The verbatim report of the debate in Congregation on 10 March on the general resolution concerning the Report of the Commission of Inquiry (see Gazette, pp. 896, 933) is set out below.
The general resolution read as follows:
That this House take note of the Report of the Commission of Inquiry.Speeches were made by the following:
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I would like to welcome also the intention of Council to consult widely among university committees, individuals, and other bodies on the report of the North Commission before bringing proposals to this House. The Committee of Estates Bursars, with which I am mostly concerned, will indeed be concerned with many of the ideas in the report, and of course particularly with Chapter 12, on resources. Today I want to pick up just two points arising from that chapter. They are of very different kinds: one is, I think, perhaps apparently technical, but not so in practice; and the other will, I am sure, concern many of us as we look through the detailed proposals.
The first concerns recommendation 89, about the accounts of the colleges. As I say, it seems a little technical. What is not obvious to me (though it may turn out to be true) is that these accounts must necessarily be made comparable with those of the University. Accounts are there to provide information for those who have a legitimate interest in it. Before work is commenced, therefore, we need to be sure who needs the information, what information they need, and for what purpose they need it. I accept here that there are different constituencies: one, certainly, would be the general public (who have a general interest in the activities of colleges); one will be the persons who have made generous donations to the college, to make sure that those donations are being properly utilised; another constituency will be those who have the charge of the affairs of the college, namely the fellows; and the fourth, certainly (though this is not an exhaustive list), will be the central university bodies, who wish to inform themselves of the activities of colleges. It is only, therefore, after these matters have been discussed and properly resolved in the light of decisions made as a result of the proposals of the North Commission, that it could be possible to begin a construction of a format, or changes in the present format, of the accounts of the colleges.
The other matter I wish to address, Sir, concerns the remarks of the Commission, which are made at some length, about disparity of pay (or, if you like, rewards). Here I personally very much welcome the references made by the Commission to `equal reward for work of equal value'. Supposing of course that there are no areas where some work is of more equal value than others! The details of the Commission's proposals for achieving this are tucked away in Appendix C. To my mind they are slightly worrying. They envisage that the University, the central University that is to say, Sir, should take over the payment of the salaries of joint appointments almost entirely. They then require, necessarily, a set of rules, inherently unstable and of Byzantine complexity, for shuffling money around the system. I hear in the wings the rubbing of the hands of senior partners in the more expensive accounting firms.
The proposals have side-effects out of all proportion to the problem they seek to solve, and it is for me depressing that the Commission have so little faith in the collegiate system of Oxford that they do not even consider that the result can be achieved by persuasion. The evidence, in particular in Paper 16 in the Supplementary Volume, is that colleges overwhelmingly prefer co-operation to compulsion.
The cynics will of course at this point say that the colleges cannot be trusted to do the right thing. My responses would be three. Firstly, such a view is not just offensive: a moment's reflection shows that it is incompatible with the desire, overwhelmingly supported in the University, to remain a collegiate University. Secondly, even the Commission's own proposals require the whole-hearted co-operation of colleges, in the matter of not paying allowances of one kind or another, of paying the full top-up salary for those who do not live in college, and so on. Thirdly, however, and for me most importantly, the evidence is clear that colleges, when they are accorded respect rather than being told what to do, in fact respond positively to sensible proposals; and it has been my delight, Sir, to be involved with you and others over the last few years in many discussions which have convinced me of that. Certainly, a few colleges (and it is only a few) may have insufficient resources to give effect to the common will. Then, if that is the common will, they must (and it will follow logically) be helped by the College Contributions System. In that context, the sums required in fact are very small.
In the thirty odd years since the Franks Commission reported, the differences in stipends have in proportionate terms been reduced to less than a third of what they then were. They have of course been reduced now to zero in the case of those who are at the top end of the salary scale. I am confident that with this lead from the Commission, with this encouragement, and with general will among the colleges, we shall be able to finish the job.
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Last term the Vice-Chancellor's Fees Group asked three colleges to carry out a theoretical study of how they would deal with the situation of the loss of college fees, together with a large increase in the distribution of resources from the less poor to the poorer. Magdalen was one of the colleges asked to carry out this exercise, and in doing so we assumed quite draconian cuts in expenditure, involving cuts in staffing. We also assumed significant increases in charges to students on top of the rent increases which we have all introduced in recent years. Further, we assumed that we would increase the income from our endowment by forsaking some of our best investments, which, however, produce little or no income. We found that, having taken those steps, we would still have to cut severely into teaching by reducing numbers of tutors and lecturers. This, with stark clarity, showed really that Magdalen at least could certainly not absorb both a large loss in college fee income and at the same time a very large increase in the contributions to help others. I believe that that demonstrates quite clearly that in our present deliberations there is no room for complacency.
The College Contributions Scheme was set up to strengthen the finances of the poorer colleges and not to finance an increase in the size of the University. I believe it is completely unacceptable to divert these funds, from the purposes from which they are intended, to finance expansion at this particularly critical time. I therefore believe that we should beware of readily accepting in our thinking that a 1 per cent per annum increase in numbers is something which will continue. It is quite possible that we may have to contemplate reduction in numbers of students, and even reduction in numbers of colleges.
Turning to some of the recommendations in Chapter 12, I would like to say that I agree, and I am absolutely certain that Magdalen College will agree, with recommendation 90, that the College Contributions Scheme should continue. On the other hand, I certainly cannot support recommendation 91, neither 91 (a) nor 91 (b): in my view, any new colleges must be fully endowed and not be accepted into the system to be a burden. Recommendations 92 and 93 outline the way in which the Commission suggests that the housing allowances should be equalised. I do not believe that these recommendations have been thought through properly; I think that they are ill conceived and may be unaffordable. I believe that we should turn our attention to agreeing a cap on the housing allowances (probably at or around the upper quartile of housing allowances currently being paid), but at the same time, and this is very important, we must agree also a cap for all other academic allowances (however they are referred to: some are called book allowances, some are called research allowances, and I think there are other names for these things).
I would just like to make one final observation, which is about recommendation 88. I do not think anyone would disagree, and I certainly agree, with that recommendation, that Oxford should remain part of the UK's publicly funded system of higher education, supported on the basis of a partnership of both public and private funds. However, the discussion in the Commission's report on this subject was rather superficial. After the years of the last Government's squeeze on college fees, and after the experience that we have had and that we are still going through with this present Government trying to cut out college fees in their entirety, it seems to me that we should examine carefully and in depth ways of managing a progressive move towards lesser reliance on public and greater reliance on private funds. If that move involved a more cosmopolitan student body, I would have thought that would be most welcome.
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The report deserves minute examination and, if its recommendations are not to be followed, we had better be sure that we have the means to deal with the inefficiencies and inequalities which detailed research has uncovered.
When some of us came to this building in the autumn of 1994 to launch the Commission's inquiries, it was the reputation of the University that was foremost in our minds. There was no doubt then, and there can still be none now, that in the phrase of your predecessor, Sir, one `over-arching issue', connecting as it does the University and its colleges, is that of financial reorganisation, with the aim of ensuring equality of opportunity and equality of treatment. Despite strenuous efforts in some quarters, these equalities, alas, seem to be eluding us and that at a time when the gaze of the press is fixed upon us, and reports of what some colleges can offer and what others cannot appear regularly in newspapers and alternative prospectuses. Oxford, Sir, does not now need the reputation that the excellence offered in some colleges is at an altogether different level from that in others. Yet the actual and perceived variation in, for example, facilities and allowances have already skewed applications at both senior and junior level.
Back on that autumn day in 1994, I proposed a check-list of ideals against which the Commission might measure its success in providing a mechanism to reorganise the University's finances and to do better than keeping poorer colleges on the breadline. I continue to hold that if these ideals can be approached, then the solutions to many other problems will fall into place. One such ideal was that all holders of joint appointments, regardless of college, should enjoy the same stipend and taxable (pensionable) allowances, not only at the joint maximum, but at all points leading up to it.
North in fact, as we have already heard, dwells on this, finds the present variations `unacceptable', insists that `measures should be taken to equalise levels of salary payments' (paras 12.56 and 12.65), and backs this up with imaginative, though, as we have heard earlier this afternoon, challengeable proposals which would at least make sure we need not look at this issue again (Appendix C).
My second ideal was that all junior members, regardless of college, should have the same opportunity to live in college for the same length of time and pay the same rents.
North tells us (para. 12.49) that almost 80 per cent of second-year undergraduates in well-off colleges are able to live in college accommodation, compared with only 44 per cent of those in poorer colleges, and recommends that the College Contributions Scheme continue, the prime objective being to enable the poorer colleges to improve their provision.
No timescale is hinted at, and we are left wondering how this anomaly can be put right without a far greater infusion of funds, more than could ever be raised by colleges individually.
As to college charges for accommodation, the report notes (para. 12.22) that they vary, but are `clustered within 10 per cent of the [weighted] average [for all colleges]'. Such variation seems, surprisingly, not be to be considered significant, which must be challenged. A 20 per cent difference when living in, plus the additional costs of living out in the second year, pose an unfair financial burden, particularly on undergraduates whose college was chosen for them by computer. Colleges with the highest charges are often those with the smallest inventory of rooms.
We should remember that the Conference of Colleges, without individual college opposition, has already agreed that the band of accommodation charges should be narrowed. However, we still await action.
As North observes (para. 12.44), `there is a broad correlation between college wealth and academic performance'. By perpetuating the current imbalance, we are too often offering very different—and undesirably different—academic experiences.
But the time has now come to move from `ideals' to `practicalities', from Sir Peter's `thinking the unthinkable', the possibility even of a college going bust, to `working the unworkable'. I should therefore like to propose a modus operandi for the various committees about to consider these issues:
There is first the need to specify acceptable `minimum kit and maximum variation', that is, minimum provision of salaries and allowances, IT, books, administrative and secretarial support, hardship and travel grants, accommodation, etc., which should be available to Senior and Junior Members, and the maximum acceptable variation in this provision from college to college.
Secondly, the committees should address the means by which these minimum levels and maximum variations can be achieved, be it by enlarging the College Contributions Scheme, by the central payment of salaries of joint appointees, by University-wide fund-raising initiatives, by making use of assets such as the University Press, or whatever.
Thirdly, there should be time-scales for the achievement of these objectives.
Fourth, there should be an annual review, giving the opportunity for adjustment of the objectives. How many would have anticipated ten years ago, for example, the extent of the subsequent increase in demand for IT provision? This points to the need to create a standing committee with appropriate formal representation.
Finally, a report of this review should be published each year in the Gazette.
The Commission of Inquiry has made an invaluable contribution in demonstrating the impact of the differences in college wealth and suggesting methods for combatting unacceptable and undesirable inequalities. In particular, the report has shown the need for willing co-operation within the University as a whole and all its independent colleges to ensure that its reputation as a place of the highest standards in research and education is maintained and that the opportunity is given to all its members to achieve their best.
We now call on you, Mr Vice-Chancellor, to lead the way in discussions to transform our ideals into the practicalities which will govern our lives into the twenty-first century.
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The Commission's report does, briefly, acknowledge this international dimension of the University, and concludes that it has `implications for the University's future operation and structure' (para. 2.38).
The report does not however spell out what these implications may be. I wish to begin to do just that. Oxford cannot go on assuming that its world-wide reputation will sweep all before it. I and my colleagues on the International Committee have argued that we must consider more positive steps to maintain this status.
First, it is essential that we should be able to compete for world-wide talent with the right weapons. These must include the provision of scholarships on a scale that can compete with many North American universities. We are not in that position—not by a long way, and we certainly lag well behind Cambridge. We are some of us attempting to strengthen the University's work to raise funding for scholarships (in fact the International Committee itself has recently transferred funds to the Development Office to help in this regard). But much more needs to be done. The logic of our argument is obvious: it is in the long-term interests of Britain's economy and international reputation that we should educate the best from abroad, regardless of their personal wealth. They will remember Oxford and Britain long afterwards.
Second, we should encourage the development of international research links and funding. It is already the case (perhaps little known to members of Congregation, but referred to in the report) that over 10 per cent of our total research income comes from overseas industry and from the European Commission. We should be developing the links that will enable this total to grow further. There is a major role here, obviously, for the overseas offices of the University. These are now established in North America and in East Asia, and, as the Review Committee on the Development Office concluded (and I was, Sir, a member of that committee), there is a case for extending this network even further. We need here to take a long-term view. It takes many years to reap the rewards of friend raising and fund raising abroad. Our American competitors know that only too well. They have been at it longer than we have.
Third, and finally, as we review the administrative structures of the University, let us not lose sight of the need to co-ordinate the range of related activities. I see an almost continuous chain, running through the Research Services Office and the activities of Isis Innovation, through the International Committee and the External Relations Office, through to the Development Offices and Alumni Associations here and around the world. Over the last few years I have interacted in various capacities with all these parts of the University. They could benefit from a strategic vision of where the University is trying to place itself in the international world, and we should give thought to how this should emerge alongside our deliberation of the North Report.
If I may speak here from my personal experience, many of the universities with which we would like to compare ourselves internationally have the equivalent of a Vice-President for international affairs. There are many ways in which this might be achieved in Oxford, and I am not necessarily suggesting that solution. The exact solution must depend on the new administrative structure that emerges from our present deliberations on the North Report. However we achieve it, though, we need a strategic vision, and the means to implement it.
Like you, Mr Vice-Chancellor, I travel much around the world on university and research business. Like you, I find that Oxford is always held in extremely high regard abroad. Dare I say that it is valued almost more abroad than it sometimes seems to be here in the UK? We are admired not only by foreign academics for defending what a university should be about, and one of the few universities still to do that publicly, but also by foreign industries for what we can bring of value to their technologies, and by foreign governments for the insights that our humanities and social research can bring to their problems. As a result, we receive a steady stream of visiting foreign industrialists, politicians, and administrators.
But, and this is the bottom line of my speech, I do believe that the University could be in danger of underestimating the steps now needed in a more competitive world not only to maintain this international reputation but also to develop its international impact as well as it could. So, I urge those who will now consider the implementation of the North Report to keep this need in mind. It will not be a bad criterion by which to measure the administrative reforms to ask whether they will go any way to enabling the University to put its strategic international vision in place.
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The Commission of Inquiry Report (the North Commission) is in many ways an impressive document. To survey such a vast range of issues; to comment on them; and to come up with judicious proposals, cannot have been easy. There is much to welcome in the recommendations, especially where governance is concerned, which I have no time to discuss today. Yet I fear that the sheer volume of problems, and the babble of contentious voices to which the Commission had to respond, has resulted in the neglect of what I believe to be one of the most worrying questions concerning Oxford's future. Will it be able to retain its status as a leading international university?
That Oxford is at the present rime a leading international university in the field of research is sometimes overlooked, but cannot be doubted by anyone who examines the facts. The North Commission makes more than one reference to Oxford's high research standing. However, one can search the report in vain to find out why that came to be, or for any sense that it may be a position difficult to sustain in the future. It has been well said that there are only two universities in Europe which are truly world-class research universities, Cambridge and Oxford. It could be argued that aggregating the constituent colleges of the University of London would make it three. Be that as it may, whether it is two or three world-class universities, the point is that when it comes to world-class research across a full range of subjects, the main standard for comparison has to be the best large universities in North America—a small club which certainly includes Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford.
Oxford likes to compare itself with Princeton, and the comparison is reasonable, because in the past Princeton modelled itself explicitly on Oxford. The position today, however, is of sharp contrast, not similarity. To put it brutally simply, Oxford is a university dedicated to undergraduate teaching, which has graduate studies as an after-thought extension. That spirit is widely reflected in the North Commission Report. Princeton could be seen as a hugely powerful team of graduate schools, which has undergraduate teaching as an add-on. In each case the university concerned derives a large part of its income from the sector which in relative terms it neglects: Princeton from high undergraduate fees; Oxford from, according to the North Commission's figures, £179.2m worth of research money coming to the University: its largest single source of income.
This said, the two great institutions, Oxford and Princeton, do share world-class research performance. The source of my worry is that, as in other theatres of competition, past success is no guarantee of future brilliance.
The sources of Oxford's greatness in the past are no solid guarantee of our research future. We used to gather together the finest academics, and just let good research happen. In the sciences it needed more in terms of big resource budgets, and this was provided. Oxbridge experienced no trouble in attracting the best and the brightest. In Britain, with salary scales more or less fixed, we could easily trump the rest with the attractions of a fine city, a large university, and the pleasures of college life. When some departments declined, they could even be revived on the back of the general attractiveness of Oxford. Most of all, time to do research was not a leading concern, particularly for young appointees. There was always, of course, serious competition from the top US universities, which could, and did, tempt away leading academics with offers of large salaries and light teaching loads. Yet most people are not easily mobile internationally, and we could live with US competition. We even attracted US scholars. Although most did not stay, some did, and even the short-stayers could provide very good academic value.
Today the world is changing fast. An academic market, encouraged by the last Governments, exists and is functioning. So, when considering whether an academic at another UK department might be attracted to Oxford, we find ourselves asking: `Could she face the cut in her salary?'. (By the way, my woman embraces the man, Sir.) It is not easy to acquire firm data on salaries. One hears that the best-paid LSE professor earns twice what the worst-paid earns. It even seems that Oxford enjoys increasing flexibility where professorial appointments are concerned. Yet what this adds up to in practice is less easy to know.
Even if I dared to be optimistic where senior appointments are concerned, the position for junior appointments is bleak. Few of the young today see an Oxford appointment as a life-time position. They want to attain a national/international reputation, and we should powerfully wish that they might do so. That means doing research and publishing, and that takes more and more time, as standards everywhere rise. In this connection, an Oxford CUF or UL appointment, involving many hours of wide-ranging teaching, is a serious deterrent. Speaking for my own faculty, Social Studies, I can say that we have seen far too many resignations from these positions, by people we would like to retain. And I hear tell of comparable problems in some science departments. One should always judge a university by who is joining it, not by who is leaving, for turnover is a healthy, renewing thing. Unfortunately the difficulties in retaining people translate to problems in attracting good people. The difficulties are structural. The idea that levelling down of conditions of employment, as proposed by the North Commission, is any part of the answer bewilders me.
I am certainly not wishing to suggest that there are easy answers. The conflict between the demands of teaching and research visits any university, including Princeton. There is no ideal answer. The solution needs skilful design and intelligent compromise. I applaud, for example, the North Commission's discussion of the merits and problems of graduate students as undergraduate teachers. However, in treating research as something that can be allowed to happen, the report militates against the redesign of Oxford's teaching that will be required for the twenty-first century. In that respect, in my opinion, Mr Vice-Chancellor, Oxford's compass does not point North.
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The North Report has little or nothing to say on the subject of women in university governance. (I have to add that it has little or nothing to say about women in general; the only reference I found to women as a separate issue is in Chapter 9 in relation to under-performance in Schools. Remarkably, Chapter 7, dealing with academic appointments, makes no references to the problem, long since acknowledged in this University as a problem, of the scarcity of women professors, the poor record of appointment of women to established academic posts, and the concentration of women in short-term contract posts. I hope the question of women's appointments will be taken up in next week's debate.) Returning to governance, it seems to me self-evident that steps need to be taken to draw women into decision making in the University at the very highest level. The arguments have been rehearsed often enough, although perhaps more outside Oxford than in. First, there are numerous issues which directly affect women's ability to make an academic career which are subject to decision by central committees—women should be there to take part in discussion. The second reason for drawing women into university government is that the University is obviously losing out on the contribution women can make; there are women who would like to become more involved in university politics, but they need positive encouragement to do so and they do not find this in the North Report. Thirdly, of course, it obviously makes good sense for the University to have a system of governance that is seen to be inclusive.
I also regret that the North Report does not consider the impact of its proposed changes on women. For example, where the sciences are concerned, one of the report's principal recommendations—the establishment of a Science Board—is unlikely to represent a leap forward for women in high-level decision making. There are so few women in the sciences, particularly in senior positions, that it is difficult to see how any of them will be elected to the Science Board. At least some women, drawn largely from the humanities and social sciences, do currently make it to General Board and, once there, can look after the interests of women across the University at large. On the other hand, the proposal to extend membership of Congregation to some academic-related staff may improve women's representation on committees in the University, although this is, of course, likely to be at the lower levels. But the point I am making here is that these are questions which I think we might have expected the Commission of Inquiry to explore and to comment upon.
It is not too late to rectify this oversight in the North Report—the composition of the committees established to work on the recommendations for changes in governance and appointments could be looked at again with a view to making sure that women are equally represented on them. The committee to consider governance has, I think, only one woman on it—the Principal of St Anne's. The Principal of St Anne's has carried the torch for women in university politics for as long as I can remember, and certainly for as long as I have been in the University, and I think it is about time she was joined by some others.
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I want to comment from the standpoint of someone who is a member of the Faculty of Clinical Medicine, who is a fellow of a specialist graduate college, and who was a member of the General Board for five years until last summer. In fact I wrote in the Oxford Magazine last October about the General Board and I put there my considerable respect for the work that the Board has done, the work of its successive Chairmen, and indeed of its officers. I think it has been impressive in recent years, but none the less it seems entirely clear to me that it has been overwhelmed by business, increasing business, much of it minor. It is part of a complicated and opaque structure of General Board and Council committees with uncertain relationships with the Chest, university libraries, and a number of other key university institutions. I think the General Board has been restricted in its powers and scope. Even so, it has been trying to deal with very rapid change, and I think in many ways it has been successful, but that makes me even more aware of how much needs to be done.
The Commission, I think, recommends the abolition of the General Board in favour of a new Council. I would prefer to recast that as an evolution of the General Board as the main policy body of the University, and I think that that is possible. I would like to see it with ex officio members from the different constituencies in the University, but continuing also with elected members; and I hope they would, as are the present members of the General Board, be elected from various constituencies in the University, rather than elected as is Council. I would like to see then around it some simplification of the committees so that the central business of policy, of resource allocation, and of strategy could be brought together and given the intensive consideration that it requires. It really is not possible, I think, at present for any of these matters to get the attention that they deserve.
I see no alternative in the new structure to reversing the delegation upwards, and that we do need delegation downwards, and I see no reason why we should not be able to achieve this without extra, over-elaborate administration. I think that it would simplify matters and would make it a great deal easier for the General Board and the centre to concentrate on some of the very important matters that are covered in the Commission.
I would like to see certainly the three academic boards, and I wonder whether in fact five boards might be a preferable number. In Clinical Medicine (my own faculty), as the Commission has pointed out, we already have moved substantially towards an academic board; we have transformed our faculty board. I think one would be remarkably politically insensitive to recommend to other areas of the University that they should move in any way in the same direction as Clinical Medicine, but I would, I think, want to point out several lessons. Six years ago my faculty was certainly the most troublesome, and I think perhaps the most troubled, of the University's faculties. We had no representative on any senior university committee; we had a weak faculty board and seventeen or eighteen highly separate departments. I think we have made progress from our own efforts, and indeed with help from the General Board and successive Chairmen. We have found this, I think, very helpful in ourselves, and I think it has also resulted in a slowly improving relationship with the centre of the University. It also opens the way for more horizontal relationships with the Pre-clinical School, the other life sciences, and so on.
It seems clear to me that the sciences are actually moving in the same direction, and they will continue to do so whatever happens about the implementation of the Commission recommendations. If we look at the science membership of the General Board, it now includes the Chairmen of Physics, Chemistry, and Medicine, and the Heads of Biochemistry, Materials, and Physiology. It already has amongst its members people who are running the broad areas of science, and I would have thought that there were strong advantages in continuing that, though I suspect that separation of the physical sciences and the life sciences as two boards might be easier than one very large board.
Clearly, I think, arts and humanities face greater problems in any new structure, they are more disparate, and they are organised in a different way, but I see no reason why they should not attempt to follow the same structure, with a Deputy Vice-Chancellor (or possibly two boards again and two Deputy Vice-Chancellors at the centre). I think there would then be the opportunity for the arts and humanities to develop in their own way, which might in many ways parallel science and medicine or it might be different. I think if we have the same system at the centre, then there is room for diversity, but that I think is for each grouping to work out themselves within some broad setting.
I want to conclude by saying that I think governance is the crucial issue and that evolution of the General Board in significant ways, simplifying the centre, with delegation downwards to three (or perhaps preferably five) academic boards, does open the way to changes. I agree very much with Professor Noble and Professor Bliss about changes which will enable the University to remain internationally reputed and competitive. It also seems to me that changes in governance are the way in which we can preserve a distinctive Oxford approach to many problems. This is a matter that has quite properly raised considerable concern, but I think we are not going to maintain an Oxford approach, we are not going to be able to persuade the Government, and the country, that it is a valuable approach unless we have a system in which all of us, and not least the Vice-Chancellor and the centre of the University, can put forward this view robustly. So I hope that in this one area at least we will make a start with significant developments.
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The figures on pp. 97--9 showed clearly how the humanities and social sciences, science, and clinical medicine have different structures and different types of problems. The devolution of responsibility to these three new academic boards is very sensible. As Richard Mayou said, in Clinical Medicine it extends a system that is working fairly well.
I do understand that other faculties may fear that the new structure may lessen the control of their destiny. I do not think that this would be true. The new academic board would be able to focus on their needs in a way that hitherto has not happened. Their Deputy Vice-Chancellor will be a key figure in supporting their case in senior committees. The three academic boards are bound to develop slightly different administrative arrangements, and they will be able to learn from each other.
The Clinical School understands that separation of the Clinical Medicine Board from pre-clinical sciences is not ideal. However, it is probably a better option then subdividing the science departments. The important feature is that the Clinical Board and pre-clinical sciences should maintain links with liaison committees, and possibly cross-representation between academic boards.
The new academic boards will have responsibility for dealing with external funding agencies, such as research councils and medical charities, which I believe to be correct. There have, in the past, been problems with shared responsibility between the General Board and the host department that has received the funds. It would make sense if the academic board had both administrative and financial responsibility for handling the grant, rather than passing these on to the central administration. It will fit in with the principle of clarity of responsibility. This addition does not affect the overall structure of the proposal from the Commission of Inquiry.
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I think it is well recognised that, in many ways, the Faculty of Clinical Medicine is different in its activities from what goes on elsewhere in the University. Some would say that indeed we are at the bottom of the academic pecking order, because what we do is largely technical and considerably less academic than many of the others in this room. One of the great advantages of having a Business School in the University is that there is now someone else to wipe our feet on, and we are no longer at the bottom of the pecking order. But it is true, we do have different activities, and those were made very clear in the North Commission. We have a very different structure in terms of our staffing: we have a very small faculty but a huge number of research-related staff. The nature of our teaching activities are different, our interactions with the NHS are an important part of our day-to-day activities, and many of us carry a significant clinical load. And finally, to echo Professor Bliss's comments, we are operating in a research setting in an increasingly international field, and we do not believe, in the Clinical School, that we are truly internationally in the first division. I believe that to be true of much of the University. The Research Assessment Exercise, in my view, has done nothing but encourage us to believe that the best in the UK is in fact the best in the world, but I do not believe that to be true. We want to compete much more efficiently and much more effectively in an international setting in biomedical research, and those are our goals.
For that reason we feel that it is extremely important that there is some devolution in decision making to allow us to take decisions that we view to be essential to retain our competitiveness, and to do what we believe to be important in our day-to-day activities, without hindrance. Too often the central bodies of the University have been seen to restrict and constrain, rather than to encourage and support. That is not always the case, and very often those decisions appear to us to be restricting simply because there is not the information at the centre to take sensible and logical decisions about what we do. So I would argue that devolution is a necessary requirement to allow people who have to live with the decisions to take the decisions, and I was terribly disappointed to see that there was not more in the North Commission to encourage devolution of financial activity to the level at which money is being spent, decisions being taken at that level, in a responsible way. Many will know that the issue of devolution of responsibility was considered in great detail by Sir David Smith and his committee reviewing the governance of the Clinical School, just over a year ago. And he brought into place three very senior deans of medical schools, one from Scandinavia, one from California, and one from London, and they concurred with the faculty that devolution was essential for the successful running of the school. For that reason I support strongly that notion in the North Commission, but only urge that perhaps it could go further.
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Why do I support them? My views really derive from two years as chairman of a small faculty board; followed by three years as chairman of the Bioscience Research Board, to which I am still attached as its chairman of planning; and more years than I care to remember trying to design and subsequently run an interdisciplinary, interdepartmental graduate M.Sc. course.
The latter experience is very easy to describe. All the proposals I ever made went out at least in triplicate to the other faculty boards, which usually sent them down to their various sub-faculties, which sometimes sent them down to the various departments represented there, which typically sent them back up to the sub-faculties, which returned them to the faculty boards, from which (with luck) they would go on to Graduate Studies for some comments, before coming back down through much the same route. Each cycle takes its requisite number of weeks or months, depending on the particular timing of the meetings, and it is an enormous extra load on any development that crosses boundaries; and yet increasingly, I think—and rightly—such interdisciplinary activities are spreading in the sciences. I think our present structures hinder them. (I have not even mentioned the question of how you then get the resources that the course attracts off out to the various contributing departments, which makes simply setting the course up a simple matter.) I have often heard it claimed that there is nothing wrong with our structures, because it is perfectly possible to set up interdepartmental courses of this kind. It is true: I have done it. But let me assure you that the task is infinitely more daunting than it really ought to have to be.
As far as experience on boards is concerned, I think that the most obvious conclusion I gained from chairing the Psychological Studies Board was that it dealt well with its own local issues, but it had absolutely no wider impact. It had no effect on bigger strategic issues, like the overall balance of different subject areas, or the consequences for other subject areas of a professorial appointment in Psychology, and yet these kinds of broader issues do need to be considered within the broadly related subject areas. We ought to be able to say what the results will be of going for this sort of person, rather than that sort of person, as the head of department: there has got to be a mechanism.
The Bioscience Research Board represents, I suppose, an embryonic mechanism of that kind. It is an attempt to provide a longer-term strategic planning mechanism across the life sciences. That was initially needed, because external funding agencies threw up their hands in dismay on discovering that the same proposal, essentially, would arrive from different groups in Oxford who had sent it in in complete ignorance of the other groups' activities. That happens really because nobody knows what everyone else is up to. Hence you set up the Bioscience Research Board, inter alia to advise on research priorities. Now that works well when there are no conflicts of interest, but it finds it very difficult to cope when there are conflicts. When, inevitably, such conflicts arise, it is often an irresistible temptation for people to simply go round the board that is supposed to be responsible for strategic planning, and get what they want some other way. It can be done. It seems to me that in fact Oxford's committee structure makes that a temptation for people at other times as well. I would suggest that over-elaborate democratic structures work against democracy, and I think we have such structures here.
I think what we have to have is boards that are able to make decisions and can be seen to do so. For that to be true, such boards need their own budget, because when they have their own budget you cannot simply go round the board whenever you want to. If its judgements do not agree with your local interests, you still have to live with its judgements. You join in the decision, but you live with the consequences. So that means you can see where the decisions are made, and that gives you both transparency and accountability. The other thing such a board needs to do its work properly is people who can devote enough time to the issues it has to consider. So I want to support the idea of amalgamated boards with full-time Deputy Vice-Chancellors. Indeed I think it would be a disaster is some areas not to have such boards.
What can a unified board do that the little ones cannot? It can deal with wider strategic issues than at present, and it should be able to handle them faster. It can pool its resources for particular initiatives and forward planning. It can deal with the ways in which different departments' activities interact, and in doing that it can develop interdepartmental activities. I think it would be more flexible and more responsive than the present structures.
What do the Deputy Vice-Chancellors need to do? They need to be full-time. They need to have adequate support from the University. They should be intimately involved in issues like appointments to professorial chairs, all the way from laying out the areas of interest, and the ways in which the appointments would interact with the other subject areas, through to how you negotiate the last bits of the deal (because the Deputy Vice-Chancellors should have the information that the Registrar's office needs to have in order to help move things on appropriately). They should assist in grant raising. They should be an identified person that outside bodies can deal with: that is a regular complaint that Oxford hears. They must be accountable to their board. They must know what is going on across the field they serve. And they need to be the links between boards. I think that suggests, as Professor Mayou indicated, that a single sciences Deputy Vice-Chancellor is unlikely to be enough.
There are obviously disparities between boards in a variety of ways. The humanities have many more staff and students that they are responsible for. The Science Board in other respects is very often the largest board; and though it does not have to deal with Health Service Trusts and so on, it does none the less deal with a very wide range of departments. So I think the sciences would need two Deputy Vice-Chancellors. I think arguably they would need two boards, and I think that the same could be said for the humanities as well.
Would five Deputy Vice-Chancellors make Council unmanageable, as some have claimed? One possibility, with respect, would be that perhaps not quite so many places should be reserved for the Proctors and Assessor, so it might be possible to fit a couple of extra people on the board without disaster. Would this be a dangerous concentration of power? I do not see any serious threat in having five out of twenty-five people representing the academic boards. In fact, I think it would be astonishing to have only three people who worked full-time for boards on a Council that determines long-term university strategy. I think that would be an amazing state of affairs.
Finally, is there room for variation, such that within this general kind of structure people can get what they need? I think that there should be room. I do not think that the sciences should try and push the arts into accepting a system of governance that they cannot manage, but I think it is also crucial that the arts do not prevent the sciences from having a system of governance with which they can work. Our research and intellectual needs may differ: we may need more co-ordination, bigger groupings; you may need to be left alone. It ought to be possible for both to be achievable, and I do not think that the need to be left alone should prevent the sciences from having an opportunity to be co-ordinated. So I would like to support the general idea.
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I think that, for that reason, the principles set out in recommendation 1 in so far as they refer to continuing education should be endorsed, but with one qualification (or at least clarification) of recommendation 1 (ii). That the education offered by Oxford should `largely continue to be on a full-time residential basis' is, I think, itself unexceptionable, provided that the word `largely' is interpreted sensibly. At present there are about 20,000 students other than full-time residential students in Oxford in any one year; these are studying on short courses, part-time courses, and by other less traditional forms of study. In aggregate the overall volume of activity is equivalent to about 1,000 full-time students. Given the recognition of the importance of this work as set out in Chapter 3, and the fact that continuing education students tend to make proportionately fewer claims on resources (most obviously in terms of residential accommodation), the scope for increasing this work is evident. The volume of this activity could, for example, double within the next ten or twenty years and still represent only about 10 per cent of the University's overall teaching activity—scarcely, I think, a significant dent in the interpretation of `largely'. For that reason, Sir, I hope that recommendation 2, which refers to the 1 per cent annual growth limit, is interpretable in terms of full-time students only, and that more flexibility in the number of students studying part-time, through short courses, or other non-standard methods of study, can not only be permitted, but perhaps, indeed, encouraged.
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Having presented a paper to the General Board on the need for strategic planning in the University at the end of my term as Junior Proctor in 1996, I was reminded of this incident when I saw strategic planning ideas running through the North Report, section after section. I should hasten to add that I was not worried that these ideas would lead to the lights going out all over Oxford, but I did suffer the momentary conceit that I might have been responsible for switching the University on to them.
The truth, of course, is that anyone taking a long, hard look at the University's governance would come to the same conclusion. Strategic planning procedures are a necessity. But common conclusions about procedures do not entail common conclusions about structures. I am not alone amongst former Proctors in thinking that the central structural proposals of the Commission, as set out in recommendations 15, 17, 18, 20, 22, and 23, are mistaken. In passing, I might add that I am not persuaded that the present mechanism for selecting the Vice-Chancellor has proved so faulty that it needs to be replaced, so I am not in favour of recommendation 26 either. But I want to concentrate on the governance proposals, especially the idea of the super-faculty and the associated proposal for the abolition of the General Board.
From a university perspective there is no doubt that the present faculty structure is in need of reform. Having sixteen faculty boards, which are neither formally represented on the central bodies of the University nor required to communicate directly with them, is nonsensical. It is hardly surprising that the Commission does not feel it necessary to labour this point. What is surprising is that the report does not address two consequential questions: why three boards and why use current faculties as the building blocks? Almost all that is said on the former is as follows (para. 5.112): `We believe that three boards is the maximum number which can sensibly be accommodated, and that any greater degree of fragmentation would be inimical to a coherent approach to planning and resource allocation.'
The only other justification offered for the three boards is that they have been designed (para. 5.105) to bring together `subjects in which the policy issues concerning teaching and research, funding, and other matters are broadly similar.'
But the similarity appears to be slight, given the data published in the Supplementary Volume as part of the KPMG Report. If a `coherent approach to planning' is dependent on the degree to which the super-faculties cohere, then the three-unit solution is distinctly unattractive.
A notable feature of the work by KPMG is that their financial model—-produced to support future planning in the University—has five subject groups that are not simply amalgamations of existing faculties. There is little doubt that there is greater coherence within these groups than within the Commission's super-faculties. What is more, many of the other desiderata identified by the Commission point to the advantages of having more than three groups, as do a variety of other factors.
As the report notes, Franks came out in favour of five groups, and the reasoning that led to that conclusion is not challenged. Cambridge has a well-established five-school structure (and a General Board), which it shows no signs of abandoning. The number of research councils with whom the proposed Deputy Vice-Chancellors would have to build up strong working relationships currently stands at eight, if one counts the British Academy's Humanities Research Board. And Oxford has, and has recently reaffirmed its commitment to, a site strategy involving four subject groups.
There are, in addition, certain negative reasons for avoiding three super-faculties: there is a danger that rational decision making will be replaced by the Buggins's turn principle; and there is an even greater danger of a two-culture divide in the `downtown' University. Given the capacity of such a divide to reinforce the tensions between college and University, this should be a matter for concern. The Commission makes perfectly good points about scaling down activities in some areas to make room for growth in others, but an arts/science divide seems likely to lead either to a spending status quo or to significant frictions. These problems would not go away with a five-board (or even eight-board) structure, but they would be mitigated.
The proposal to have only three super-faculties is intimately connected with the idea of abolishing the General Board, notwithstanding the fact that the Board `is regarded as more effective and is better understood than is Council' (para. 4.67). The report argues that (para. 4.83) `the way forward is to pass upwards from the General Board to a new Council the broad strategic oversight of the University's academic work ... and then to devolve responsibility for all other matters ... to a lower level.'
It is undoubtedly right that much more responsibility needs to be devolved downwards. The problem is how this should be done and what the responsibilities of the centre should be.
There should certainly be a strategic oversight function, but the oversight arrangements proposed by the Commission have a number of deficiencies, including a peculiar asymmetry between teaching and research. The proposed Educational Policy and Standards Committee would scrutinise the teaching work of the boards, but there is no comparable body to oversee research. In so far as there is any oversight, it must be presumed to operate through the proposed annual planning and resource allocation cycle, or directly in the new Council's regular, albeit infrequent, dealings with the academic boards. In either case, there is no equivalent sense of the research work of the boards being audited. Quite where the current and very valuable system of subject reviews would fit into the structure is not clear, given that they cover both research and teaching.
The obvious body to deal with such activities is a General Board. A General Board could also deal with the academic support services. Whilst there are some advantages in having a separate structure for these services, directly under Council, the thrust of many initiatives over recent years—and the leitmotif of the report itself—is to bring them closer to their users. This is of particular importance in the library and computing sectors. Some would argue for the division of both these sectors between super-faculties, but there are likely to be greater costs than benefits in such an arrangement. A sensible middle way is for a General Board to be responsible for overseeing both the faculties and the library and computing sectors.
A General Board would also be well placed to make strategic academic judgements about developments on the borderlands between faculties and, indeed, on the grouping and possible regrouping of subjects within faculties. One disappointing feature of the report is that there is no intellectual case made for the arts/medicine/science divide. Persuasive cases could be constructed for alternative arrangements that challenge conventional wisdom.
If there is to be both a General Board and devolution of power to faculties, then the responsibilities suggested for the Planning and Resource Allocation Committee would have to be assumed, in large measure, by the General Board. As a strong supporter of both strategic planning and devolution, I see no difficulty in such an arrangement.
I have referred throughout to a General Board because the current body is clearly not above improvement. For one thing, having faculty heads as members would be eminently sensible. The devolution package requires faculty heads to have a fair degree of autonomy and authority, but it would be desirable for that autonomy to be rooted in a broadly based faculty body, rather than a Council possibly dominated by college interests.
Let me conclude by saying that a great deal of the report is to be welcomed. The Commission should be congratulated for shining a torch into some of the darker organisational corners of the University. They have, as it were, located the fuse box, condemned the wiring, and sketched out a new circuit diagram. It is now up to Congregation to decide whether to accept the design and put the electricians to work, to reject it and hope the present system will suffice, or to look for a third way. I believe, Mr Vice-Chancellor, we need to find that third way.
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One is Chapter 8, entitled `Teaching and learning: quality assurance'. When I read through that chapter I had the following thought, which applies to the humanities, but I do not know how far to the sciences. Quality assurance in every department of life, including academe, is a deeply important matter. But I regard my whole job, with or without extra bureaucratic devices, as quality assurance in one field or another, and I have discovered through experience that it is too easy to create heavy bureaucratic systems, expensive in paper and time, and actually counter-productive. No amount of quality-assurance mechanisms, after all, can produce quality if we do not attract and entice absolutely first-class people to come to the University and work here. The humanities departments in Oxford have this great attraction, and they have always had it, that it is a privilege to work here, among distinguished colleagues. It constitutes the subtlest and most effective quality-assurance mechanism there is, and others tend to impede and detract from it.
Secondly, and leading on from that, as I read through the summary of this marvellous report, my eye just came down to some of the small items of which my own limited experience in university governance was able to instruct me. (I will not keep you with a lot of them.) As some people here may know, I entered the world of Congregation politics only a year or two ago. I learned that Congregation itself, as a constitutional device, has come up for debate several times in the history of the University. As a historian I am the first to acknowledge, in the general context of the history of deliberative bodies, that for those conducting the business of the University the sovereignty of Congregation must be a difficult thing to handle. I readily acknowledge that. At the same time, the principle of academic self-government, ultimate self-government, is deeply important, even though it may create practical problems. I would therefore, myself, resist any recommendation which tended to erode the ultimate sovereignty of the researchers and teachers. Therefore, rather than keep you, I will focus on one of the recommendations in the report, one which has a certain poignancy for me because it touches the last occasion, or almost the last, when I was here in this assembly.
There was a debate on that occasion about whether retired people should still be allowed to vote in Congregation. A motion had been tabled to abolish that vote, and the motion was defeated. The number of people voting against came up to the minimum number of seventy-five members. I was one of those seventy-five. Those of us who did not believe in the motion had gone round our colleges saying, `Can you come along?' There were so many people who would have liked to come along but had committees, tutorials, and the rest. So they could not come. The vote was therefore a near thing, like the Battle of Waterloo. I feel that to enlarge the minimum number of people in Congregation required to vote in favour of a resolution for that vote to be binding (recommendation 10), or against a resolution for the rejection to be binding, would militate against the busy working academics who should have the ultimate say-so about approving these splendid proposals. I just cite that as an example. There are one or two others, if you look carefully at the small print, that tend to erode the ultimate authority of the teaching and academic staff, the first-class people so painstakingly appointed here. Their authority is one of the wonders of our system. We should protect it.
At the meeting of Congregation on 17 March Mr Vice-Chancellor declared the general resolution carried nemine contradicente.
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