AS PERSEPHONE begins her slow descent to Hades signalling both Winter and the new academic year, Mr Chatterbox stokes his fireplace and settles down in his comfiest armchair to reflect upon his battles against one of Beelzebub’s more cretinous imps over the past twelve months.
Much time has passed since we last reported upon the asinine blunderings of our nefarious Provost, the much loved Professor Malcolm Grant: Chief Executive and Führer of UCL Plc. And he has been a busy boy.
It went by almost unnoticed. Not even the razor-sharp wits at Pi Squared spotted it. It did not, however, pass under the radar of Mister Chatterbox, whose eagle eye honed in like a shark on a menstruating bather.
The ‘it’, of course, is last year’s Green Paper; the Provost’s Grand Plan to ‘modernize management practices’, published in February 2007. Had it not been for the perennial recataloguing of my snuff-box collection (as well as the reporting of Professor Grant’s maleficent plans to destroy the widely respected University of London and his machinations to impose yet higher fees on unwitting students) I would have lambasted it sooner. Be that as it may, during the silly season, while Pi Squared editors were learning to spell and academic staff were venting their unbridled fury to me, I cast aside my copy of Le Fanu’s Carmilla and picked up what turned out to be a far more macabre and gut-wrenching read. This was not unexpected; familiar with the chicanery, skullduggery and same enthusiasm Chris Langham shows for shower-time.
But like all the best spinetinglers, the real terror lies not in what is said but by what is left unsaid. Dare ye read between the lines?
On the surface this strategy document has all the threat of a lesbian in a beauty competition. Yet in reality it proposes a radical shift for UCL away from the higher education sector, moderated by government for the general good, towards the college becoming a ‘Global Centre of Excellence’ - whatever that may mean. Perhaps like that other PR slogan, the ridiculous ‘London’s Global University’, it is destined for the Provost’s marketing dustbin. But the point holds: what the Provost wants is to decrease the amount of monies taken from central government even more and compensate by increasing those taken from students and the private sector. For many academics the foolishness of this seems self-evident. They assert that they have expressed their concerns to Professor Grant but according to senior sources within the college ‘consultation’ for the Provost means discussion over generalities before doing exactly what was proposed anyway, the upshot being the imposition of diktats onto a reluctant and dispirited academic body. One is reminded of the Roman general who leads his troops to battle despite the inauspicious omens.
Academics report that behind the comforting words and vague exhortations to ‘modernization’ (another favourite buzzword), there is serious danger of the Provost selling the college’s soul, having perhaps realised from personal experience that it is a profitable market. “The danger is that the Godless Institute of Gower Street becomes the whorehouse of Gower Street,” said one wry academic wag. Moreover, in following this course, he has gone against the wishes of the majority of his colleagues, and is now left isolated but for his Praetorian Guard. It should be noted that in the course of his research Mister Chatterbox could not find one single independent source to defend the Provost’s general directions. This is UCL Plc at its most anemic.
The Green Paper continues a process of centralising – sorry, ‘streamlining’ management processes away from individual departments towards the sinister and pernicious body known as the Senior Management Team. Instead of holding a ballot for ac- Deans of Faculty and there is growing fear that the installation of department heads will soon go the same way. While this may seem a minor issue, academics argue that UCL is not the same as a major business, although many suspect that Professor Grant would like it to be so. Individual departments’ administrative budgets are being slashed – my mistake again: ‘streamlined’ while huge increases are taking place in the central management, HR and the Development and Communications Office.
I asked many academics whether the Provost’s Green Paper had students as its priority. Many of the replies could not be published in a family magazine. However, one replied diplomatically, “Let me say that if he ever did care about student welfare, the priorities he has pursued as Provost have made him lose sight of it.”
No serious academic questions the need for financial stability or the need for the college to work within a given budget. What they question is that financial ‘necessities’ are given higher priority than the academic needs of both students and staff. Even more remarkable is the fact that the Provost does not have an academic strategy. The financial tail appears to be wagging the academic dog. Such perverse shortsightedness and intellectual timidity is risking our education. UCL Plc still offers academic excellence for all, as long as the ‘all’ can stump up enough cash; any Tom, Dick or Heinrich is welcome at UCL if they pay higher fees.
No-one denies the value of overseas students and the vital role they play in the life of UCL, but one can question a strategy that educates overseas students at the expense of equally gifted British students, simply because the college can charge more. Universities have to play a role in the national educational life or they are nothing.
Professor Grant’s are salami tactics. Slice by slice, bit by bit, strategy by strategy, diktat by diktat Malcolm Grant aims to undermine all that is good about progressive history and ethos that was an example to the higher educational world is being slowly eroded and replaced with a dreary, drab commercialism in the name of marketisation, commercialism and modernisation that stifles academic freedom and subverts integrity to financial imperatives. This of course, is the greatest tragedy.
There was another mustachioed leader who was very fond of Grand Strategies and dangerous rhetoric. He died in a bunker on his honeymoon. While I would not, of course, wish that upon Professor Grant, I hope that Mrs. Grant has alternative holiday plans this year.