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.
Monday, 9 August 2010
Saturday, 10 July 2010
A few numbers
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
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
Thursday, 8 July 2010
On Statements
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
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
Friday, 25 June 2010
Symbols and Scholars
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
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
Monday, 14 June 2010
Strange Defeat
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
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
Thursday, 6 May 2010
A Kingly word or two
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.
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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
----------
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
Wednesday, 5 May 2010
On sulks and silence
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
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
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