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subtext issue
71 10
February 2011 ***************************************************** '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, march, job opportunity, finance committee, Charles Clarke,
facilities re-structuring, court report, Facebook,
management-union relations, different strokes, having it both ways,
demonstrations, university in crisis, letters ***************************************************** EDITORIAL William
Goldman famously averred that 'no-one really knows anything', to which might
be added 'and on the rare occasions that you do know something, you will be
overtaken by events'. The first draft of this editorial was written on Monday
7th, and suggested that Oxford and Cambridge would soon announce their
intention to charge the full £9k student fee. On Tuesday Cambridge did so, on
Wednesday Oxford followed suit. Nostradamus, Dr Dee, subtext. So, while we're
on a roll, a few other points should be considered here. The first is the
fact that universities are very aware that more people want to go to Oxbridge
(and most other universities) than there are places for them,
therefore the price there can probably safely go up without much risk to
admissions. Second, no one really knows what difference the higher fees will
make to applications, whether students who are willing to pay £6k would also
be prepared to pay £9k, and which other universities will be wise to demand
the highest fees. Third, however, students will, we may be sure, once at
University, seek to extract the maximum value from their experience, but by
then the problem will have been shifted from policy-makers to staff. (Another
prediction; watch out for the number of students suing their alma mater to go
through the roof in a couple of years' time.) Finally, draft guidance
published last year said that universities' 'level of ambition' for widening
access should be proportionate to how much they seek to charge. If
universities don't make progress in widening access, their right to charge
top dollar could in theory be rescinded and they could be fined. However, as Gareth
Thomas (shadow higher education spokesman) has pointed out, there are exactly three staff to review 130 universities
annually. The 'light touch' and 'self-regulation' that worked so well for the
banks will no doubt have a similarly galvanising effect on the universities.
William Goldman might agree that the evidence that government and
universities give a damn about widening access is pretty thin. **************************************************** LONDON
MARCH One
for the diary - 26 March, demonstration 'March for the Alternative'. http://marchforthealternative.org.uk/ ***************************************************** JOB
OPPORTUNITY Attentive
readers of the latest issue of the London Review of Books will have noticed a
small advertisement on the Contents page.
Headed 'Editorial Vacancy', it states that 'The LRB is looking for an
editor, preferably one with an interest in politics and history.' It then goes on to suggest that this post
'Would suit a young disaffected academic'. Young disaffected academics? No
idea where they'll find one of them ... **************************************************** FINANCE
COMMITTEE TO SET FEE RISES? It
is widely expected that the Finance Committee will decide Lancaster's fee
levels for 2012 entry at its next meeting, to be held next Friday, 18
February, at 10.00 am. Readers will
recall that, under the legislation that was passed in the House of Commons on
9 December, from 2012 universities will be able to charge undergraduates fees
of up to £6,000 per year - or up to £9,000 if they can show that they have
mechanisms in place to increase numbers of poorer students. Given the massive cuts to the HEFCE
teaching grant that all universities will suffer from 2012, and Lancaster's
ambitions to be regarded as a first-class university (top in the North West,
top 10 in the UK, top 100 in the world), there is likely to be strong
pressure to follow Oxford and Cambridge and set the fees at the higher end of
the range. However, committee members
will also know how contentious the whole reorganisation of student finance
continues to be. The Finance Committee
has as ex officio members the Pro-Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor, Chief
Operating Officer, Deputy Vice-Chancellor and the President of LUSU, and its
appointed members are currently Laurence King (Chair) and Francis Fitzherbert-Brockholes (both as lay members of the
Council), Gary Middlebrook (lay Chair of the
Estates Committee), and Professors John O'Hanlon (Accounting) and Derek Sayer
(History) (both from Senate). So its
voting members consist of four lay, three management, two academic and one
student representative. It should be
an interesting meeting. *************************************************** CHARLES
CLARKE, LANCASTER AND UEA Former
Home Secretary's Charles Clarke's appointment as a Visiting Professor in the
PPR department has garnered considerable critical comment in recent issues of
subtext, not least in the 'letters' section. But it seems that Lancaster is
not the only university to be offering Mr Clarke post-political employment.
The School of Political, Social and International Studies at the University
of East Anglia (UEA) have likewise appointed him to a Visiting Professorship.
(Mr Clarke was MP for Norwich South until the May 2010 election, hence the connection.)
A UEA announcement said: 'The
School is delighted to welcome Charles Clarke as a Visiting Professor. His
appointment will enable students and academics to engage directly with an
experienced politician - a rare opportunity in British Universities. Mr
Clarke will co-convene a high-profile guest lecture series, organize a
seminar on public policy and public management at UEA London, and contribute
to undergraduate and postgraduate teaching in the School. He will also offer
strategic advice to the University. Mr Clarke will use the opportunity to
develop his thinking about the conduct of British politics, the factors that
produced the results of the 2010 general elections, and approaches to
democracy in the modern world.' http://www.uea.ac.uk/psi/eventsnews/news/charles+clarke+psi Luckily
for Mr Clarke, his attack on 'useless' Arts and Humanities subjects like
Classics and Ancient History (reported in the THE,
9.5.2003, if you want to refresh your memory, just Google 'Charles Clarke
useless arts')seems not to have damaged his own employment prospects in Arts
and Humanities faculties. University managers must either have short memories
or few scruples. ******************************************** FACILITIES
RE-STRUCTURING The
proposals for re-structuring the Facilities Division have recently been
revealed. As is becoming increasingly common lately, the re-structuring has
significant repercussions for personnel and raises the prospect of yet more
people losing their jobs. Perhaps one of the most high profile staff members
to be affected is David Peeks, Director of Hospitality. His
own post is to go, being replaced by a new one also encompassing
several new areas of responsibility, including that for commercial
properties. He will presumably be able to apply for this new job or,
alternatively, another new one lower down the scale whose remit is
considerably more restricted than the job he currently holds. Other members
of staff have also been affected, and it seems that re-applications will be
necessary for them too, and possibly redundancies in some cases. ********************************************* COURT
REPORT, 29 January 2011 The
47th annual meeting of the Court, after
preliminaries by Chancellor and Pro-Chancellor, held in tension what
the Vice-Chancellor described in his presentation as the 'finest year on
record' with the monstrous problems visible behind the veil of good news and
optimism. It sees that Lancaster must
immediately face not only the changes to undergraduate fees and loans, and
potential government caps on student numbers, but also uncertainties about
postgraduate funding and recruitment, heightened inter-institutional
competitiveness, rising staff pay and pension costs, international
instabilities coupled with aspirations for further international expansion,
reductions in research funding, and threats to the arts and humanities. As
many have commented, these are the most substantial changes for a generation,
and it would have been good to hear more about how they are to be faced. Next
came Sarah Randall-Paley with the financial report,
a presentation as flawless as the 50 pages of the detailed financial analysis
in the Annual Report. No one can
complain of being under-informed about the back story. The transitional year 2011-12, before
increased tuition fees come on stream but when large cuts will be made to
government funding, is though a major concern, particularly with a White
Paper to follow in March. Next, the LUSU President, Robbie Pickles, predicted
a step change in treatment of students by the university, from 'inertia' and
'exclusion' to a new relationship where the 'consumers' would be treated with
respect, and 40% of committee memberships would consist of students. On the way, though, he pointed to major
shortcomings of consultation that appeared to some to cast some doubts on his
new-found confidence. So
far, so easygoing, but a motion from former pro-vice-chancellor Alan
Whitaker, seconded by former LUSU presidents Michael Payne and Tim Roca,
asking for a Court-led study of the impact of
the changes ahead, ran into deep trouble. Amidst an engulfing swirl of student
politics, the objectives of the motion - to involve staff and students in
contributing together to an informed appreciation of the likely future - were
quickly lost. Deputy Vice-Chancellor Bob McKinlay
led a choreographed university response by kindly explaining how busy and
grown-up senior managers had everything under control, and how time-wasting
and naughty it was of Court to think it could assist. Other pre-arranged interventions with the
same message followed, and Robbie Pickles shrilly denounced both proposers
and motion. The motion was duly lost,
but as senior managers congratulate each other on their success, they might
also wish to pause long enough to recall how many Court members, despite
these tactics, showed their support for a motion that could have led to
greater accountability and transparency for Lancaster, particularly for its
staff. Another missed opportunity? ********************************************* FACEBOOK subtext has heard of two recent instances at local Colleges
where staff have got into difficulties through their Facebook
pages. One member of staff was sent a
series of highly uncomplimentary messages through Facebook
by someone who, from the tone of the language, appeared to be a student of
theirs. Perhaps more seriously, the second member of staff found that the
personal information revealed on their page was being used by a student to
embarrass and inconvenience them. (You
may feel that anyone who works in the public sector and who publishes a
holiday picture of themselves in a bathing suit and holding a tall glass
accompanied by an over-excited description of the previous night's revelries
deserves what they get. Others may
think that it's a bit more complicated than that. Anyhow.) Both of the
affected Colleges are now busy composing official Facebook
Policies for their staff. Perhaps
Lancaster will remain above that sort of thing. Or perhaps we should think about it now,
before something similar happens here. ********************************************** MANAGEMENT-UNION
RELATIONS ON CAMPUS It
is no secret that relationships between university managers
and campus unions has been poor over the last few years. This has been
true of the management's relationship with both staff and students, UCU and
LUSU in particular. According to the unions, this has been the result of an
increasingly hostile and confrontational style of management that has left
behind the spirit of consensual co-operation that marked management-union
relationships a decade ago. One sign of the breakdown in relationships with
the staff union has been Lancaster UCU's request that regional officer Martyn Moss assist with negotiations over proposed
revisions to the university's employment procedures. The less than amicable
relationship of management with students was most clearly displayed in public
at successive Court meetings, notably but not solely through successive LUSU
presidents' annual report to Court. This
made all the more interesting - and to some extent intriguing - the apparently
newly established harmony between management and LUSU that was evident at the
most recent Court meeting. The LUSU president made much of the new accord
that had been reached between management and students and the benefits from
this that would accrue to all. Indeed, management and LUSU leaders were
clearly singing from the same hymn sheet. In the most recent issue of LU
Text, the official line in the reporting of the Court meeting stressed 'the
importance of the existing strong relationship between management and
students to ensure continuing success.' This theme of 'existing strong
relationship' was picked up by the LUSU president in comments he made to SCAN
after the Court meeting: 'By continuing with the current relationship we have
with the University, we will be able to secure significant wins for students
on space for societies and sports clubs, on funding future international
partnerships with other institutions and on more money for real projects that
matter for students.' This
new outburst of amity has left many students mystified and, in some cases,
suspicious, if the latest issue of SCAN is anything to go by; 'It's a sad day
for the students' union', the editorial column opined. subtext
will watch with interest to see where these new developments lead in the
coming months. ***************************************************** DIFFERENT
STROKES In
subtext 70 we welcomed Katrina Payne as the new Director of Marketing and
External Linkages, replacing the unlamented Anthony Marsella. We also remarked that Ms Payne was a
Lancaster alumnus (or, as some insist, alumna) and is (by all accounts) a
human being, both attributes being seen as advantages in her new occupation.
We thought that a bit of further background might be useful. Ms Payne worked
previously at Cranfield University, an institution
we didn't know much about. So we
checked. Cranfield's website talks about itself in
the following terms: 'Cranfield's mission to transform knowledge into ingenious
solutions in science, technology and management places us at the forefront of
some of the world's most practical, cutting-edge projects. From unique cabin
evacuation research to finding life on Mars, from a frost blanket for
racecourses to zero-emission cars, and from the next generation of anti-landmine
devices to a new blood glucose monitor, Cranfield's
focus is squarely on the application of its research. Cranfield
has a global reputation for inspirational teaching and research,
industrial-scale facilities and superior links with industry and commerce.
And as a wholly postgraduate institution, Cranfield
is the first choice for ambitious and skilled individuals wishing to enrol on
Masters', Doctorate and professional development programmes. Our passion for
the areas of expertise we operate in - aerospace, automotive, defence,
energy, environment, healthcare, management, manufacturing and security -
makes us uniquely placed for both students and corporate partners alike.' We
do not know if Ms Payne has been brought here to help accelerate the process
of turning Lancaster into an entirely business-orientated institution without
either undergraduates or an Arts and Humanities sector, and with 'superior
links' to the corporate sector. We
hope not. We understand that Ms Payne
is encouraging people to approach her to describe their vision of Lancaster.
Subscribers may wish to take advantage of this generous offer. Late
addition; a colleague who used to work at Cranfield
tells us that there used to be a small Social Policy unit there. It was,
apparently, easier to get capital funding for a wind tunnel than for books. ***************************************************** HAVING
IT BOTH WAYS Writing
in his Bad Science column in the Guardian on Saturday 31 January, the doctor
and journalist Ben Goldacre referred to Lancaster
University's recent press release about 'mobile phone software to help keep
kids safe.' This is being developed by
the spin-out company Isis Forensics, based in Infolab
Knowledge Business Centre. The
company, which receives funding from EPSRC, ESRC and NWDA, says the software
is at the stage of final testing before being made available as apps for iPhone, Google and Nokia phones. The claim is that the software will be
able, reasonably reliably, to check the age of the person one is speaking to,
so that children will be able to tell when adults are posing as
children. It does this through the use
of advanced language analysis technology. Goldacre says he asked to see the paper describing this
work, but was told it was 'secret' - or at any rate not in the public
domain. The same team have several
published papers which are listed on the Isis Forensics web site about the
detection of online paedophile activity; but this latest piece of software is
thought to have commercial potential, and this is the chief reason not to
give any details of how it works or the results of tests on it. Goldacre has
exposed the tension that inevitably exists between the University's wish to
see work published in highly-rated journals, and its desire to demonstrate
commercialisation of research as evidence of impact. The first requires open publication, the
second retention of intellectual property, and it is obviously very difficult
to achieve both. Several
responses to Ben Goldacre's article can be read on
his web site. Those that address the
developers' reluctance to reveal anything about their work are mostly quite
sympathetic to them, pointing to the fact that this is at least partly a
commercial development. The
intellectual property is certainly not going to be openly published; not yet,
anyway. The
affair raises a number of questions.
Most immediately, we might wonder why a University press release was
issued now about this mobile phone software.
The product is still under test, so we are not showing an output of
University research that has been successfully commercialised. The software itself is confidential, so it
cannot be claimed as a publication.
The originators of it are very clear that this is commercial work, not
University research. If the intention
was simply to do some preliminary advertising, then surely the press release
should properly have been issued by Isis Forensics, not the University. More
widely, it was generally accepted until relatively recently that University
research results should be made openly available, so that others could use
them, or, if they were in any doubt about their validity, they could try to
reproduce them. It is this
opportunity for others to test, and possibly falsify, our results that gives
others confidence in our work.
Commercial research, by contrast, is often done in conditions of
strict security, to protect the intellectual property; we have no way of
checking its quality, and have to take the results on trust. Most of us are aware of the pitfalls in
this. But when (as here) people are
publishing academic papers and at the same time involving themselves in
commercial research on the same subject, the boundary becomes
indistinct. It can then be very hard
to judge the quality of the work. This
is one of the big problems with commercial research carried out in
universities: the details of the research cannot be revealed, because this
would destroy the value in the results.
This means that the work cannot be reproduced elsewhere or checked -
and it runs directly counter to the University's motto Truth Lies Open to
All. It is hard to see how the
University can retain its reputation for excellent research if it moves in
the direction of doing more and more commercial work. (The article can be
viewed at http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/29/bad-science-transparency-authority-publication. See also letters below.) **************************************************** DEMONSTRATIONS Now
that the government's policy on fees is apparently radicalising students once
more, after a couple of decades of apparent apathy, older members of the
University have been reminiscing fondly about their own demonstrating days.
One wrinkly soixante-huitard was heard claiming
that he'd spent almost every weekend in the early 70s in London and never
once paid to travel. Student Union
buses would take the demonstrators down on Friday night or Saturday morning, then return on Sunday night. Unsurprisingly the buses were
always full. The demonstrations were sometimes fun too - one of the subtext
collective remembers the day that the entire Lancaster contingent queued
patiently in order to ask the remarkably patient policeman standing under Big
Ben if he could tell them the time. One after another. ***************************************************** THE
UNIVERSITY IN CRISIS - TERRY EAGLETON The
fourth in the series of talks and discussions on the University in Crisis
took place on 1 February, featuring an opening talk from Terry Eagleton,
Distinguished Professor of English Literature. Professor Eagleton started by saying that
all governing powers have tried to do two things with the education system:
to educate their own children separately from those of the common people, and
to educate the latter in a way that reinforces the values of the governing
power. He said that the first was
non-negotiable - so, for example, it would be impossible to close the British
public schools. The second task,
however, was more tricky to achieve, because
academia is a self-contradictory place: it has to deliver useful skills and
social values, but in order to do that one has to get lots of open-minded
students together to talk and discuss things, and this can become explosive
under certain conditions. Education is
thus double-edged from the standpoint of leaders: it is hard to transmit
values without also transmitting the capacity to criticise them. Eagleton
then described a bolder idea that is available to the ruling class to
overcome that dilemma: to drive ideas out of the university, like animals out
of the zoo - especially ideas of education as critique or self-realisation. This strategy involves sidelining the human
dimension and as far as possible making education all about metrics, outcomes
and technical, managerial processes.
On this model, education is no more about self-realisation than is
glue-sniffing - it is just rational exchange.
He quipped that this strategy is even penetrating Oxbridge, despite it
not having had its bourgeois revolution yet.
In this new, dominant vision of the university, teachers become a new
management, presiding over a 'lumpen
intelligentsia' (the students). The
point, Eagleton insisted, is not to turn universities into a mechanism for
ideological brainwashing, as happened under Stalinism or Nazism - but to get
away from ideology and ideas as much as possible. He
described this as the most dramatic development in higher education that he
could remember, more historically significant than what happened in
1968. At that time, Eagleton
suggested, something happened that rulers fear most of all: a combined
movement of working people and intellectuals.
Now, we are seeing instead the global extinction of the idea of the
university as a centre of critique. Rather than education being a human right
or an end in itself it is being turned into a commodity. He suggested that making people pay for
education - a precondition of full social participation - is like charging
babies for breast milk or the bleeding for bandages. Eagleton
then turned to the specific role of the arts and humanities. He argued that when these disciplines
emerged in the late 18th and early 19th centuries they functioned as
protective enclaves for values that were being increasingly dismissed in
wider society due to the utilitarianism of industrial capitalism. The disjuncture between academia and
everyday life meant that their critique often seemed remote and distant, but
it also made that critique possible.
Now, he suggested, that state of affairs is visibly coming to an
end. Late capitalism cannot apparently
afford to educate its young, even though ours is the wealthiest society ever
- quoting JK Galbraith, he cited this as an example of the 'private wealth
and public squalor' characteristic of capitalism. In a
crisis, he suggested, it is the poor that go to the wall, justified by the
idea that 'someone has to pay for it'.
However, the necessary resources are there, in the billions siphoned
off by shareholders, bankers, wars, armaments, and the super-rich. But in order to properly fund education we
would need to commandeer it for the public good. The current crisis of capitalism thus
reminds us of the necessity of socialism more than ever. Eagleton
ended his talk by quoting the poem 'Days', by Philip Larkin, suggesting that
apparently, in the current context, simply to restate the idea that education
ought to be pursued for its own sake: Brings
the priest and the doctor / In their long coats / Running over the fields. *************************************************** LETTERS Dear
Colleagues, I
note that Ben Goldacre has some comments about
Lancaster in his Bad Science column in the Guardian of 29th January
2011. I wonder if they will appear in LUtext this week? Jenny
Brine, Subject Librarian ******* Dear
Editors, In
the prior issue, SUBTEXT published a letter in which I mocked the ignorance
by the editor of the official Lancaster newsletter of even basic
English. Let me repeat part of that
letter: '
"Contributions to the media this week include Professor Cary Cooper
(LUMS) on the Times Higher Education website following his receipt of the
Lord Dearing Lifetime Achievement Award, and also Professor Ruth Wodak (Linguistics and English Language) who's recent
lecture on 1940's Hollywood actress Hedy Lamarr was published in Der
Standard, Vienna." 'Undergrads
I teach at Aberdeen from places like Poland and the Czech Republic would
never write WHO'S instead of WHOSE.' In
the current issue of SUBTEXT, one Jessica Abrahams replies to me with equal
scorn. Writes she: 'I
write with reference to Robert Segal's letter. I was taught to use "such
as" when giving examples. The
writer means presumably to refer to Poland and the Czech Republic, not to
some unidentified other places "like" them. 'Yes
I know it's mean but he started. 'Jessica
Abrahams' I
would appreciate Ms Abrahams' explaining to us readers what is ungrammatical
or even infelicitous about my use of the preposition LIKE instead of SUCH
AS. My handy office dictionary
offers, as one of the many acceptable uses of LIKE, the following: as, for example: 'fruit, LIKE pears and peaches, for dessert'. LIKE
and SUCH AS are interchangeable grammatically, though stylistically SUCH AS
offers a mite more space between the category and the examples. Ms
Abrahams' education carries no authority.
Her appeal to her schooling is ad hominem. Perhaps she, her former teachers, and the
editors of the Lancaster newsletter would like to study English grammar with
me. We can arrange something. May
I note that in her last line two commas are missing and also that STARTED is
here being misused as an intransitive verb. Robert
Segal, University of Aberdeen (Eds Note: Scholars wishing to pursue the 'like/such as'
debate should consult Fowler, 2nd Ed, pp. 334-5, who is most helpful on the
subject, or see http://alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxlike00.html. Beyond
that, this correspondence is now closed.) **************************************************** The
editorial collective of subtext currently consists (in alphabetical order)
of: Rachel Cooper (PPR), George Green, Gavin Hyman, David Smith, Bronislaw
Szerszynski and Martin Widden. |