Academy denounces £600 million funding cut

Bye bye London Met?

So no Comprehensive Spending Review? How are they (the Gov't) going to decide where the priorities lie? Where will the cuts be made? What input, if any, will the HE sector have on that decision-making process?

The chilling part: you will look in vain for this story in any of the main newspapers/websites. That's how easy a target universities now are.

The scrapping of that NHS IT project is getting lots of attention, but is worth less than these cuts (£500m).

We even trump the headline-grabbing tax on bankers' bonuses (projected to raise £550m).

If, as expected, the election turns out to be a 'many v few' fable, universities will become even more of a hostage to our imaginary 'privilege'. It becomes impossible for any major political party to defend us.

Let's get this in perspective. This represents a 4% reduction in ONE source of HE funding. If we are unpopular then we may only have ourselves to blame. We do not save lives (directly), catch murderers, empty people's bins or deliver home care. In a time of economic crisis some of what we do IS frankly a luxury we can ill afford. If we bleat like infants when we are asked to shoulder a not unreasonable share of the burden at the same time as submitting half-witted 8% pay claims then we can expect those outside of HE to see us as having an overblown sense of our own self-importance. It may be unfair that HE suffers because of the actions of investment bankers, but when you have been shot, arguing about who pulled the trigger doesn't stop the bleeding.

"Share of the burden?" I'm sorry to see that even academics fall for that old chestnut. The national (and European and world) cake has already been shared out, to the overwhelmingly massive benefit of utterly - because fundamentally and essentially - philistine capitalism (yes, that's what the system is called, capitalism: it's the dictatorship of capital, which means profit-above-all, which in turn means that everything, all values other than profit, including not just scholarship and art, but human life too, is and are in the last instance redundant, only of interest if they can be exploited to feed greed). It's not bye-bye London Met, it's bye-bye the university as an institution: not on account of this "paltry" 600 million, but because capitalism itself means barbarism. There are those who still haven't quite taken in the import of Rosa Luxemburg's words: A continuation of capitalism will lead to the "the collapse of all civilization ... a great cemetery". — "Leading figures" in the higher education sector "warned", we read, that Lord Browne's review "must take account of" the impact of funding cuts. Why should he take account of anything other than his masters' interests? His job is to serve those interests, and they are the interests of that cemetery of civilization now under construction. Academia has long been "sharing the burden" of the costs of this construction project.

"Bye bye London Met?" -- bring it on, baby. Feels so right...

The BBC have covered it:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8405680.stm

and the Guardian last night....

"Leading figures in the sector warned that the cuts could have a severe impact"

Can we sign him up for our REF submission?

I just hope that weaker Universities are wiped off the map with this round of cuts. Then, maybe we can actually see an improvement in quality, once a proper culling has taken place. The real disaster would be if all of the by-the-seat-of-the-pants universities continue to operate on an even more shoestring-like budget, with worsening staff-student ratios and failure to keep up with equipment and facility maintenance.

To be honest, moderate cuts every once in a while do the system good. The "Recession Drill" etc. What really ticks me off though is the fact that we, the tax payer have to pay billions to support banks that then give themselves massive bonuses. Public sector employees then have to have a pay freeze. It is a total f***ing obscenity. Yes we know that there is pain but why can't the bankers accept some community responsibility with their pay demands. So they are threatening to leave the country. Well let them surrender their passports and leave forever.

@Scott. It is no surprise that neither the general public nor the newspapers care about HE....at the moment. HE is not foremost in the minds of the general public and to be fair, job losses have been horrendous elsewhere. Academics are (wrongly) considered to have an easy time, to be detached from the real world, to be over paid and to have long holidays. Most politicians only experience HE briefly as undergraduates and are not much better informed. However, this is just the beginning: as HE job losses escalate and the system begins to creak, there will be industrial action. At this point HE will begin to matter to middle England and their children, who will likely not be able to graduate next summer. At such times, rightly or wrongly, the true worth of any public sector body is defined by the impact of withdrawing its services. I am not advocating industrial action. HE should share a reasonable proportion of the cuts, whilst ensuring that its role in recovery is not compromised. However, the reality is that HE is populated by professional academics who are amateur managers, ill equipped to restructure huge organisations. This is the sad reality that underpins the chaos to come.

Phil, "the reality is that HE is populated by professional academics who are amateur managers, ill equipped to restructure huge organisations". Yes and no. HE is partly (50%-ish) populated by academics, who are endlessly pushed about by not very convincing (but nevertheless notionally professional) managers. I don't honestly believe that universities should be stopped in their tracks by even a recurrent 5% reduction in income over the next three years or so. This isn't really major restructuring. They will be, though, unless they have the nerve to implement that reduction where it does not impinge on their core functions. Does anyone really think that 5% of most universities' costs/activities couldn't be lost - and largely without job losses?

@ David Trotter. Management styles clearly vary across the sector as does the reality on the ground. However, I work at a Russell Group University and many of those currently making the decisions on re-structuring in advance of the anticipated cuts are academics temporarily undertaking senior admin posts.
In addition, the current cuts are not the only issue. As you will know, in some units of assessment, the formula used by the last RAE resulted in a substantial loss of funding to some already high-scoring departments. This is because the same pot of money was spread more thinly, as small pockets of excellence were recognised across the board. In my Faculty, you can add a further 10+% shortfall due to a decrease in funds post RAE to the anticipated 15+% of cuts to come. Will this result in redundancies? Absolutely, ~30% staff cuts are already well into the planning stage.

To Phil, Fair enough: there is a convergence of problems. Added to which there are certainly universities who are using those problems as a smokescreen whilst they make changes which had been planned and hoped for well before the credit crunch. Disentangling all of this is not easy, but protesting about the £600m is not, I think, tactically very wise: more should be said about the broader picture which you correctly emphasise.

@ Dr Howard Fredricks "I just hope that weaker Universities are wiped off the map with this round of cuts. "

Weaker in what sense? Clearly the financially weak will go to the wall - or rather they will end up being merged a la London Met. But if Big Fred thinks that weak = the former polys, his normal hate figures, he is as wrong-headed as ever. The list is more likely to include the mid-ranking redbricks who don't have the prime real estate that the serious players are able to fall back on.

@Fred-tastic -- It is not the former polys that I consider the "weaker" universities per se. Whether old or new university, academically weak institutions, whose quality of service, as measured through staff-student ratios, entry requirements, integrity of standards, quality of research output, and outcomes for graduates, is poor, should be closed or merged with better managed institutions. Whether or not they have high-value estates is not the most important measure of whether or not an institution is strong or weak, though I would acknowledge that what you have said about "mid-ranking redbricks" might very well be spot on in terms of which institutions are ultimately affected by such a culling process.

@ Phil: I am delighted to hear that the much-vaunted superiority of the Russell Group is being taken down a peg or two. Institutionally, they are a bunch of insufferable wankers, for whom a 25% cut seems to me to be a well-deserved punishment for inflicting their sense of smug superiority on the rest of the sector for the past decades. Shape up or ship out, fatso!

Wow! Good to see that petty bickering and in-fighting will do the Chancellor's job for him. The unified message should be that Mr and Ms middle class parent will suffer big-time when their offspring find that fees have to rocket and/or places vanish and they end up at home for longer, signing-on or flipping burgers. But no, academics can't help but use it as an opportunity to attack one another. Ever wondered why tube drivers (av education a few GCSEs?) can earn more than most of you moaners?

You have to hope no-one outside of HE ever looks at the comments that get left here. No wonder governement feels free to stick the boot in when we can't even stand together at a time like this.

Its interesting that Howard F takes a rather 'Dawinian' lets say.. approach to killing off the weaker institutions rather than sharing 'the tribe's' resources to help them too grow to strength. David's view on Universities is incorrect - professional administrators often have very sensible views on operating universities to serve the professional specialists that provide the USP (academics) - the problem is that academics are given overall authority over those managers and very often simply don't understand good practice in management. That is compounded with the crossover from academic to senior administrative roles at the higher levels (because of the assumption that 'being an expert' is transferrable) and then you have former academics with little organisational or people management expertise communicating with academics in the same position and being given responsibility over something they have little more than a layman's guesswork at (witness the London Met dictatorial management style - 'Management is about being dominant' is a schoolboys idea). Academia resists good administration because it prefers to recruit more acacemics and hope that somehow things will tick along rather than properly motivating and managing good administrative and management teams. My view on the 'weaker' institutions is that now is a perfect opportunity for them to get a grip of the prejudiced and frankly class-ridden arrangements of the older institutions and shaft them at their own game by ignoring the 'acdemics are automatically in charge' paradigm and switching to evidence based, performance management that the academic functions can ask results of, but leave the 'how' (implementation) to the people who are good at it. The idea that a Public School - Uni - PhD - Academic route with no experience of any other type of institution should be given automatic hobbyist directorship positions automatically is painfully and dangerously outdated. I work with someone I like very much who is a course director, and making an ok job of it.. a good administrator could do it better, and we would do this were it not for the fact that 'traditionally' people ignore admin people because they think of them as a bit stupid and definitly junior to even the most useless academic.The administrative work should be done by people who a) can dedicate their time and focus on the task, b) who have worked in several types of oprganisation and in different functions so they can cherry pick from the global experience, not the local british HE experience c) are properly resourced, and d) properly respected. IF we take the example the other way round - and in a technical position, the equivalent is taking someone who has worked as receptionist, office secretary, Office manager, Sales Manager, General Manager, Director of Operations and then saying 'Could you be responsible for writing all the next decade's papers in 18th Century peasant pottery'

look_on_the_bright_side:
I agree with you. And it's unbearably sad.

'Hero', there is a real problem with the argument that goes 'let managers manage', if said managers have no real knowledge of, or intrinsic belief in, the so-called 'product' (i.e. a ‘worthwhile educational experience’) they are tasked with overseeing. In the case of London Met, it was not the case that we had too many academics that couldn't manage (although that was certainly an aspect re a number on the EG). It was more the case that we had Governors, plus other managers, who had zero understanding of the reasonable constraints/expectations of education within the context of a widening participation agenda. They saw widgets when they should have seen student potential, they saw vested interests when they should have seen staff academic knowledge and know how. This 'new managerilaism' is, and certainly was in the case of London Met, often implemented in the crudest Taylorist 'scientific management' approach imaginable – a veritable ‘time-and-motion’ tick-box approach. As has been said, they appear to know the costs of everything and the value of nothing. Good administration is to be welcome and valued. However, it should not become the focus of a university system. Rather, it should simply be a means to an end. And that end should be decided by the real stakeholders in our universities - students, faculty, and community.

It's rather unchartered territory isn't it. With the last big HE cuts in 1981, the University sector was both smaller and planned, so the UGC could protect the sector and still make differential cuts on a rational basis (one probably favoured by Dr F). In the 1930s, big cuts were made, but the Government wasn't funding the core activity - it paid for developments and capital: the fees paid for the actual running of the universities. So, perhaps that's where Lord Browne comes in...

Being a mere postdoc researcher, people like myself are already suffering from the feeling of low status (despite our education) and job insecurity is a fact of life. Its now clear that the prospect of someone like me ever getting a permanant academic post is even slimmer than it was before and do we now have to worry about our present funding being withdrawn prematurely as well?

Perhaps flipping burgers for a living was a better option after all!!

@Dave, everyone knows your regular potty-mouthed contributions are simply intended to irritate....and so they don't. However, your language is unnecessary. Where are the THES moderators? Incidentally, I have no particular issue with the former pollys. Most do a different job rather well. If you have an inferiority issue because you are employed by one, perhaps you should have worked harder at school? Hmm....or perhaps you did? :-)

The UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills seems to have a model for UK universities based on the US for-profit sector. Unfortunately, there are serious problems in that sector--a very heavy reliance on part-time staff, no research activity, only satisfying the needs of a minority of the student population, high loan default rates, non-transferability of module credits due to lack of accreditation. Mainstream colleges and universities in America cater to students who need guidance and support, while the for-profit universities concentrate on skills and knowledge training of students with specific employment needs. While the latter may be useful in the short run, I have my doubts about the long-term viability.

If you want it bad; you get it bad.

@Dr Howard Fredrics
"I just hope that weaker Universities are wiped off the map with this round of cuts. Then, maybe we can actually see an improvement in quality, once a proper culling has taken place"

I agree. This means culling the Mets, the banks and the Moores. One Met in London is already heading that way.

@I agree and @Dr Howard Fredrics "I just hope that weaker Universities are wiped off the map with this round of cuts."

But they won't be because they offer just what the government (thinks it) wants - impressive stats which are produced by pile 'em high HE on the cheap. Before I am shot down, I've taught in both new and old. Research active academics offer a good sevice in both, but newer unis have far too few for this to be meaningful. First (and possibly even second) year students can be taught by lecturers who are a bit ahead of their students in the textbooks and last wrote anything themselves when they were students, but definitely not finalists and Postgrads.

It would be nice if the above opinion were based on facts rather than jolly gentleman's club denigration and yes, snobbery. Many 'new' (yes I do mean post 92 in this - not sure if you do above) are frightengly well organised and are well-ahead of the older institutions in terms of organisation, accountability, measurement etc. Academics hate it sure, but with better organisation they see the loss of their power and status - (and also the humiliation of seeing clear thinking and efficient people without the prefixes Dr or Professor which unsettles how they think the world 'should' be). Personally I am pleased because the dripping priviledge is never more obvious than with people who can comfortably take home large salaries whilst having low standards of organisation and management and don't see anything wrong in that. I'm not alone is seeing academics and bankers in the same light, as people who are given authority over their own salaries and over organisational structures that benefit them - just that now both of them are doing it with public money rather than just academics

@ Hero: What a drivel! You have time to produce it in such quantity!

"I'm not alone is seeing academics and bankers in the same light, as people who are given authority over their own salaries". That's good then. Don't know how I missed this clause in my contract. I think I'll award myself a half-million bonus.

I checked my contract, there are a plethora of 'do' as action verbs, but no line on what salary I can award myself! @Hero, could you enlighten me please?
I am working hard 7 days a week for a miserly sum and would like to multiply it atleast by 10.

Example 1:
With a finite amount of money academics choose overwhelmingly to spend it on academics rather than admin - and choose to take admin jobs themselves in order to keep the money for admin going to academics
Example 2:
High profile restructures, department organisations, department management are led by academics who cut non-academic positions without an understanding or input from people running support functions and leave support under-resourced but academics comfortable
Example 3. Academics elect for themselves to be in protected national pension schemes and require support staff to be in less well-funded poorer benefit schemes
Oh yes theres more but these are the clearest.

WRT 'Miserly Sums' your income is in the top 1-10% in the country - get real.

And i hope (but you may not) pick up that through those above examples runs the fact that acacemics give themselves the authority to sit in authority over themselves.

Hero, your logic is so convoluted as to be almost irreparable. ad 1) How does the fact that academics take on admin jobs (do they?) mean that the money keeps going to academics? It means (usually) that those academics are just taking on extra work but I hadn't realize that they got an extra salary too; ad 2) I am not in favouring of restructuring which is usually a complete waste of everything; but "leaving support under-resourced" (as you allege) does not keep academic "comfortable" -- anything but: it keeps academic activities (e.g. teaching and research, both quite handy things to have a little of in a university) going, and again usually leaves academics picking up the admin work too 3) I don't know enough about the history of USS to know whether you're right about how it was set up, but a lot of support staff are in it too.
The more interesting question is: why do you hate academics so much yet spend so much time on this site?

@Hero. Try breaking your sentences into short sentences. You are confused and hence sound ignorant. The USS has a lot of support staff in it. I was one before I did my research work and became an academic. If I were you, I would spend my time elsewhere as this is the thread which concerns academia. Academics work 24/7 and take very little break. We become academics because we like to teach students and see them flourish and we like to do research that is worthwhile in many ways. I think you should move on.

Thanks for attacking the way I say things rather than the content. If you can't follwo the logic, try a bit harder! Its not spoonfeeding you know, at University level you need to devise strategies to help your own understanding.. ahem.. 1. If there is £70K available - and this can pay for two junior academics or three good junior admin staff. Academics prefer two junior academics and to share the admin work rather than employ any admin staff - this should have been simple for you to understand 2. There is a level of uncomfortable above 'having a low of work' and that is 'having no salary'. Supremely comfortable is 'protecting your usefulness', and 'having consistent pension contributions' and even 'making sure new work goes to you' is in there - again a bit of reflection could have helped you with this answer. 3. I don't hate academics! I know you are trying to use this characterisation to block the criticism, but this ain't personal - its about effective management - If a person runs a window cleaning firm and allows the window cleaners to employ more window cleaners and no people to answer the phone in the hope that occasionally customers will bump into the window cleaners if they want any changes the business will slowly fail. As regards the idea that one should butt out of discussions about 'academia' which represents about £30bn of taxpayers money - this is exactly the attitude I am illustrating - that academics get nervous and aim to exclude when their (I think fragile) positions are threatened.

Mindful of your advice to do so, I am trying quite hard here but I still don't see how any of this means that I have "authority" over my own salary. I don't get to decide most of the things you mention. As to "protecting your usefulness": do you mean: doing my job properly? Well, yes, I do try to do that because I'll get fired if I don't. Back to your £70K example. If there are two lecturers'-worth of classes a week to be given (without which: students will stop coming to my window-cleaning firm) and I have £70K to spend, how could half of that money possibly be allocated to an admin post?

One of the things that surprised me when I left full-time academia was how well people with A-levels only but several years in a career performed, and how intelligent. There was incredible snobbery in the institutions I worked in where collegues would assume that more years of full-time education was the same as being more capable. This is slightly outside this argument, but there was almost an automatic two grade rise for admins who had come from the PhD route, (and therefore 'in' in terms of being seen as quasi academic) even if they were worse at the job than a colleague with only a degree. I also had an admin post under me that an ex postdoc applied for - I thought her application was weak, yet her place at interview was waived through ahead of people with a good ten years of experience ahead of her. Luckily her presentation revealed this, but with no experience at all that was relevant (except maybe presentation skills) she shouldn't have been at interview.

I think we do have to think about whether academics doing admin half-heartedly is as effective as strong accountable administrative teams. THis is a serious business you know - no longer a pipe-smoking chatting shop - much as I regret that!

If you were only trying to solve the 'two lecturers worth of classes a week' problem, you would recruit a new high profile academic with a large research group and get their postdocs to supervise PhDs to free up generla time for teaching, then share teaching out amongst four or more junior academics and leave them the stress of co-oridination and timetabling.. sound familiar??

Ah. OK. But it doesn't work that way in all subjects. Large research groups aren't universal. It's pretty rare in humanities to have even two post-docs.

Here is an example from my own experience. One junior academic and one administrator get sick. The academic's classes are given to another colleague without compensation until (and if) he recovers. A temporary replacement is hired for the administrator. Sounds familiar?

@Hero. Don't you think you should do something else if you do not know how academics work and what they are paid? Try accountants, dentists and GPs.

You don't seriously think acacademics would acknowledge the transferability of their jobs so professionally would you?!!

@Hero You fail to see what I meant. Best take some rest.

I just hope that weaker Universities are wiped off the map with this round of cuts. Then, maybe we can actually see an improvement in quality, once a proper culling has taken place. The real disaster would be if all of the by-the-seat-of-the-pants universities such as LONDON METROPOLITAN continue to operate

Whatever the arguments pro and con., "culling" seems to me a very vicious term to use.

Whatever the arguments pro and con., "culling" seems to me a very vicious term to use.