BADGER PIECE 28 JAN - Koos Couvée
The University of Sussex is entering a crucial time in its relatively young history. In the Green Paper, a draft for their Strategic Plan for the period 2008-2015, the senior management has set out their vision for Sussex’s future. What you are about to read will affect not only you, but most significantly, members of faculty and non-academic staff, as well as future generations of students at our University. This is therefore not an ‘ordinary’ news article – it is a call for critical reflection and debate. Debate not only about the future of this institution, but more broadly a debate on what higher education, academic research and scholarship is all about.
When you read the document, you will find quickly that the language used is highly ambiguous. The text must be interpreted within the context of Labour’s Higher Education policy, as set out in the government’s 2003 White Paper, titled The Future for Higher Education.
First and foremost, the notion of students as “customers” or “investors” is clearly transpiring in the Green Paper - “students are paying customers who are offered increasing choice and flexibility”. This idea is not very old. In fact, top-up fees were passed through Parliament with a tiny minority, only four years ago. The rationale is that students now pay much more for their University degree, but they will earn more after graduation. This justifies the expense and subsequent debt (on average this is a nonsensical argument, getting a job that pays well is much more dependent on factors such as the degree award and social class). Education thus has purely instrumental value. It is reduced to “training” to acquire “skills” for future employment – an investment made by individuals seeking future remuneration.
Under “Research and Scholarship”, the Green Paper explains how Sussex has to adjust to a government research funding policy in which there is much greater funding selectivity. In recent years, a lot has been written about the government’s plans to concentrate it’s HE funding in larger, more concentrated units. The idea is that “universities need to compete in the world market”, and the best way Labour politicians think this can be achieved is through the creation of a small number of super-universities, since only the very best universities can contain a “critical mass of research groups” that are able to compete globally. This is a notion derived from the corporate sector – where competition is inclined to reduce the number of competitors – but it ignores the difference between the public sector and the corporate sector.
In the paper, it is claimed that one of the outcomes of the consultation process was that staff supported “seeking excellence in all our activities” and the “the raising of performance standards”. “Raising standards” is one of those ambiguous terms; it’s a phrase that is very hard to disagree with. However, what it means is the reduction of services to measurable criteria, which often leads to deterioration in quality as people rig their activity to produce indicator-friendly outcomes (ever cheated for a good grade, and learned absolutely nothing?).
These notions, of education as a commodity, competition between institutions and the endless measuring of academic activity are fundamental to the proposals as outlined in the Green Paper.
The normal democratic procedure is that the academic governing body, Senate, debates the proposals, after which the highest governing body of the University, Council, makes final binding decisions. Council met Tuesday 22 January, and was presented with the Green Paper for Sussex’s future. However, the timings between the next Council meeting – 4 April – and Senate –14 March (note the holidays between 20 March and 25 March) – is only ten working days. Papers usually go out about one week before the meeting: i.e. 28 March. This means that there are only five working days for Senate’s thoughts to be included in the White Paper – the final strategy document to be approved by Council on the 4 April. The Senate meeting is, itself, only of standard length. The supposed argument would be that written submissions are being accepted from all senate members. But surely the academic community needs much more time for debate if such significant changes are made to curricula, teaching and learning conditions, research priorities, staff conditions, financial priorities and governance?
Last term, the Vice-Chancellor in the Badger vowed to “promote very vigorous debate within the institution – students and staff – about what are their inspirations and visions for the future”. However, both students and staff have seen very little of this so far. No open meetings with the VC or other members of the Vice-Chancellor Executive Group have been organised for students to attend. This is something the old VC, Alasdair Smith did do in his time at Sussex.
The Green Paper is now subject to consultation to the wider University community, but we all know that consultation is not the same as debate. There is a significant difference between sending emails to an address with suggestions and critically debating the substantive proposals in a constructive way. It’s up to us to start this debate, together with staff and the unions, and construct a more grassroots vision for the future of Sussex.
The view of a lecturer
“It is fairly clear that research activities that are not related to the chosen Research Themes will be relatively less well supported by the University than at present. So people will come under (financial) pressure to pursue research related to the themes. In so far as the themes mirror UK funding agencies’ priorities, which in turn mirror government priorities, this represents a definite erosion of ‘freedom of research’, although the fact is that in most parts of the University our research is anyway increasingly ‘directed’ by the funding agencies’ priorities.”
The view of the Union
“UCU (Universities and Colleges Union) were given the paper yesterday so on an initial reading we are surprised that if the University wants to become the “employer of choice for the employee of choice” that it has signally neglected to include in its key performance indicators anything relating to the reduction in use of fixed term and zero-hour contracts. These would seem to be pre-requisites for any sensible employment strategy, and they are certainly ones that other universities seem very able to implement. UCU will of course be responding in detail in due course.”
The view of a scholar
“To me, the new management of the University first of all comes across as ideologically driven. This transpires from declarations about our closeness to business, being policy-oriented etc. A university however is an institution of learning which must set its own agenda on scholarly and intellectual grounds and these are always more varied. The idea that it would therefore be removed from social concerns is mistaken, because through the student intake and the social embeddedness of the institution and academic life itself, it is tied to society by thousands of threads, including links to business and government, but not just that of course.
The market discipline which today penetrates more and more aspects of everyday life, offers only one lens through which one may look at the world. To take its legitimacy for granted and forget about how capitalist globalisation is creating the most extreme inequalities the world has ever seen, generating conflicts and destroying the environment, is incompatible with the responsibility of intellectuals. Sussex attracts a very particular type of students, people who are more curious and critical than average in the UK, along with SOAS and a few others. The fact that this is an international university more than any other in the UK, is related to that particular profile, which Sussex has had and has been known for since its inception.
Anyone managing an institution like this must acknowledge that you can’t change that, except at prohibitive cost in fee income terms (collapse of the student intake, especially overseas) and demoralisation of the staff. Those with the strongest CVs will go elsewhere, those who remain will merely become more cynical, say yes and do no. Even then the specific culture would not change, it would only lose much of its attractiveness.”
