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issue 49 19 February 2009 ***************************************************** 'Truth: lies open to all' ***************************************************** Every fortnight during term-time. All editorial correspondence to: subtext-editors [at] lancaster.ac.uk. Please delete as soon as possible after receipt. Back issues and subscription details can be found at http://www.lancs.ac.uk/subtext. The editors welcome letters, comments, suggestions, and opinions from readers. subtext reserves the right to edit submissions. subtext does not publish material that is submitted anonymously, but is willing to consider without obligation requests for publication with the name withheld. For tips to prevent subtext from getting swept up into your 'junk email folder', see http://www.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/dejunk/. ***************************************************** CONTENTS: editorial; news in brief; Council; lessons from CRILL; mission statements; graduology saves the President; letters. ***************************************************** EDITORIAL In his fascinating social history of quantification, Trust in Numbers, Theodore Porter argues that the drive to measure things in a standardised way is not a tendency inherent to science or to the organisation of social life, but arises under quite specific circumstances. Where there are high levels of trust, people are generally permitted to use their judgement, and measurements are often used in a negotiated way in order to ensure a fair outcome (think of a more benign version of the fabled 'butcher's thumb' on the scales). In ancient Poland, for example, land area was measured in a way that took account of differential soil quality, so that two units were equal if they could produce roughly the same amount of crop. Similarly, in ancien régime France, the way that merchants measured grain in bushels was negotiated to ensure a 'just price' even when the quality of grain varied wildly - by using heaped or flat bushels, or by pouring the grain into the container from greater or lesser heights. By contrast, standardised measurements, applied with no room for judgement or negotiation, are what people reach for where professional or craft judgement is no longer trusted - where it is assumed that the butcher is using his thumb to maximise his own profits rather than to modestly redistribute food toward the needy. And standardised, objective measurements are also a powerful mechanism for tipping the balance of power away from provincial autonomy and towards distant centres: the forced introduction of standardised metrics played a crucial historical role in consolidating the power of emerging nation states and empires to know and control their territories and populations. So consider the system of metrics that is used here at the University. As we take satisfaction from Lancaster's respectable ranking in RAE 2008; as we concentrate on ensuring that the courses that we teach achieve their learning outcomes, and anticipate the computerised student questionnaires at the end of the year; as we consider all the quantified measures of our output at each keystroke, each whiteboard mark, and each breath - ought we not to reflect what this regime of metrics might tell us about the nature and distribution of power at the contemporary university? Of course, standardised measurements and impersonal decision-rules are not all bad; they can be a powerful, even democratising corrective against corruption and vested interests. Some might say that they are inherently meritocratic, helping to remove old privileges and complacencies and levelling the playing field. However, as was found after the French Revolution when the new Bureau de Statistique tried to gather information about the newly unified France, in order to gather reliable information about society one has to alter it, to break down its local peculiarities, to standardise it - to turn it into a measurable thing. To measure society was to change it. And what of the way that measurement can serve to tip the balance of power between periphery and centre? In the ancien régime, it was the monarch that was most visible; in modern society, by contrast, it is the individual subject that is subject to surveillance and measurement. The sight in recent months of our financial elites with red faces and bowed heads has only served to remind us how rarely the powerful are subject to the same forms of accountability as the rest of us. But wait - it's not quite the case that no metrics are applied to our own managing class at the University of Lancaster. A measure of the perception, at least, of the performance of our managers lies in the periodic staff survey. And, although the 2008 survey found that staff members generally thought they were doing a worthwhile job, and had a high level of job satisfaction, there were several areas in which the results were at a standstill, or sliding backwards: and those, disappointingly for the top echelon of managers, were the ones to do with institutional leadership. Fewer respondents thought that the institution's values were clear in 2008 than in the 2005 survey. The score for leadership also eroded. Less than a quarter of staff thought that university-wide policies were consistently applied. There was considerable concern about bullying. The upshot from these negative results? The University management soon announced that the next staff survey, intended to follow those of 2005 and 2008, would not take place after all. Was this a perverse example of the butcher's thumb, tilting the balance of metrics and surveillance to deflect attention back to the workers? Top managers award themselves a free pork chop; for everyone else, there's Personal Development Review. Offal pie, anyone? ***************************************************** NEWS IN BRIEF Central Administrative Review Last Friday's LU Text saw the announcement of appointments to the new Heads of Directorates which are to make up the Central Services - an uninspiring collective title, if ever there was one, which does little to reflect the professional expertise which resides within. Generally speaking it contained few surprises. Two of the Directors had previously been named and others were widely anticipated. subtext offers its congratulations to the one newcomer, Sarah Randall-Paley, who steps up to become Director of Finance. It is understood that one successful individual was moved to celebrate the announcement in a rather unconventional way - by providing bacon butties to immediate colleagues. It had also been trailed that two of the posts were to be externally advertised (market tested, perhaps?): the Director of Marketing and External Linkages and the Director of Student-Based Services. The list, however, did contain one intriguing omission, namely the Director of Human Resources (HR), and this has set some wondering why. subtext understands that what passes as a formal application/interview for the post has taken place but there has apparently been no announcement to date. Despite considerable recent investment in the HR function its role and leadership seem to remain problematic, issues which cannot have escaped the notice of the secretive Human Resources Committee, particularly its lay (external) members. It may be that the jury is still out on this one and we may yet see a third post advertised. On the other hand, it may be that the present Director has already been confirmed in post and it was a simple, if embarrassing, reporting error. ****** Redundancy Committee Next week's Senate meeting will have an opportunity to discuss the Council
decision to initiate a process which could lead to a Standing Redundancy
Committee, (see below and subtext
48). What would appear to be an anodyne motion opposing this move
has been submitted and is reproduced here in full: The debate is expected to be lively. ****** A recent meeting designed to facilitate changes to the contracts of the college licensees was held between the licensees themselves, director of commercial services David Peeks, and a representative from HR. The new contracts are focussed on achieving high-profit targets (but drink responsibly, folks). Interestingly, all mention of work for the colleges has been removed from the new contract too. Mr. Peeks reassured those at the meeting that this had been done because it was taken for granted that college work would continue. Cynics would point out that not writing college work into the contract of other members of staff has all but eliminated such work from people's agenda when faced with increasingly more stringent targets. For many years college licensees were the only full-time member of staff upon whom the colleges could call for assistance, particularly in relation to welfare cases occurring after office-hours. It is unclear as to whether or not such good deeds will now continue. ****** Chinese lantern festival As part of the programme of events specifically aimed at overseas postgraduate students, Graduate College Bar hosted a Chinese lantern festival evening on Monday of week 5. The evening was attended by scores of students both overseas and home/EU, postgraduate and undergraduate, and as such provided a happy occasion for groups of students who do not normally mix to do so. ****** County Main refurbishment In response to comments from readers, subtext drones were sent to inspect the quality of the new County Main accommodation last week. Much is improved - though worryingly the refurbishment of the building appears to have rendered it damp and mouldy. Because of a design-flaw in the new windows students are left with one of two options: lie on their beds with the window open and get a stiff neck from the draft; or close the window and watch the condensation run down the window. One student demonstrated to our drone how she keeps a towel by the bed specifically for the task of mopping up the damp, and pointed out where mould had started to grow on the walls. ****** The future's still bright ****** Down the 'Tube Readers may have read the helpful article in SCAN explaining the details of the recent flurry of activity on YouTube, which ended with the removal of the offending video mentioned in the last issue. It probably isn't our place to comment on the justice or injustice of the matter - but that's never stopped us before. Exercising pressure on someone lampooning a University officer feels like over-reaction; if the lampoon was part of a wider movement then taking such action might make some sense, but as an isolated incident it looks heavy-handed and (shades of the George Fox 6) serves mainly to draw attention to the offending material. It would be nice to think that the University felt secure enough to roll with the punches a bit more easily than this. **************************************************** The University Council met on 6 February, and received a presentation from Pro-Vice-Chancellor Trevor McMillan on the results of the 2008 RAE. The report was generally good news, but it was noted that some departments with relatively low RAE scores were big teaching departments, which might be relevant for planning. Apparently Lancaster's position in the rankings would have been little different if we adopted the much more selective policy on inclusion followed by some of our competitors. The funding that will flow from our results is still unknown, but it is known that there will be a general shift in favour of the sciences, and that a 4 rating will attract 7 times as much funding as a 2 rating. A 1 rating will attract none. Council spent some time considering various reports from Andrew Neal. These were preceded by a reminder from the Chair of the need to treat sensitive commercial and financial information as confidential, and 'Commercial in confidence' appeared at the top of some of the material. It will come as no surprise to subtext readers to learn that the financial environment has become more dynamic than it was a year ago. One presumably non-confidential point that seems to be being made in a few contexts now is that we may not need much if any more new teaching accommodation after the Management School's latest expansion. The item that provoked most discussion was the proposal to establish, or at least to agree that at some stage it would be a good idea to establish, a Standing Redundancy Committee. The proposal was handled by the Chair with some apparent nervousness about the issue's sensitivity and its capacity to arouse a strong reaction among University employees. It was presented as a prudent measure that would allow the University management to be prepared for what might turn out to be necessary. Quite unusually, the proposal was put to a vote, and passed only by the narrowest of margins. It was made clear that Senate would be able to comment on the proposal at its next meeting. ***************************************************** LESSONS FROM CRILL In the present economic climate, and in light of the University's building boom and discussions at top table of taking on considerably more borrowing and making changes to the existing debenture, readers might do well to re-read the CRILL Report into the causes for the University's dire financial problems in the mid-1990s ('Review of Institutional Lessons to be Learned 1994-1996', edited by Peter Rowe, May 1997). The whole volume is an enthralling read, but the following extracts from the penultimate chapter, pages 228 to 231, might be especially worthy of attention at present: 'There is some evidence from witnesses that the senior officers and committee members were not themselves wholly confident of the direction in which they were leading the institution, but either did not feel able to voice their doubts, or were placed in a position where the expression of them, or of questions which might at the time appear naïve or out of order, seemed unpopular or even counter-productive, and a sign of personal failure ... 'We have become increasingly conscious of the dependency of any system on the people who make the structures work. The pages above give ample illustration, we believe, of the extent to which strong-willed and purposeful individuals can operate outside the usual committee structure; even if the objectives are beneficial and honourable, the consequences can be profoundly damaging ... 'We suggest that, in line with the Nolan principles of selflessness,
integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty, and leadership,
the following tenets be observed: 'Finally, all of the above should contribute to keeping structures as simple and clear as possible, maintaining open lines of communication, and engendering a sense of shared institutional objectives. The tasks still facing the University remain considerable.' Were these lessons learnt? Are we in a better shape to avoid financial recklessness than we were 15 years ago? **************************************************** MISSION CREEP The ongoing kerfuffle over the take-over of some of the College bars by the Hospitality Division (does anyone else hate that title a lot?) has prompted subtext to follow up the article we ran last June about the customer satisfaction scores quoted on the HD website (see subtext 40). At the time we gave short shrift to David Peeks's claim that their survey had showed that Catering services on campus achieved their Mission Statement objective of 'exceeding customer expectations on nine out of every ten occasions'. The team of statisticians that we hired for our investigation confirmed that the stated goal looked impressive but was pretty meaningless and its achievement or otherwise impossible to ascertain. We now note with much humility that the HD's mission statement has now been toned down into something a bit more realistic. It now reads 'It is always our aim to exceed our customers expectations and that every restaurant, coffee shop or conference delivers nine out of ten for customer satisfaction from our customers point of view'. At this point we won't draw attention to the new statement's potential usefulness in teaching basic literacy skills (and we don't just mean the missing apostrophes). We just thought we'd use it as the occasion to try out our new subtext mission statement on you all. 'subtext: we aim to lower unrealistic aspirations at Lancaster University on nine out of ten occasions' What do readers think? Any possible hostages to fortune there? ***************************************************** THIRD-MISSION IMPOSSIBLE; OR, THE KNOWLEDGE-TRANSFER OF POWER It's good news and bad news. First, the good. subtext readers who watched the extraordinary American Presidential Inauguration on 20 January will recall that during the taking of the presidential oath, President-elect Obama stumbled over the words of the presidential oath, transposing the word 'faithfully' from the beginning to the end of a sentence. While most observers thought that this transposition was grammatically irrelevant, there was some press speculation about whether the inauguration was thereby rendered invalid. Call for subtext. As readers will know, our interdisciplinary graduology research team are world experts on the misfiring of ceremonies, and are available for christenings, bar mitzvahs and weddings. You will recall our report in subtext 42 of degrees accidentally being conferred on University officials, members of the audience or even passing wildlife. Look, ceremonies are dangerous in careless hands, and if they go wrong, 'who you gonna call?' (No, not Ghostbusters, subtext - pay attention.) So our troubleshooting team arrived with their equipment in Washington on the morning of 21 January, ready for whatever they found (it was a bit like an episode of 24, but with less attractive actors). It transpired that the main worry was that Obama had accidentally reinaugurated George W. Bush. Of course, security had been high against such an eventuality - as well as snipers on the rooftops with their sights trained on the soon-to-be-former president, before the ceremony they had also deconsecrated the ground under the chair where Bush would sit, so that it was technically Panamanian territory. But when we used our specially adapted hand-help Presidentiality detector on Obama we did detect residual gerundival status, so we told them to retake the oath to be sure, and 'do it very slowly', a line that Obama later used (he got more of a laugh when he said it - it's all in the timing). However, another worry of Obama's team had been that the ceremonial slip-up had damaged the American Constitution. The presidential oath, including the promise 'to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States', itself forms part of Article II of the Constitution, a dizzying circularity of implicature that prompted worries that the misfiring of the oath might cause an infinite regress, damaging the Constitution's integrity. Some constitutional lawyers were even worried that they might need to bury the old constitution in Yucca Mountain, stage another revolution and found a Second American Republic - and all that would cost serious money, threatening Obama's economic stimulus package. The good news is that extensive tests confirmed that the American Constitution is fine. The bad news is that the experience prompted us to return to Lancaster and check that all our messing around - I mean, research - at Lancaster degree ceremonies hadn't damaged the University Charter. And what we found wasn't pretty, I'm afraid. The Charter (more precisely, a complex structure consisting of the Charter, Statutes and Ordinances) has to be in the engaged position under the Great Hall during ceremonies, or the awards conferred are not valid, and this is how the problem occurred. subtext readers will recall that during postgraduate congregation on 12 December we crashed an anti-MSc in Mechanical Engineering into an MSc in Accounting and Financial Management in an investigation into the constituents of higher awards. Unfortunately the collision caused a burst of anti-knowledge which seems to have compromised the integrity of the Charter. It's all gone a bit Pete Tong, to be honest. The University's in-house team of constitutional lawyers are still assessing the damage, and we will give you more news on this as soon as they've stopped shaking their heads and tutting and have given us their considered verdict. ***************************************************** LETTERS Dear subtext, Your item on the proposed changes to the definition of 'academic staff' in subtext 46 has a horribly familiar ring to it for those of us who have seen a pre-emptive version of this kind of thinking in action, in my own case in the review of the Department of Continuing Education (DCE). Some months ago, during a meeting between the staff of DCE and a certain member of UMAG, it became very apparent that this individual found it almost impossible to believe that any members of the department might have been appointed at least partly on the grounds of their academic standing, and that there could possibly be an academic aspect to their job role. When I directly challenged him why it was that the job description used to advertise my post specified a doctorate, a research profile and teaching experience - in other words, the qualifications expected of a lecturer - if I am not to be defined as an academic, he came up with an answer which amounted to 'I don't know, I wasn't involved in your appointment'. This was not followed up by any fuller response subsequently, which was less than surprising given the deafening silence that a colleague experienced when repeatedly trying to find out from Human Resources whether the temporary changes to recruitment processes put in place during the review process would be extended to those of us in the department who were neither clerical staff nor administrators. In relation to the definition given in the subtext article, I certainly plan, direct and undertake academic teaching, and am paid on a 'USS default' grade despite the fact that I am not accorded the status of lecturer in this University, let alone the accolade of any of the higher categories mentioned. I regret to say that my research has to be carried out in my own time and at my own cost - I still manage to publish regularly, to speak at international conferences and even to make the occasional media appearance. Whilst my research output was not entered for the RAE (though I would have considered this if approached), it is interesting to note that the University seems happy enough to take some measure of credit for my work as a cultural historian - see LU Texts passim - although for the purposes of defining 'academic staff' I evidently languish well beyond the pale. I note also that at least one fellow member of UCU seems to have difficulty along the same lines as my friend on UMAG, claiming in the recent general meeting that 'academic' could be quite easily defined be reference to whether an individual published in refereed journals. Luckily he was shown the flaw in this analysis in suitably short order, but his intervention did at least underline why this issue needs to be taken seriously by the whole Lancaster University community. Best wishes, Dr Sam Riches, DCE ***************************************************** The editorial collective of subtext currently consists (in alphabetical order) of: George Green, Gavin Hyman, Bronislaw Szerszynski and Alan Whitaker. |