THERE ARE GREAT works of western literature that are published every so often that have an impact on society so large that it is impossible to gauge their importance: Origin of Species, Das Kapital, Jeffrey Archer’s Prison Diaries (vol. 2 – Purgatory) to name but a few. Now it seems a new work has entered this exclusive canon: Issue Ten of Pi Squared.
The regular reader of The Cheese Grater will probably be aware that in the past Mister Chatterbox has been somewhat disparaging of this periodical. However, after turning to the op-ed pages, Mister Chatterbox found himself (in an event as surprising as David Irving paying a sympathy visit to Auschwitz) in almost complete agreement with our Provost, Professor Malcolm Grant.
Ignoring the Provost’s gaudy shirt and tie combination, he read with unmitigated approval Professor Grant’s quite proper dismissal of the latest league table placing University College as the ninth best university this side of Orion’s Belt. Only a fool, Our Dear Leader indicated, would be taken in by such fluctuating league tables, let alone boast about the fact on interweb “sites” such as myspacebook.com.org.
Ninth best - so what?
That said, the Provost is quite correct to ignore the trifling concerns of methodology and to allow himself to bask in the warm glow of the favourable press coverage that has resulted from the result.
As the Provost is well aware (although absentmindedly forgot to include it in his wonderful article) the Times Higher Education Supplement-Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings has been subject to prolonged public contention since its inception in 2004.
There are some (although we do not necessarily count ourselves among them) who argue that too much emphasis has been put upon the significance of peer-review in the survey (40%), which is open to gross manipulation and the sinister application of self-interest. It must be noted that a number of changes were made for the 2007 table to address such concern, yet UCL academics have pointed out that the method used in drawing up such a review is unscientific in the extreme.
While some muse upon the over-importance placed upon “recruiter review” (which is given a 10% weighting in the survey), it has also been suggested that the citations per faculty (a 20% weighting) is now biased towards UK universities. A distinguished academic friend from an illustrious institute in the former colonies, which is not included in the top ten, points to the continuing improvement of the UK as suspicious: “It is hard not to conclude that the inclusion of so many UK universities in the top ten is tantamount to academic gerrymandering.” When interrogated by Mr Chatterbox, some senior College staff reluctantly admitted this too.
Hay-maker
When asked if the THES-QS World Rankings had “finally got the balance right” in its methodology for the 2007 survey, one authoritative academic of the university raised his bushy eyebrows and gave a wry, yet knowing, smile. Asked why the Provost was making hay from such allegedly tainted grass he commented, “Well, he would, wouldn’t he?”
Spurred on by our Provost’s jollification of this magnificent ‘global centre of excellence’, he was eager to discover the opinions of the masses towards University College and was devastated to find that while vox populi might be the vox dei, it is certainly not vox Provosti. There was a truly shocking lack of reverence towards our benevolent and omniscient leader, at least from those who had heard of him.
While Mister Chatterbox has reluctantly accepted that Professor Grant is about as popular as Freddie Mercury at a Transylvanian blood bank amongst UCL academics, he never in his most shuddersome nightmares expected that this would be replicated in the opinions of undergraduates.
Now it must be admitted that such an inquiry is about as valid as, say, a THES-QS survey. However, when one undergraduate was asked how he was celebrating the joyous news of the elevation of UCL into the heady stratosphere of academic prestige the response was: “It’s good news in a way, and will probably look good on my CV, but I don’t really feel it’s up there with Oxford and Cambridge”.
When questioned on how she felt about UCL an English undergraduate commented: “I’ve got no real opinion about UCL to be honest, I love my department and that’s why I applied but I don’t have much contact with the rest of the university”. Not disheartened Mr Chatterbox pursued. Was it Jeremy Bentham’s progressive liberal vision of higher education that made you apply to University College, he asked a third. “Jeremy who?” came the reply. There it is; this is the university without a soul.
None of this means UCL isn’t good or great. However it is unfortunate that the Provost’s slash and burn diktats, interwoven with the dispiriting and unimaginative management policies of UCL plc, have almost totally destroyed the very being of what used to be a proud college. With his bland corporate-style logo as his banner, he has ignored the noble vision of Bentham, and leads a woebegone troop of undergraduates into the cruel world of management consultancy.
Even that long-held rivalry against another institution by the Strand, which in times past resulted in mass skirmishes in the Quad, has been reduced to pathetic sniping and the uninspiring anthem of the College sports teams, which makes the average Millwall chant seem like a lost verse of The Waste Land. Such things are, of course, all part of the drab modern world of cut and thrust, yet Mister Chatterbox cannot help but feel that there should be more to a university than the prospect of a job at PriceWaterhouseCoopers.