AS OUR beloved leader, Professor Malcolm Grant, goosesteps towards his own Night of the Long Knives - I refer to his intended vast cuts in UCL’s academic budget - it also seems he is determined, with all the relish of an undertaker, to put the final nail in the 170 year-old institution that is the University of London.
OK, so he has been helped by Imperial College’s decision to vote itself out of the federation and by the recent QAA lukewarm assessment of the University’s regulation of its degrees. Essentially the report by the QAA concluded that it had “only limited confidence” in its oversight of our degrees.
Now, while the University actually awards our degrees, it is the colleges of the University who are responsible for awarding and grading your degrees. Indeed the same QAA expressed “broad confidence” in each of the individual colleges’ supervision of its degree – even King’s - and the criticism by the QAA seems to be because of the fact the UoL did not know about QAA criticism of a foundation course at Birkbeck College. Sir Graeme Davis, the Vice-Chancellor of the University, responded forthrightly that the QAA did not understand the checks put in place and has said that it would be unacceptable for the federal university to interfere too much in individual college’s affairs as set out in the University of London Act 1994. In doing so he is protecting the structures for supervising degrees set in place and more generally the federal structure. Generally he has been supported by the head of University of London colleges.
It has to be admitted that all this is damaging publicity for the university and Professor Grant would be foolish if he were not to consider University College’s position. It has already been noted that while the other colleges have rallied round the University, Professor Grant has been more reserved and circumspect: he has commented that he regrets the decision by Imperial College and that the move could only harm the federal University. However he went onto to say that said UCL is not proposing to follow suit “for the moment”. With friends like these, Sir Graeme, who needs enemies, eh?
Professor Grant also went onto say that now was the time for the University of London to review its functions and cost-effectiveness. I must say that coming from Malcolm “15% Cuts” Grant that is rather like being lectured on population control by Josef Stalin. Furthermore how much does membership of the federal university cost UCL? A mere £2 million a year. Perhaps Professor Grant would prefer to spend the money on a new stone for UCH?
He must also resist the temptation to go for a takeover of some of the smaller colleges, such as SOAS, as Simon Jenkins recently suggested and whose points Mister Chatterbox countered in the last issue of The Cheese Grater. For a start University College simply cannot afford it. Part of the reason why the Provost feels he has to make drastic cuts in the academic budget is that University College has been operating a £7 million annual deficit. Any further, drastic takeover would just exacerbate the problem.
Furthermore he should remember that universities are about students, not buildings and names, and in a straw poll which Mister Chatterbox took at the SOAS bar a few weeks ago, he found no enthusiasm for becoming part of University College. The reverse in fact. As they’ve seen SSEES (“merged” with UCL in 1999) lose their identity and school bar, they’ve been given a warning about what might happen to them. The anger amongst former SSEES students at how their old school has been treated by UCL since the takeover is fierce indeed; some of this anger is mirrored by academics within the school (Read more on SSEES’s identity crisis on p. 4 - Ed.).
At present the University of London is one of the largest concentrations of academic material in the UK. With over 125,000 students, innumerable libraries and an international presence which UCL cannot at present match, the University of London still has a great claim to be at the centre of UCL’s future. It is important that we remember that Imperial College has for a long time been an independent college within the University structure. For some time it had had its own degree awarding powers. The smaller colleges within the university benefit from being part of a larger body with an interna tional reputation. But University College benefits as well. As a science-based college, Imperial did not benefit from the federal, resource sharing structure to the same basis as University College. By remaining within the federal structure, those students whose departments are facing cut-backs, who are not part of the Provost’s central ambitions for the university, students of classics, history, philosophy, politics and languages, can enjoy the benefits of the Senate House library – which alone benefits from 3 million volumes - as well as the use of other college libraries.
On top of that, the University of London is committed to maintaining the breadth of academic work across all fields; the danger for universities at the moment is that in their aim for immediate research points and good research grades (based purely on the number of papers published per year) important and unpopular research is cut back, neglected or stopped. Academic freedom is under fire from coldblooded accountants and the University of London is one institution that can act as a buffer against their bloody ambitions.
Finally the University of London is an historical institution; established in 1835 after the foundation of King’s College and University College, it is the third oldest university in England. Its loose federal structure is a benefit to its students – after all, aren’t Oxford and Cambridge also federal universities with independent vibrant colleges and different, but not dominant, specialisms?
“A university is one of the precious things that can be destroyed” – perhaps Professor Grant would remember that for longer than a moment.