Tom Wills
The Badger
Monday 11 February 2008
- Bosses announce second reorganisation in 5 years
- Some academics fear more central control
- Uncertainty ‘very damaging to morale’
A growing number of staff are expressing concern over plans to restructure the University. Some faculty fear the changes will lead to more managerial power over research and teaching agendas, while some support staff feel left out of the loop on changes which will affect their working conditions.
A number of staff have spoken to The Badger on condition of anonymity.
One member of support staff said, “The uncertainty caused by the way the restructuring has been managed has been very damaging to morale amongst faculty and support staff. For around two years we have been receiving tidbits of information, through both official and unofficial channels, about what may be happening. Support staff are often the last people to be told what’s going on.”
Support staff are being promised “full and proper consultation” by management before their roles are changed. But one commented, “Many people are not opposed to change per se and recognise that some good may come of it, but are angry that they have been continually invited to comment on proposals that are so vague that little can be said. There’s a sense that this is a false democracy.”
Another member of staff said the process was “mayhem.” She said, “Staff are being pushed around, re-positioned and re-graded. Sadly, the University management never appears to engage with those who keep the boat afloat and in many cases have been steadfast and loyal employees for many years.”
She fears the new support structure could destroy the close networks support staff have built with faculty and students. “Such anxieties are answered with talk of job progression higher up the administrative ladder, but many support staff don’t necessarily want to move into a different field,” she said.
The Vice-Chancellor says staff will have an opportunity to discuss the plans – which include merging small departments – at open meetings this week. But some members of faculty share support staff concerns over the consultation process. “We are being steamrollered,” said one. “As recently as December, the Vice-Chancellor was saying that there were no immediate plans for restructuring. The proposals have now suddenly been published – not as an idea for discussion, but as a virtual fait accompli. The only question being addressed to faculty is ‘Which department would you like to
join up with?’”
A Questions & Answers document produced by University management has done little to allay the concerns of the support staff. It clarifies that cost-cutting is not the intention of the exercise, but stops short of ruling out redundancies: “If there were to be job losses, the University position is always to seek to avoid compulsory redundancy where possible,” it reads.
The Vice-Chancellor’s Executive Group (VCEG) are insisting that the changes are merely “an evolutionary development of current structures.” But, like the support staff, some faculty are also concerned about the consequences of the restructuring. One said, “It shows a lack of wisdom for VCEG to throw itself into yet another round of restructuring so soon after the last one. Academic and administrative groupings take time to bed down so they can function effectively. Every restructuring destroys what has been built up and forces people to start again from scratch.
“The long term effect will be an increasing withdrawal of staff from real engagement with anything beyond our private careers and personal research interests – to the detriment of the whole institution.”
A member of support staff echoed the sentiment, saying “The changes are going to cause a fair amount of upheaval and stress in the next few years.”
Under the plans, smaller departments will be merged to form what some staff have dubbed ‘Mega-Departments’ with a minimum of around 30 faculty. These will belong to one of three new ‘Super-Schools’ – Humanities, Social Sciences, and Sciences. The Heads and Deans of the new units will be newly appointed. The Vice-Chancellor says he expects them to work closely with VCEG – “especially with respect to budget setting and financial management” – to carry through plans for the future of the University. The Badger understands that University bosses have already been ‘talent-spotting’ likely candidates and privately inviting them to join management training programmes.
The Vice-Chancellor says the changes “would increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the management process,” while giving the new ‘Mega-Departments’ more power to make decisions independently of senior management – a move which has been welcomed by some academics. “This will give much more freedom to departments to drive their own agenda,” said one. But another was sceptical: “The official reason given for the new structure is to give departments more ‘autonomy’, but the expectation that the new Heads of Schools should work closely with VCEG suggests the opposite – that VCEG wants to exert closer and more direct control over departments.” He pointed out that the restructuring in 2003 was also supposed to deliver more autonomy, but said Deans have found the opposite has been the case. “Deans are treated as a transmission belt for VCEG decisions. The real motivation for the present restructuring is that VCEG want to put in place a more efficient transmission belt, replacing the Deans by a set of hand-picked Heads of Schools.”
He called on the University to make commitments to safeguard departmental autonomy: “It is essential that the planned change, if it goes through, should not lead to a further centralisation of power within the University. Existing departmental meetings need to retain their control over the Department’s curriculum and research strategy, and faculty need to have a major say over who is appointed as head of their School, as they always have done with regard to the appointment of their Head of Department. Successful universities like Warwick have a very high level of departmental autonomy.”
He believes University managers want to centralise power so that they can respond ‘nimbly’ to changing market conditions, a trend in Higher Education which has raised concerns from academics across the disciplinary spectrum. Philip Moriarty, Professor of Physics at Nottingham University argues in the scientific journal Nature Nanotechnology this month: “The increasing emphasis on commercialisation and market forces in modern universities is fundamentally at odds with core academic principles. Publicly funded academics have an obligation to carry out science for the public good, and this is not compatible with the entrepreneurial ethos increasingly expected of university research by governments and funding agencies.”
A Sussex academic urged staff to get involved in the joint staff-student organised Education Not for Sale group: “The erosion by market forces of the traditional idea of academic work and education – as a contribution to the common good – seems to be proceeding apace at Sussex. The Education Not for Sale campaign is a unique opportunity for staff and students to get together and address this. I would strongly urge colleagues to get involved.”
· The plans will be discussed at the Vice-Chancellor’s Open Staff Forum meetings this week, open to all staff: Tuesday 12th February at 2.15-3.45pm in Engineering 2 AS3, and Thursday 14th February at 11.30am-1pm in the Terrace Room, Bramber House.
· Education Not for Sale weekly meetings are open to all students and staff. Fridays, 1pm in Russell Building 30. Or contact
sussexENS@gmail.com (discretion assured).
· What’s your view? Students and staff are invited to respond to this article by emailing
communications@ussu.sussex.ac.uk. Please specify if you wish to remain anonymous.
