Who rules our universities?

Number 15: #USSbriefs15

Most pre-92 universities are governed, generally, through a Council (or Court), Senate (or Academic Board) and an Executive Group chaired by VCs. Senates preserve the academic quality of education and research, while a university’s Council, or governing body, delegates its authority to manage and administer the university to the VCs executive groups. Traditionally, universities would have been managed FOR its members — that is, on behalf of the academic, student and staff communities and alumni, and even regional constituencies — all of whom would be have been represented on Councils. Instead, in this pensions dispute, we find VCs and UUK actively working against us, as ‘employers’ disciplining and punishing ‘employees’.

But, if universities are corporations of we members, why do we not think of the VCs as working for us? Should we not instruct these executives as to what position ‘the university’ wishes to bring to UUK and USS? Indeed, why has the only mechanism through which we can reject the widely discredited USS premises been through industrial action? Surely there must be other ways of lobbying these increasingly unaccountable VCs.

Two recent cases from the dispute will draw the range of possibilities into relief:

In sum, Oxford’s inefficient ancient structures of self-governance — without even a formal constitution — allowed the corporate membership of the university to change the formal position of its chief executive vis-à-vis UUK. We should all aspire to at least Oxford’s ancient standards and mechanisms of academic self-government.

In sum, in universities like Exeter, which is by no means unique in wanting to climb the rankings via shortcuts and flagship capital spending, rather than investing in staff capacity to deliver high quality education and research without having a nervous breakdown, there remain few, if any, means through which academics can formally register their dissatisfaction, let alone their position in the USS/UUK dispute.

The issue of how we as academics access and wield our internal governance structures is essential to understand as we enter the next phases of this dispute. As USSbriefs12 notes, the position of VCs within UUK is evolving due to our industrial action even as our leadership at UCU feel we have obtained the best we can get. And, this is unlikely to be the last time we need to fight for our pensions, or salaries or ‘benefits’ such as free nursery care or parking.

Indeed, under the watch of our benevolent, unaccountable VCs, the most intrusive legislation into the Higher Education sector ever was passed through Parliament, establishing an Office for Students which seeks to turn our curricula into a series of Amazon reviews. We need to resist half-baked exercises like the Teaching Excellence Framework in all our places of work, through Senates and Academic Boards which have been decimated, like Exeter’s across the country. And, we need our VCs to represent us properly through UUK, the voice of the university. After all: We Are the University.

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