for a victory in an unnecessary trial of strength.

-- Iain Pears

On sulks and silence

2010-05-05T02:26:00.000-07:00

While there has been a great deal of comment about the extent and nature of forthcoming cuts in universities in the UK, the one perspective that is noticeably missing is that of the management doing the cutting. Whether it is at King’s London, Sussex, Hull, and now Middlesex, protestors protest, and managers respond – by not responding. Perfectly reasonable alarm goes unanswered, and managers seem to go out of their way to be aloof, Olympian, severe.

Not all are like this. The head of Dublin City University, Ferdinand von Prondzynski, keeps up an on-line blog which puts his point of view in a way which is witty, informed and civilised. His comments, many of which touch on the subject of university governance, the relationship between public and private, funding and research, are at http://universitydiary.wordpress.com/.

A similar openness and engagement from his British peers would help a great deal: the more they sit closested in their offices pretending not to notice, and the more they communicate only through bland public statements, then the more they create the impression that they truly are cold and uncaring of the institutions they run. I do not believe that is the case; I have no doubt that, from their point of view, they are engaging, as best they can, with difficult circumstances and are properly cheesed that their efforts are going unappreciated.

But it would be nice to know what that perspective is. There must be someone in the massed ranks of administrators who does not regard the world outside with horror, and thinks that explaining clearly not only policies, but the underlying reasons for policies, might be more than a show of weakness.

The problem is a difference of style. Academics discuss: it is the fundamental quality of their occupation. Nothing is of worth unless it is capable of withstanding counter-arguments; this applies in science as much as in the humanities. Any action or policy which is not justified by words is at best suspect, at worst fraudulent.

The world of managers is different; there justification is by deed. Effective and efficient action is all important; managers are (quite rightly) suspicious of smooth talkers as this is often a cover for inept performance. Compromise is also suspect as always producing second best policies which are neither one thing nor another.

The divide is best seen in the businessmen who are adopted by politicians, another class of humanity which trades in words. Generally speaking these are the ones who are good at talking, and at selling themselves. Time and again – going back to the 1970s – the businessmen who have been taken on as government advisors have been the ones able to talk a line; they have generally proven to be disappointingly mediocre at actually running things.

There is no better sell sign for a share than when the Chairman gets a peerage: that's when you know the company has fallen into the hands of a vainglorious egotist.(Another is when they build themselves a new corporate headquarters designed by a famous architect).

In business the most effective managers – and the ones who are often most admired – are the ones who keep quiet and get on with it, who demonstrate by what they do, not by what they say they are going to do.

This, of course creates problems when the two worldviews collide, as they do in universities. When one side values accountability over efficiency, and the other sees things the other way around, there will always be a clash, sooner or later, unless some accomodation is reached to promote mutual understanding.

The attempts by managers to show competence in their particular fashion generates suspicion; the desire of academics to be kept informed and be consulted, generates contempt. The academics think of managers as arrogant hit-men, managers think of the academics as vacuous wind-bags. The two sides understand each other less and less, just at the moment when a rigid and unbreakable unity of purpose is required.

A pity, really.

-- Iain Pears

Lessons of History

2010-05-04T05:08:00.000-07:00

In 2006, the university of Oxford defeated proposals by its vice-chancellor, John Hood, to centralise control and weaken the university’s democratic structure. As it is the one substantial example in recent times of academics turning back the tide of managerialism, (if perhaps only temporarily) it is worth looking at how it was done, to see if there are any lessons to be learned for other institutions now.

The reforms Hood proposed were a classic managerial putsch. An outsider who knew little of the institution he was brought in to head, he scarcely took the time to find out much about it before putting forward his proposals. Oxford’s – admittedly peculiar – structure did not conform to managerial best practice, so would have to change: the precise nature of that existing structure was largely irrelevant.

The crucial proposal was to separate financial and academic functions, and put the financial side of things into the hands of a committee dominated by outsiders, mainly businessmen and likely to be the allies of the administration. Academics would be left with the rest, the assumption being that they wouldn’t realise in time that the body which controls the money controls the organisation. In addition, an internal assessment programme would be set up, giving the administration the tools to reward those in favour, and punish those who were troublesome.

Another orthodox step was to bring in reliable outsiders to fill key posts in the administration. Back through history, it has been a standard procedure for monarchs to bolster their position by creating a breed of “new men” whose power and fortunes were largely dependent on them. Henry VIII did it effectively by parcelling out monastic land to his supporters, while retaining the power to take it away again if their support wavered. University vice-chancellors hand out lucrative offices in the same way; there may be appointments committees and the like, but these rarely deny a powerful head what he wants.

In some ways it is standard bureaucratic power politics; in other ways the rise of the managers has been more like Trotskyite entryism – disguised ambitions, patient accumulation of power and chipping away at the edifice of accountability until only a shell remains. It would be interesting to do a prosopography of university administrators and see how many dabbled in student politics in their youth. Certainly I suspect that few on the left ever suspected that the tools they invented would be used in such an effective fashion for such purposes.

The Oxford proposals for reform were accompanied by the full blast of propaganda; change was presented as inevitable – not if or when, but what. The university was castigated as antiquated, self-indulgent, a joke. It was time for it to receive the full benefits of efficient management, otherwise its status would be threatened, and it would be harder to raise money. In the background there was a rumble of threat from government and the likes of hefce of dire punishment if the reforms were not implemented. Oxford at the time was under heavy fire from the Labour government, and its ability to resist seemed low.

The strategy was to split scientists and those in the humanities apart, and sweep the changes through by mobilising the massed ranks of researchers. There were tales (I never found out if they were true) of professors in medicine dragooning their contract workers onto minibuses and threatening them with dismissal if they did not vote in the right way.

Hood’s trouble was that the changes had to be approved by the university parliament, congregation, which had to vote itself out of existence as an effective body. It refused; the internal assessment was voted down first of all and later, after a debate that went on for hours, the proposals were comprehensively defeated. The administration then tried again, going for a postal vote which it hoped would bring out the discontented scientists more effectively; this was again defeated.

The attempted coup was over, and Hood acknowledged defeat: no more reforms were proposed, several of the leading campaigners against the changes were elected to the governing council, an important ally, Victor Blank, chairman of Lloyds-TSB (which later gave concrete evidence of the effectiveness of modern management) was effectively forced out, and Hood himself left in 2009.

Curiously, despite blistering attacks in newspapers, letters from businessmen denouncing Oxford and all its ways and predictions of dire reprisals from hefce, there were no negative consequences of any importance.

So, how was it done? The academics had the advantage, of course, that the congregation was still in existence and capable of stopping the proposals: had it voted the reforms through, then managerial power would instantly have become near absolute. But congregation voted the way it did because of hard work by the opponents; at Oxford, as elsewhere, the natural tendency is not to be bothered, and assume everyone is really terribly well-meaning. Administration is a tedious business, and there is always an inclination to hand it over to those who, for some unfathomable reason, want to do it. Even getting people interested, let alone getting them to focus on a coherent campaign, was not easily done.

Moreover, the proposals were presented in a deliberately bland way so that their implications were not easily discernable: technical changes, a new committee here, devolved power there, a large amount of incomprehensible reorganisation of reporting structures all over the place, all of which seemed harmless in isolation, and which, indeed, were presented as enhancing accountability, not eliminating it.

The big mistake was to underestimate the opposition: until very late on it doesn’t seem to have occurred to the administration that it would face any serious challenge at all. It missed two vital factors. Firstly, it did not succeed in splitting the disciplines apart; the strategy of divide and rule failed and the opponents were a genuinely interdisciplinary force of lawyers, historians, physicists, chemists and geologists, amongst others. Many of the most impassioned speeches at the final debate were delivered by scientists, not by people from the humanities. For some reason a physicist or a chemist pleading for accountability carries more weight than when a philosopher does. Don’t know why.

Secondly, it failed to grasp that the peculiarities of the Oxford system generate a large number of people who are expert in the ways of bureaucracy: nearly all of them are on the governing bodies of their colleges, and so are well-versed in the business of motions and amendments and committees and reports and minutes. Rather than being given a headache by the barrage of technicalities, it was a language in which they were entirely fluent. Moreover, they knew their institution in ways that the administration – increasingly staffed by outsiders – did not. The result was a procedural guerrilla warfare in which the administration was outclassed and outmanoeuvred by a motley band fighting on its home turf.

Clearly this little bit of history does not apply to many universities in Britain today – for the most part it is no longer a question of stopping the inroads of managerialism, but of finding some way of reversing it. And, although the academics at Oxford won that battle, the war is far from over even there: it is in the nature of administrations never to give up. Rather like governments and terminators, they do not stop, ever. If defeated, they wait, then come back for another try, and then again. As with a European treaty, you get to vote until you get it right.

Nonetheless, there are some pointers at least for giving managements a rather harder time than they have had up to now. As they are paid quite a lot of money, there is no reason why every effort should not be made to make them earn it.

Firstly, connections and communication across the disciplines are vital: it is standard managerial procedure to pick their targets one by one, and to proceed in secret so that one part of the institution does not know what is happening elsewhere. The best way of countering this is simply to make it impossible by finding and then focussing on concerns which apply equally to all disciplines. Some sort of interdisciplinary network to monitor the overall picture is crucial, as is a means of internally publicising what is going on – a newsletter which is unaffiliated, trusted and can command a wide readership – especially in what remains of the senate or other representative bodies.

Secondly, there is a need for expertise: people who know the institution’s statutes, charters and regulations off by heart, who can pick up procedural errors and opportunities for challenge. Lawyers and accountants come into their own here. In many cases senates have been largely stripped of their powers; but some retain influence and could be used more effectively; the same goes for the way that committees are run and lesser administrators – like department heads -- are chosen. Academics have a reputation for being picky and pedantic: properly used these characteristics can become potent weapons.

Thirdly, there needs to be a willingness to put in the hours. Scrutinising management is laborious, time-consuming and frustrating. It means sitting through long committee meetings and actually reading the minutes. It means firing off barrages of memos querying this, objecting to that, and proposing alternatives. It is a total pain. But, if it is not done then there is no accountability, and no possibility of catching measures before they are implemented. A never-ending persistence can also be a powerful tool.

Fourthly, simply reacting is insufficient: rather than waiting for the management to do something and then objecting, it is important to act as early as possible and respond with counter-proposals. This, of course is a weakness of relying primarily on unions, which naturally operate in a largely defensive mode, and have few skills or opportunities for more interventionist methods.

Fifthly, public campaigns are of limited use: the Oxford campaigners largely lost the public relations battle. Unless something changes radically in the near future, the public discourse will always be about spoiled academics, long holidays, not in the real world, need a dose of strong medicine – Peter Mandelson’s aspic comment sums it up perfectly. Arguments about academic freedom will fall on deaf ears. Few people really care. In contrast, management will be the people taking tough, necessary decisions, ensuring value for taxpayers’ money. Public support will be limited to the Times Higher Education Supplement (which scarcely reaches a broad audience) and the Guardian, although this latter has a spotty record.

For the most part, academics should regard the outside world as largely hostile territory and proceed on the assumption that they may manage to blunt managerial arguments in the public sphere, but are unlikely to defeat them. The real work will have to be done in-house, battling through committee by committee. Strikes and all the rest can only go on for a short while: bureaucracies can, and do, hunker down and just wait for them to peter out. Such tactics are for a short sharp campaign for specific goals; they can tackle symptoms, but not the underlying causes. The only way of shifting entrenched management power is through attrition.

That said, there may be now a possibility of changing the discourse, or at least modifying it: discontent at the salaries of managers in the public sector is likely to accelerate in the next few years, and the managerial model – the idea of transferable skills which can run any institution regardless of its nature, purpose or character -- has taken a beating in the financial crisis and recession.

But that will be hard to translate into change as long as there are no inroads into the institution itself. Unless academics can re-insert themselves into the administrative structure and make looking after their institution (as distinct from the low-level administrative function they routinely perform) a part of their job alongside teaching and research, they will never have the influence they need to keep management under control.

-- Iain Pears

On to Middlesex

2010-04-30T07:37:00.000-07:00

The wave of cuts which began in places like Sussex, King’s London and Hull has now hit Middlesex, which has announced it is going to close its philosophy department despite the fact that it is one of the highest rated departments in the university.

The pattern in all cases has been pretty much the same – an announcement of a decision taken in secret and presented with no alternatives; taking aim at the humanities (philosophy in particular seems to be a favourite target) and a refusal to explain the basis of the decision except for vague comments about financial sustainability which cannot be tested against any available evidence.

The result is a great deal of confusion, to put it mildly, about what is happening, not least because the assaults seem on the surface to be so arbitrary, random and irrational.

But I do not think these similarities are an accident; in fact the actions of managements show all the signs of at the very least following an understood pattern – it would be too paranoid (and too optimistic about the coherence of government) to conclude that there is an actual plan. But it is worth looking at what it all means.

The public starting gun, of course, was the letter the minister for business, Peter Mandelson, wrote to introduce his first round of cost cuts just before Christmas 2009. These cuts, it must be remembered, were fairly mild, so much so that the severity of the reaction inside the universities themselves seems out of proportion. Managements have reacted with quite remarkable speed, with several producing their response – job cuts centred on the humanities -- within a few weeks of the announcement.

The response was far too quick, in fact; at the very least they must have been working on them for months in advance and all the signs are that they are also planning for the next cuts, and those after that. It would seem reasonable to conclude that messages have been flowing to and fro for some time, and that management knows much more about the direction of future funding than it is telling. King’s put out a forecast of what might happen, which it presented as a sort of guess. It may well be that it was a little more than that.

If the cutbacks being announced are not simply individual responses by university managements but are, in fact, aspects of an almost coherent policy, that what might that policy be? In the last few years reading the entrails of gnomic government utterance has become something of a necessity, as more and more policies – especially ones that are likely to prove unpopular -- have been introduced piecemeal, so that what exactly they are cannot easily be discerned until they are fully in place.

But there are, at least, enough hints to go around, and to understand the possible direction of government thinking, it is important to remember a little history.

In the beginning was the binary divide. Until 1992 higher education was split in two, the universities and the polytechnics, which worked a little like grammar schools and secondary moderns in the secondary sector. The task of comprehensivisation, so to speak, fell to the Conservatives, not out of a desire to improve education (a minor question for generations of politicians), but more to teach the universities a lesson.

By levelling the playing field -- funding was previously tilted to universities' advantage -- they aimed to drive costs down as the polys produced degrees much more cheaply than the universities did. The scheme was given an extra twist in the 1990’s when universities were used as a dumping ground to soak up excess youth unemployment, the basis of the Major government’s drive to increase student numbers.

This worked well: the universities were cowed, found no way of fighting back effectively, and ended up compromising their integrity in the search for grants and foreign students to fill the coffers. Although they had more money, the sources of that money were much more unstable, and that made the universities more malleable.

What the government did not foresee was the effect this would have on the polys. At the time a much larger portion of income came from student fees paid by government, and it was a lot cheaper to produce arts graduates (who need little more than a few books and a room or two) than ones in science, who need all manner of expensive toys and knick-knacks. The polys expanded into the humanities to tap that source of revenue, and also for reasons of prestige: real universities had philosophers and stuff, so they wanted some too.

The problem was that the same reform which abolished the binary divide also began to shift the whole basis for funding to concentrate more on research, an area in which the humanities find it very difficult to compete. The amount of money a philosopher can bring in through grants is very small, in comparison to the vast sums that a chemist or engineer can attract.

As universities developed the habit of creaming off ever larger sums from departments for their own purposes, they began to think of the humanities as a waste of time. The ever more complex accounting methods used slowly began to flash up the conclusion that the humanities, instead of being cheap and cheerful ways of attracting revenue, were becoming liabilities because they could not attract enough.

Which brings us to the present, and all the signs seem to point to the idea that the government intends by stealth to re-establish a form of binary divide. The humanities will shrink across the board, but will be particularly hard hit in the group that lies outside the Russell Group and perhaps a dozen or so others.

Outside this sector, the arts might be even wiped out altogether, with a large portion – possibly a majority -- of the “new” universities returning to their old function as institutes of vocational training – still universities, but only in name. They, in particular, will be the ones which will find it hard to resist government pressure to institute two year degrees – fast-track courses which will make it impossible for those who teach them to do any research at all.

This outline coincides nicely with government statements on emphasising “stem” subjects, the concentration of research money in the Russell group, which gives these universities much more flexibility, the way that managements have been behaving, and with the forthcoming review of student fees. A place like King’s is drastically pruning the humanities, but is clearly aiming to keep them going. Others might not have the option.

The problem that will come from this is how to manage demand. If a large number of places the humanities disappear, how will government steer future students into the largely vocational subjects they wish them to study? The probable answer here is fees. If humanities subjects are overwhelmingly confined to about 30 or 40 institutions, then these are likely to be the ones – because of the higher ranking which greater access to research money will give -- that will be in a position to charge much higher fees if – or rather when – the current cap comes off.

I would not be at all surprised if, in 10 years time, a degree at a Russell Group university costs £15,000 a year, a level which the new universities would not be able to match. The binary divide will have been recreated not by differential government grants, but by differential student fees. And, of course, if most arts degrees are concentrated in this group, then the number of people from poorer backgrounds able to study for one will shrink dramatically.

Do even university managements want this? Probably not; but they are reacting to circumstance at the moment and too busy fighting their own academics to think about lobbying together for a change in policy. Would they be able to do anything about it even if they tried? Probably not again. They are, after all, up against people who can manipulate the funding structure to get the outcome they want: arts degrees can be profitable or loss-making depending on the funding milieu that government sets.

Even going private – and only Oxford and Cambridge could realistically contemplate such a thing – would not help much. Nor is there much chance of bursaries or hardship grants being anything more than cosmetic. 50,000 students each year receiving bursaries of only £5,000 for their three years study would require an endowment of £25 billion – more than the combined endowment of all the universities put together at present. There is absolutely no chance of raising such sums.

Universities will have little choice but to do as they are told, shrink their arts faculties and concentrate on producing the human fodder the government fashion currently thinks that the knowledge economy requires.

The combination of artificially-induced market forces and government disdain for the humanities as economically non-productive will shrink arts subjects into a ghetto where they will become increasingly studied by those who can afford to pay, at institutions which can afford to charge. On current showing this will, probably, include few of the new universities.

-- Iain Pears

The Empire Strikes Back

2010-04-19T14:13:00.000-07:00

After several weeks' silence and (I gather) frenzied activity below the surface, the nature of the King’s College management response to its self-imposed debacle is finally becoming clear.

It had two obvious choices: either to press ahead with redundancies in the humanities and elsewhere, brushing aside the hit to its international reputation, or to roll them back and start over from first principles. It could go for a furtive fix, or a genuinely open consultation.

In essence, it appears to have chosen the first option, in the belief that a public relations fix will repair the damage. It seems that it will countenance no alternative to its desire to get rid of people, and the fundamental assault on academic freedom – the new principle that academic research is to be the plaything of managerial whim -- looks as though it will remain in place. It is, after all, a prize worth fighting for.

The only change is that, rather than the compulsary redundancies, it picks off its targets one by one, in a way that will allow it to present departures as a voluntary decision.

Forcing people to re-apply for their own jobs – one of the more contentious issues --appears to have been ditched, which will have the effect of driving a wedge between those targetted for removal and those now safe, who may be so relieved that they will be disinclined to mount further protests. With luck, this will neutralise the union.

This will, no doubt, cost more with all the assorted sweeties that will need to be loaded on, but saving money has long since become a secondary (although no doubt still important) motive.

Since the protests erupted, the important thing has been to save the plan – not because it is a good one, but because the most vital concern is to preserve the aura of management authority. Better a dreadful scheme that comes from management and is imposed, than a superior one that originates elsewhere.

So, despite the formation of semi-secret committees to review the options, despite public display of the Principal being booed and heckled, despite the protests from across the world, it appears that there will be no meaningful new options to review.

There will be no option to cut administrative costs, no discussion of across-the-board pay cuts, no slowing of development spending to save money, no real consultation, no cast-iron guarantees about academic freedom. Nor will there be any openness in the way the policy is pursued: everything is to be confidential.

The often eminent and well-meaning academics drafted in to fill the working parties trying to triangulate a solution risk being used like Lenin’s useful idiots, accomplishing little more than putting a civilised and urbane face on a continued management drive forward.

So, no changes. Instead the original proposals will be repackaged; the only thing that will alter will be the style.

In that sense, all the protests from the UK and abroad have so far been to no avail. Even though they were primarily designed to save the reputation of one of the world’s great academic institutions, it appears that the management has decided to interpret the protests as impudent trouble-making by people whose opinions must be neutralised, rather than as a useful warning of errors being made.

With such an outlook, it was inevitable that the question of cuts would become a trial of strength, with the administration interpreting victory not as the emergence of a workable, effective and agreed policy, but rather as salvaging as much of their original scheme as possible. As is often the case, macho effectiveness at getting your own way is being confused with good management.

The desire will be to get the job done speedily; the longer the protests last, the worse it gets. The object will be to close the issue down before term starts and more protests attract attention.

So the people targetted will be subject to intense pressure – a standard technique of interrogators and managers alike. Entirely arbitrary deadlines will be set up with unspecified, but unpleasant consequences if they are not met. Individuals will be told their colleagues will suffer if the timetable is derailed, so that any hesitation becomes selfishness. All the high-pressure tactics of the encyclopaedia salesman will be brought to bear to get a decision fast. Sign now, or the opportunity will be lost forever; look, here’s a pen….

Following on from that, the accompanying public relations fix is consequently predictable: pay-offs will be linked to gagging orders preventing any criticism of anything that management has said or done, and there will be a blizzard of press releases announcing the College’s commitment to whatever they think necessary to get the protestors to back off.

In all probability, these will be so full of get-outs and vagueness that it will commit it to nothing whatsoever. When the protests do die down – and the management knows it will be hard for supporters to defend people who go voluntarily, even if they have little real choice -- it will have the room to do as it pleases.

It will be prepared to put up with a few “King’s forced to retreat…” headlines, as long as it gets its way in all essentials.

From a managerial point of view all of this is standard practice; as with politicians, when you make a mistake the last thing you should do is admit it. It is, generally, much better to proceed, however disastrous the result, than to risk undermining your own position by admitting the possibility of error.

What can be said? Not much; the distribution of power in British universities is now so heftily tilted in favour of management that there is little that can be done if it digs its heels in.

But it will be a pyrrhic victory; managers may end up toasting each other’s adroitness and skill, but I suspect they will convince no-one but themselves. A manipulative fix will be seen for what it is; only in management circles is such a device regarded with anything but contempt.

The damage to academic freedom, King’s reputation, its ability to attract high-level foreign scholars, the British University system as a whole, will remain – possibly in more muted form, but it will not be reversed and will not go away.

Those in charge of King’s had an opportunity to repair the damage they so gratuitously inflicted on the organisation they are supposed to serve.

It is increasingly clear that they do not have the slightest real desire to do so; their horizons are limited solely to the problem of getting themselves out of a mess.

It will be up to the academic world in general to decide how much respect an institution deserves when it is under the control of such people.

-- Iain Pears

Note: I see from David Ganz's post this afternoon that the management of King's is still going on about orchestrated campaigns to vilify the College. I have discussed this before and suggested that they are doing such a good job of it themselves they hardly need help from outsiders.

But in view of the seriousness of matters now it is worth revisiting. I have not talked about this article, or any others I have written, with either Professor Ganz, or any of the other people targetted for removal. They have quite enough on their plates already.

I have, however, talked to several people at King's, inside and outside the administration, to get information. I even asked for half an hour with Professor Trainor, so I might better understand management thinking -- answer, alas, came there none.

If King's does want to continue with this tired musical metaphor, then I suggest myself a lone busker, banging away on the pavement outside in the hope that someone will listen...

The Once-Great British University

2010-04-19T07:33:00.000-07:00

A book by the American academic Jonathan R. Cole sets out with commendable clarity the 12 commandments that any university needs to flourish. His concern is the American system, and as he charts its rise, its extraordinary achievements, and the threats it faces, he distils the essential characteristics required.

Many of his current concerns apply in spades to the UK situation as British higher Education is currently structured, and if Professor Cole is worried about the United States, he would be utterly despondent by what is going on here.

In brief, his commandments are as follows:

Universities should

1. promote universalism so that merit prevails and only impersonal criteria are used in establishing scientific facts;
2. favour organised scepticism and question anything that resembles dogma;
3. create new knowledge through the provision of a decent infrastructure including laboratories and research libraries;
4. guarantee free and open communication of ideas and allow for criticism through open and public exchange;
5. advocate genuine disinterestedness so that individuals do not profit financially from their research;
6. promote free inquiry and academic freedom so that orthodoxies are constantly questioned;
7. base research on international communities that communicate openly with each other;
8. use peer-review systems so that arguments are tested by the best in the field;
9. work for the common good so that a more enlightened public can emerge;
10. ensure that governance involves the "company of equals", making sure that academics have a significant voice in running the institution they are part of;
11. promote intellectual progeny so that the next academic generation can emerge;
12. maintain the intellectual vitality of the community by attracting the best minds.

At the moment, many of these are either under threat or have disappeared. Universities increasingly discourage organised scepticism and criticism through open and public exchange through the use of gagging orders on academics to stifle criticism of management;

Peer-review systems become irrelevant if management takes over and decides what is, or is not, useful research;

The spread of corporate interests(especially in medicine) has given far too many academics a very clear financial interest is research which prejudices objective judgment;

Governance no longer has anything to do with the “company of equals” but has fallen into the hands of a self-appointed band of managers detached from the institutions they control;

and the intellectual vitality of any institution cannot survive, nor will the best minds be attracted, as long as managements attempt to control their academics through threat and coercion.

All of the positive conditions did apply in Britain a few decades ago. They do so no longer.

-- Iain Pears

-- The Great American University: Its Rise to Preeminence, Its Indispensable National Role, Why It Must Be Protected.
By Jonathan R. Cole. Public Affairs, 640pp, £20.99. ISBN 9781586484088.
Reviewed in THES, 8 april, 2010:
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=411136§ioncode=26

On the Dark Arts

2010-03-26T09:38:00.000-07:00

After labouring mightily, the powers at King’s London have finally spoken, and launched a mouse onto the world. As part of an article in the Guardian on 23rd March, an unnamed spokesman announced that

“The college management deplores the reckless campaign orchestrated to upset the consultation process by undermining the college's reputation. The college has conducted the consultation processes in good faith and believes that the procedures applied in each instance are fair and transparent.”

I had expected something much better than that. It is a half-hearted response, which sounds more like a manager stamping his foot than a remark crafted by someone who truly understands Public Relations.

Certainly, it is not indicative of a serious fight back. rather it seems more like a holding statement, designed to maintain the line without upping the stakes. this, curiously, is quite hopeful.

You do not win hearts and minds by sounding self-righteously hurt, you do not use the conspiracy gambit (the orchestrated campaign part) unless you are really running out of ammunition, not when it is so patently untrue.

Nor do you lay yourself open with remarks like “the college believes the procedures are fair and transparent,” when it is clear that the college does nothing of the sort; only the management does, and that is not the same thing.

And after years of politicians and bankers and governments cheerfully acquitting themselves of any wrong-doing no matter what the circumstances, declarations of management happiness with management policies carry little weight with the public. Such statements instantly raise suspicions; the wise PR man now avoids them like the plague.

"Transparent" is also a no-no, as overuse has changed its meaning in recent years from "clear" to "deliberately opaque." Only would-be technocrats now use the term, and the object of PR is to get the targets to identify with your side, not to alienate them.

Exaggeration and hyperbole are all very well, indeed PR could scarcely exist without them, but they have to be used cautiously and effectively. Referring to “reckless campaigns” is poor stuff indeed.

It is a bit like saying Northern Rock would have been perfectly fine if only people hadn’t tried to get their money back. But the run on the bank was caused by its weakness, not the other way round. It is the same with King’s: the damage was caused by the policies, not the criticism.

Finally there is the laziness of “orchestrated.” I think not. Orchestras are organised groups playing the same tune with a conductor. Trying to conjure up images of the hidden hand manipulating in the darkness, in a manner reminiscent of a 1950s spy film, is fumbling. Is King's now suggesting the nine MPs who have signed a motion urging a rethink are being orchestrated? That the reach of the humanities is so great it can stretch into the house of Commons and bend politicians to its will?

Would that academics were capable of such organisation. Anyone who knows such people at all are well aware that trying to get them to stick to a common line on anything is a bit like herding sheep. That is why academia is such fun, and why the current methods of the King’s management will only work by strangling the life force out of the profession.

-- Iain Pears

Of Colleges and Colleagues

2010-03-24T04:08:00.000-07:00

One of the interesting, (though no doubt trivial) aspects of the Principal of King’s response to the vote on strike action is his ambiguous use of language. He writes “the College has stated…” “We believe…” and addresses the recipients of the letter as “colleagues.”

This is very curious, and the way the use of the terms evolves illuminates a certain haziness of definition which is a contributory cause of the current problems.

The word colleague, after all, derives from the latin collega, partner in office, one chosen to work with another -- not for another. By addressing the would-be strikers as colleagues, Professor Trainor is appealing to the bond that exists between equals. It is a reference to the spirit of the confraternity which stresses that he also is a member of that body. It is not a term of address used between master and servant, or between employer and employee.

Similarly the letter uses the word “college” on several occasions but in different ways. the term derives from collegium, meaning a community, society or guild, an “an endowed, self-governing association of scholars incorporated within a university or a similar corporation outside a university.” Again, at one point the reference is to an organic whole, a collection of equals, not to an hierarchical body.

But the use of both words is ambiguous: the letter slips from using college in a general sense, to using it to mean the management: “the college has stated that…” In the proper sense of the term, of course, the college has done nothing of the sort: the “association of scholars,” if it has spoken at all, has spoken to go on strike, not to condemn a strike as premature.

The usage here is a stealthy act of appropriation. The shifting definitions, which also show up in the use of “we” to identify management as the college itself, mean that the management becomes by implication a sort of rousseauian expression of the general will: a peculiarly Leninist touch in the circumstances.

Those who disagree, therefore, do not merely have a dispute with management, they expel themselves from the college as a whole by going against its wishes: “the college does not accept...” Indeed, at that point he stops addressing them as colleagues: those who even contemplate going on strike suddenly become “staff” -- "a group of assistants to a manager, executive, or other person in authority."

Such people, of course, are not considered members of the college, and cannot expect the consideration due to equals…

-- Iain Pears

What is King’s to do?

2010-03-23T13:47:00.000-07:00

A thoughtful commentator has replied to one of my earlier posts putting up courteous objections to some of the things I have said recently, and as some of the points he (or she) makes are perfectly good ones, I thought it would be useful to reply.

The first point is that humanities is making a loss, which is unsustainable, so something must be done. But does such an argument make much sense? Certainly more figures need to be made available – what exactly does a loss mean here? Is it just teaching plus research income minus the cost of academics? How are the costs of libraries, buildings factored in? How, indeed, are the costs of administration and other general functions divided up? I suspect that, given all the accounts, I could quite easily make any department make a loss, or a profit, as required, simply by juggling costs until the right result came out at the end.

A bigger question is why such accounting is being used at all. This technique of slicing and dicing departmental costs is, after all, fairly new. Universities used, once upon a time, to have a general commitment to fields of knowledge and tried to maintain them. They attributed funds according to scholarly need and balance, not according to notional profit-making capabilities. They would find the money for areas they wanted to support or which they felt were important. Some subjects have never been profitable and never can be. They were once valued for other reasons.

The current line – we know this is important but it makes a loss so it’s out – sounds rigorous but in fact is lazy, as it abandons academic judgement – an assessment of what is important, and a willingness to defend it -- in favour of allowing a print-out from a spreadsheet to dictate policy. Such an approach means that no subject has any importance beyond the financial – is this truly what a place like King’s believes?

So why should a institution of learning with income of near half a billion pounds a year not support the country’s only Professor of Palaeography? The expense is chicken-feed, after all, and that miniscule cost would turn King’s to be a haven of scholarly values in an increasingly hostile climate.

More than that, divisional costing gives those in charge of the figures an opportunity to divide and rule – the figures can be, and are, used to stir resentment amongst medics, for example, that “their” money is being used to “subsidise” historians. It breaks down collegiality and a sense of institutional identity which is, ultimately, corrosive in its effects.

My friendly commentator also goes on to suggest that admin costs might be caused by bringing IT systems up to scratch. This I doubt, or if it is the case, then it suggests the programme wasn’t done very well. Firstly, staff costs have risen rapidly as well in the admin sector, which cannot be attributed to IT; secondly the costs have risen steadily over a decade, so cannot be written off as a short-term blip caused by a particular programme. Besides, aren’t IT programmes meant to lower costs, not increase them? I know they never do and always end up making administration far more complex and expensive, but I still retain the fond idea that computers were meant to make things better, cheaper and more efficient, not the opposite.

His next point is that “cuts in admin staff across the College have actually been made, though it may not appear so because obviously the College does not want to advertise the fact.” This, if true, is just plain weird. Or at least it suggests that management’s grip on reality is bizarre. What sort of people would advertise killing off palaeography, but try to hide the fact that they are cutting unnecessary administrative costs? It is not at all obvious to me why anyone should behave in a way which is guaranteed to maximise criticism.

Finally, he asks, what is King’s to do? Stand alone against the might and muscle of Hefce?

Well, yes. That is exactly what it should do. How would Hefce respond, after all? Cut King’s off without a penny? It wouldn’t make much difference, I have no doubt, although I suspect many elsewhere would rally to the standard if it were to be unfurled. But unless people like those at the head of King’s start raising their voices against the way universities have been brutalised by heavy-handed government in recent years, then nothing will ever change.

Someone like Professor Trainor calling for a better, more rational, less onerous system would make a difference, if only he would speak out. And even if his protest fell on deaf ears, it would place him at the head of his college as its leader and protector, not merely as its master and a government enforcer. That would make a very big difference indeed.

-- Iain Pears

In Praise of Management

2010-03-21T04:24:00.000-07:00

Some of the objections to proposed cuts at King’s College London and elsewhere take the line of opposing all managers in all ways. This is too simple: there is a world of difference between good and bad management, and between appropriate and inappropriate management.

It is important to separate the strands, not least because one of the main lines of argument deployed in recent years to control universities has been the “aspic” gambit, claiming that academics only oppose efficient management as practised by the private sector for selfish reasons. They therefore need to be taught a lesson and modern managers are ideal for the job of dragging them into the 21st century.

I would like to suggest here that many British universities diverge from the private sector in key ways which invalidates that argument: the current problems are arising not because university management is efficient, but because it is not.

To be precise: to identify university management with business is something of a slander on the private sector, to which real businessmen should object strongly. This does not mean universities should be run more like businesses, but rather that the conceit of pretending that the business model must be emulated should be abandoned as impractical and irrelevant.

Running any organisation well requires the utmost skill. I have written elsewhere in fulsome praise of the truly effective manager, and about how constructing and controlling a large organisation deserves to rank as one of the most difficult tasks the human mind can take on.

It requires an ability to look at detail and at the larger picture; being able to adjust to circumstance rather than sticking to a predetermined method. It requires an understanding of money and people and structures. It means knowing when to delegate, how far to delegate and when to intervene. It requires understanding the difference between consent and coercion. It means tailoring your methods and style to the particular nature of the organisation you are running. It is a subtle art as well as a demanding science.

Few people have the skills and temperament to do it well; those who do not only deserve high rewards, they will inevitably get them. There are not enough of such people around.

Alas, there seem to be few in UK universities.

Even in the corporate sector, such people are not trusted, however good they may be. Companies work within a system of checks and balances to monitor management performance and correct mistakes: it is not perfect by any means, but it works, enough of the time.

The Chief Executive answers to the board, which is led by a Chairman. The board, in turn, answers to the shareholders, who are (literally) invested in the health of the company but are distant from it. Share prices rise and fall to indicate esteem, and serve as an early warning of something going awry.

And if something does go wrong, punishment follows: the company shrinks in value, and becomes vulnerable to a takeover. Competitors grab market share. Profit dwindles. The chief executive can be thrown out; there may, in extreme circumstances, be a shareholder revolt. Even the possibility of such things keeps the management on their toes.

Few of these factors apply to universities. They do not make profits, so their performance cannot be easily monitored. There is a board, but no “invested outsiders” to keep an eye on things. There are no competitors in any real sense. And there is little scope for external rebellion to enforce a change if management proves inadequate.

The problem with importing managerial techniques into universities – and into the public sector generally – is that it has centralised authority along business lines, but has not at the same time imported the checks which monitor performance and the balances to control managerial power. The result has been conditions which are a gift to the mediocre.

Administrators in universities (and elsewhere in the public sphere) have exploited this, even when they are well-meaning. They have adopted the style, the language, the pay, but not the external disciplines, of the private sector.

This is, I believe, a source of the current problems at King’s College London, although it is far from being unique. King’s has attracted attention because of its efforts to dismiss academics, but many other institutions in the Higher Education sector show the same weaknesses, and some are worse.

Instead of the cautious approach, there seems to have been very little provision for the unexpected in the last few years: rather like the government itself, King’s seems to have been working on the belief that the uniquely favourable conditions of the past decade were both normal and permanent. As we now know, this was an unfortunate assumption to make.

In four areas specifically, King’s has adopted policies which call into question the quality of its management.

Firstly, there are the ballooning administrative costs. Normally, businesses expand in order to cut the ratio of fixed to variable costs and so become more efficient. Ordinarily you would expect administrative costs to fall in proportion to revenue as an organisation gets bigger.

Such things are carefully watched: every unnecessary pound spent on administration is a pound off profits at the end of the year. Private sector managers have a vested interest in keeping administration under control.

Universities do not, as they make no profit and are in a position to transfer money out of “core functions” (teaching and research) without making themselves vulnerable to more efficient competitors.

The result, at King’s and elsewhere, is that expansion in the last decade has been accompanied by a remarkable drop in administrative efficiency. This suggests weak cost controls, and a failure due to inadequate external sanctions.

As a rule of thumb, administration costs should rise at about half the rate of revenue increase; at King’s it has gone up twice as fast. Had it been more “businesslike,” rather than less, then administration costs in the past decade would have risen to around £22 million from about £16 million, rather than to the actual figure of £33.5 million, and the college would have had a safety net of around £11 million a year.

Secondly, there has been a heavy expansion of debt to fund an ambitious development programme. This is where “strategic vision” should be a reality rather than mere words designed to sound good. Expansion should be cautious, sustainable and do no damage to the overall health of the institution. Otherwise it is not a vision, it is a grandiose delusion.

According to the latest figures analysed by the THES, King’s now has total debts of £202.7 million, the second highest in the country. Relatively speaking it is not the worst: at debt-to-revenue of 41.7% there are a fair number of universities in a more parlous position.

King's is not going bust: it is in a position to transfer resources away from teaching and research to cover debt payments for ever, if it wishes. (A positive note: the debt was secured at fixed interest rates, which will be good if interest rates start to rise next year).

But debt is now higher than cash reserves, is high, and that is not at all good in a period of declining revenue and more uncertainty over government block grants. This is especially as an extra £60 million was taken on in 2008, when the outlines of the recession were already clear and cuts were becoming likely. This was the time to be paying down debt, not adding to it.

Were the development programme an investment in the commercial sense, it might be justifiable: spending more on plant and machinery (if done properly) shows up in lower unit costs, higher profits and increased revenue. It gives an advantage over competitors and so helps a company survive.

This is not the case with much of the King’s programme. While it is no doubt desirable to move into Somerset House, or build a sports centre for students, these do not increase revenue in the slightest.

Some programmes are intended to generate increased revenue by attractig more students or more research income, but this is now problematic: there is going to be less money for research in years to come, and the government has switched from encouraging universities to take on more students to fining those that do.

And if they do not generate extra revenue (the difference between a new corporate headquarters and a new factory) such programmes can only be justified if they cut overheads by more than their cost. Buying and fitting out Somerset House will probably cost up to £40 million; it would have to reduce net running costs (utilities and so on) by a minimum of least £3 million a year to be worth it financially. This is ambitious, to say the least.

Such programmes are more likely to be a burden on the balance sheet, transfer money to debt payments away from core functions, without offering matching efficiency gains. They are precisely the sort of expenditure which should be put on hold at the first sign of trouble, becasue whatever their long-term benefits, in the short term they squeeze the money available for teaching and research.

Had King’s not taken out extra loans in 2008, its debt payments would now be some £2.5 million lower. Had it been cautious and mothballed part of its development programme, permitting it to pay off some debt, they would be lower still.

More careful control over administration and a less expnasionist attitude together, in other words, could have resulted in fixed non-academic costs very much lower than they are at present, enough to cover a substantial portion of the cuts currently demanded by the government.

Of course reducing these areas to a more appropriate size now would be painful and unpleasant: there are now no easy solutions. An administrator or a construction worker losing his job is a sadness, as much as it is when an academic does.

But if they are to be compared to the private sector, they cannot be regarded as job creation schemes as well. The main duty of a private company is to protect its core activities – in this case teaching and research – not to sacrifice these to maintain an administrative structure.

The final elements of good business management are the way it handles personnel, and the way it guards its reputation. Both are intangible assets, but of vital importance in the service sector where there is no physical product to serve as the main point of comparison, and where there is a highly educated workforce, the best of which can move elsewhere.

In both of these areas, the management at King’s has made large and unnecessary errors. It is not always true that threats of strikes are ultimately the result of management failure (although it is frequently: people really do not like walking out of their jobs) but it is clearly the case here.

To present the proposed cuts without a parallel programme to trim unnecessary costs, and without giving reassurance that redundancies were the last resort, and without taking account of fears about academic freedom, was a serious error of judgement.

The management has proceeded in a way which was breath-takingly flat-footed. Either no-one saw the protests coming, which would be bad enough, or they thought they could be brushed aside, which would be worse. The effect has been disaffection within, protest without, and severe damage to reputation.

Add that to the other factors listed above, and the overall picture of management performance is not impressive.

The situation could be recovered, not least by the powers-that-be deciding to act as leaders, rather than masters. But that would take more acumen than they have shown up to now. The shareholders would be restless, if there were any.

-- Iain Pears

More on Debt

2010-03-18T02:31:00.000-07:00

The THES reports today that king's total debts stand at £202.7 million, representing 41.7% of income. This makes it the university with the second highest debts in the country: Manchester comes first with £206.7 million, but it is more able to cope, as this represents only 27% of income.

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=410843&c=2

Public Relations Disasters: A How-To guide.

2010-03-17T05:15:00.000-07:00

Creating a truly unnecessary PR disaster requires skill and work. It is not a task which should be undertaken by the mere amateur, or those unprepared to labour long and hard to achieve their aims.

Some people have a natural gift and are hit by moments of genius: Gerald Ratner all but destroyed his own company with a few well-chosen words describing his products as crap.

Others have to plan. King’s College London is an example of best practice in this regard. In the spirit of the business school case study, I have boiled down their campaign to its essentials.

1) Assemble a small team to identify clearly what you do – teaching and research – and then work out a careful programme to undermine it. Firing people who are regarded as the height of excellence in their field makes for a good start.

2) Make sure your efforts have as wide an effect as possible. Getting rid of a historian or a philosopher shows willing, but is half-hearted and inefficient. The true professional will choose people whose work crosses disciplines, to guarantee the maximum impact.

An ideal choice here is (say) a palaeographer, whose labours are important for historians, people in literature, foreign languages, classics, theology and archaeology. If your choice effectively abolishes a 500-year-old discipline for the sake of a small efficiency saving, so much the better.

Equally useful would be a computational linguist, whose work affects others in software, philosophy, robotics, neurology, engineering and cognitive psychology.

3) Make sure the people you choose are some of the most eminent in their field and, wherever possible, foreigners. 2) and 3) in combination will guarantee protests from around the world in a wide range of disciplines.

4) Be careful not to show sensitivity or remorse about the fact that you are throwing people out of a job. In the policy document you issue to accompany the decision, make sure there is no believable expression of regret. This might make you seem human or caring, which is something to be avoided at all costs. Emphasise that you are motiviated primarily by money, not scholarship.

5) Remember also that you are talking to people whose business is words, and who value a well-turned sentence. They have spent years learning how to use language, and to communicate clearly. So ensure you address them in the worst and most inappropriate sort of language you can manage, written by people who are scarcely literate.

The dexterous use of corporate managerialese here will get across the idea that you really do not give a damn about them, or about what they do. This will successfully add insult to injury, and invite ridicule from the outside world.

6) Try and come up with a simple catch-phrase which instantly sums up all you stand for: “subcritical strategic disinvestment” was a stroke of pure inspiration, so much so that it instantly replaced King's official motto and is now the phrase by which it is known throughout the world.

7) Mark the document “confidential.” You know it will leak onto the internet in a matter of hours, and it is a brilliantly easy way of making yourself seem secretive, insular and afraid of scrutiny.

8) Do your best to ensure that people think that any consultation and appeals process is unlikely to make the slightest bit of difference. Governments developed the fake consultation as a way of eroding public respect and trust. Learn from their insights.

If you follow all of these stages, you are well under way to achieving your aims. The true adept, however, will now add a few delicate flourishes, like a painter adding that final touch of the brush. This is what distinguishes a real artist from a simple amateur.

9) Time your announcement to coincide with the publication of your annual accounts, so that the contrast between the amount of money you are trying to save, and the amount you spend on administration, comes across clearly. Better still, buy part of a palace as well. This will underline where your priorities lie.

10) Get one of your number to sign a collective letter bemoaning the assault on the subjects that you yourself are attacking. There is nothing quite like adding a hint of hypocrisy to the mixture.

11) Sit back in total silence. If you must say something, do so in the comments section of some on-line magazine to emphasise you are not taking objections seriously. If possible, include some dismissive remarks about protesters based in other countries to stress that you do not care for anyone else’s opinion.

12) Above all, do not listen to anyone -- inside or outside your organisation -- who wants you to change course. If you feel like calling in experienced PR people to help out, resist the temptation. You have a plan: stick to it. A reputation for arrogant rigidity will be the icing on the cake.

-- Iain Pears

LRB -- correction

2010-03-16T03:38:00.000-07:00

A letter to be published in the London Review of Books this week goes out with slightly misleading figures, so I would like to amend them. (all my fault, as I did not get the last changes in on time)

In the letter on Hefce, I quote figures for administrative and academic costs and for the Vice-Chancellors’ remuneration at the University of Bristol and University College London.

They are askew because the comparison dates do not match. For the record, the figures for Bristol should be for the period 1999/2000 and 2008/9.

these are (2000. 2009, percentage change)

Vice chancellor £145,000 £309,000 +113%
Academic departments £78 million £144 million +84.6%
Administration £8.5 million 30.7 million +261.2%

Sorry about that. ip 16.3.10

On Computational linguistics

2010-03-15T05:46:00.000-07:00

King’s College, London is proposing to get rid of, among others, three people who do computational linguistics after deciding that they are surplus to requirements. Their methods have been a little shabby and coercive, their thinking has been muddled. I attempt here to explain why this is a remarkably dumb decision.

There is no denying that computational linguistics is a slightly weird discipline which is difficult to pigeon-hole.

The people who work in the field frequently speak and think geek and are not given to explaining themselves in ways others can easily understand. Many are irascible, impatient and obsessive. They are frequently difficult to integrate into a well-oiled and controlled organisation of the sort beloved by modern professional managers. (I speak generally here; I have not talked to any of the people at King’s, only to colleagues and associates abroad).

Of the three, two (Shalom Lappin and Wilfried Meyer-Viol) are in the King’s philosophy department, one (Jonathan Ginzburg) in a Computer Science now turned into Informatics department, which makes it easy to target them as useless.

Such a conclusion, however, misses the way such undertakings are dissolving the traditional barriers not only between disciplines, but also between the arts and the sciences. The result is one of the most exciting and innovative undertakings going on in academia today, something to be encouraged rather than eliminated.

The influence of such work spreads far – which is one of the reasons protests about their removal has aroused such wide condemnation. Theirs is one of the key areas of research that will fuel not only the next generation of advance in computer technology, but the generation after that as well.

This will be artificial intelligence, which after many years of promising wonderful things but not delivering much, is finally beginning to turn into a field which is making real advances.

To do this has required drafting in people from many different disciplines. To teach a computer how to tell the difference between reality and a reflection, for example, can and does call on the insights of software designers, engineers, neurologists, cognitive psychologists, specialists in robotics, linguistics and philosophy. The spin-off is not only smarter machines, but also a better understanding of brain function.

These collaborations are often informal, unfunded and (crucially given the state of British university management) happen without the knowledge of administrators who like to count these things up so they can reward people for “impact.”

The same goes for verbal understanding. Teaching a computer not only to analyse and understand words, but grasp meaning of speech and writing, the implicit and explicit texts and sub-texts to human utterance, cannot be done by someone who simply writes software. It needs input from people who understand the structure of language and how the human mind interprets those structures. This is why computational linguistics is of central importance.

Out of it, you get three main lines of advance: firstly in the field of human cognition, how we understand and process language, which has application for the treatment of brain malfunction. Secondly, in pure linguistics itself, the more philosophical understanding of how language works. And finally in computer technology. In the last field the goal is instant computerised transliteration, accurate translation between languages, and machines that can understand and respond in ever more subtle and sophisticated ways, rather than being glorified speak-your-weight machines. Machines that can read, speak and, most importantly of all, understand.

That’s their impact, even if they are only in a philosophy department. Computational linguistics is at the heart of research with the potential to become one of the great – and most profitable – technological leaps forward of the next few decades.

King’s has some of the acknowledged experts in the field. An organisation which thought in the long-term would take away their passports, lock them in a room to get on with their work undisturbed and, if they were threatened, beg in the streets to get the money to keep them.

Alas, it thinks differently. A strange letter which appears to have been sent from one King’s administrator to another, and which went astray, sums up the problem: “[Ginzburg’s] work is at the periphery of computer science.”

This misunderstanding typifies an attitude which has meant that, while the United States can produce companies like Google, which harness advanced mathematics to dominate the world (and make a lot of money), Britain’s most famous innovation in the last couple of decades has been the bagless vacuum cleaner.

As Talleyrand put it, this is worse than wrong. It is a blunder.

-- Iain Pears