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Salva sit Universitas Nostra

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Dennis Austin
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Extract

I base this enquiry on the simple proposition that the government of a university ought to be collegiate and that authority within an academic community should be diffuse.

Now it is clear – it became very clear at Manchester in 1981–82 – that the structure of control in most British universities is no longer capable of looking after its members in a rational, intelligent manner. Instead of dispersal there is centralization, and in place of collegiate government there is a persistent drift towards administrative control. Moreover, in relation to the title of this journal, universities are marvellously arranged to oppose but ill-equipped to govern. The words may sound harsh but they were amply illustrated in the crisis that descended on the unversity in July 1981.

Type
A Memoire
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 17 , Issue 4 , 01 October 1982 , pp. 469 - 489
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1982

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References

1 Written reply by the Secretary of State for Education to a parliamentary question. DES Press Notice 25/1/82.

2 The grant for the London Graduate School of Business Studies was increased by 11 per cent.

3 There was also the belief that UGC members were influenced by their upbringing ‐ where they were educated or where they had taught, but although a table of cuts below and above an average line of an 18 per cent cut can be correlated with the Committee members' background, the degree of congruence is not precise. It is interesting, however, that of the Committee's nineteen members, nine were educated at Oxford or Cambridge; none was educated at any of the universities where the cuts imposed were over 17 per cent.

4 The advice was often muddled or deliberately obscure. We were advised at Manchester, for example, to ‘maintain Economics’, but how that was to be done was very much a puzzle under a cut in resources of approxiniately 14 per cent and an overall reduction in student numbers of no more than 5 per cent.

5 The CVCP proposals covered the purchase of extra years ‐ to a maximum of ten in order to help the beneficiary reach (or come closer to) the required forty years of service to qualify for a full pension ‐ plus payment of a lump sum equivalent to eighteen months salary. Manchester proposed to add a further year's salary as an ‘enhancement’.

6 Circular letter to all Vice‐Chancellors, 3/2/82.

7 Letter from the UGC Secretary to the Executive Secretary, CVCP, 11/2/82.

8 Circulate letter from Chaiman, UGC, to all Vice‐Chancellors, 1/3/82. What kind of commitment was not binding, only the UGC could tell: administrative morality had its own gradations. And why it had not been possible ‘to issue earlier guidelines’ no one could tell.

9 UMIST is a Faculty of the University.

10 The picture commemorates a remarkable event which took place at Windsor in 1764. The cheetah was brought to England and presented to George III. An enclosure was set up at Windsor Park and the cheetah was let loose with a stag. They stared at each other like two strange dogs. First the cheetah would not move. Then events took an unexpected turn. The stag tossed the cheetah in the air with his horns.' (Commentary on the picture, City Gallery.)

11 Senate Minutes, 28 September, 1981.

12 ibid.

13 Towards 1984 and Beyond. Some Strategies for Discussion, December 1981.

14 Green Paper, p. 2.

15 Numbering 400 academics, 65 academic‐related staff, 350 technicians and over 100 secretaries, with an annual budget of £10 million. The Faculty is unusual in that it includes engineering departments alongside ‘science’.

16 James Clerk Maxwell, satirical verse against Tyndall, following the British Association meeting in Belfast in 1874.

17 Times Higher Educational Supplement, 14 May 1982.

18 See, for example, the Guide to Educational Programs in Non‐Collegiate Organizations, University of the State of New York, October 1980.

19 Anthony Trollope, The Way We Live Now.