The verbatim report of the debate in Congregation on 1 December on the general resolution concerning the Report of the Joint Working Party on Governance is set out below.
The general resolution read as follows:
That this House take note of the Report of the Joint Working Party on Governance.
When the Report of the Commission of Inquiry was received, it was apparent that two themes were central: governance, and joint appointments. The Working Party on Governance offers its proposals for consultation now; the other working party, chaired by the Chairman of the General Board, is actively engaged in developing its ideas, which will be brought forward as soon as is feasible. These present proposals do not, therefore, address the issues of duties, etc., which belong to the second working party, though they may provide some additional context for their resolution.
The working party has accepted the general validity of the criticisms which the Commission of Inquiry directed at the current structure of governance, and also the broad thrust of its remedy. That is to say that the working party has accepted the need for a more transparent, streamlined, and integrated structure at the centre, where a strategic approach to university policy can be combined with oversight of the functional areas of the University. Therefore, the working party does see as crucial the establishment of a single executive body under Congregation. Furthermore, it has accepted the need to devolve decision- making to appropriate levels within a `divisional' structure, with the purpose of shortening decision lines, enhancing flexibility and speed, ensuring that appropriate information is more readily available, augmenting the involvement of those whom the decisions most directly concern, and developing policies on teaching and research which are appropriate to the broad subject area and which can be implemented locally under devolved authority with delegated resources. Such an initiative thus also means devolving budgets and appropriate budgetary responsibilities. However, if the University is to remain properly coherent and balanced, this cannot be in any sense the creation of a set of autonomous areas. Therefore, the activities of the divisions must be set within an annually agreed planning frame, itself set within a larger and longer frame. There has to be monitoring; and there should also be more transparent resource allocation mechanisms so as to enhance the clarity of financial flows, not least in order to protect small units.
In some respects, the working party has departed significantly from the recommendations of the Commission of Inquiry. This is most important probably in three areas. First, the working party has sought (as far as it could) to embrace all interests in the University, most obviously perhaps in respect of the colleges. Second, it has sought to retain the strong democratic element inscribed in this University's culture and it has tried to reflect that in the processes by which membership of the various bodies would be produced. Finally, the working party has chosen a different model for the divisions (which the Commission called `super-faculties').
In sum, the working party believes that a system of governance which has long served the University does now in fact restrain local responsibility and accountability, that it lengthens decision-making lines and encourages micro-management at the centre. It also considers that it would be difficult under current arrangements to devolve budgets big enough to provide adequate flexibility. The working party believes that its proposals would enhance self-management and liberate innovation through faster and better decision-making and administration in a delegated system.
It is clear in the light of comments already received that there is quite considerable sympathy with the basic model for the future governance of the University, as refined by the working party. Inevitably, there are some concerns, for instance over the appropriate pattern for divisions in the sciences, over the general organisation of divisions in the arts, and over the position of small units. The working party will take close account of those concerns, not least since the principles of devolution it espouses require the development of `local' and `regional' structures commanding the confidence of those most affected by them. The working party looks forward to hearing and learning from the comments that will be offered today. In that spirit, I now formally move the general resolution.
We have been lucky enough, as Proctors, to be in a position to hear at first hand the developing lines of thought on the working party's proposals, and perhaps to know a bit about why Burke talked of `compromise and barter'. It would seem to me that the proposals for reform at the centre are incontrovertible. Speed of reaction seems to be increasingly important for the University, in getting an appropriate share of national resources. In our role, we have seen the high degree of confidence placed in the managerial capabilities of the General Board, and its committee structure, by the scholars in their cells, or at their lab. benches. In my view most academics do not want to get involved in administration---they regard their `work' as research, or teaching, or both. Their hope would be that the centre should be efficiently organised, to take the necessary strategic decisions with the minimum use of manpower resources, i.e. they do not want to see too many people doing it. They would be a little alarmed or puzzled at the batting to and fro of business between the General Board and Council, and therefore, I think, relieved at the proposals for a unified restructuring in the centre.
In my view, there is more to discuss in the proposals for local reorganisation. Here, I perceive a possible arts/science divide. As I have indicated already, both parties seemingly trust the General Board to carry out the required task in terms of priority/resource allocation. But a number of the sciences are pressing to have their own decision- taking devolved to them, and have been doing so for some time, wanting to control their own pace on a number of issues within an agreed overall plan. A divisional structure would seem to give them more scope for this.
Some on the arts side have worried about the divisional proposals---about perhaps being stranded on a desert island with the wrong partner and finding an arm missing in the morning. They would rather trust the General Board to protect their anatomy. Conversely, however, and taking an example of partners of differing sizes, it could be argued that Theology and Classics could have a more focused discussion of their respective claims under the divisional structure, than under a General Board structure, where all subjects are represented. Nevertheless, the proposed structure, in terms of size and pairings, would seem to be an important bit to get right. It seems that everyone can find something wrong with their proposed partners. We are well used to having to compromise within existing faculty board partnerships (for instance, Engineering can grumpily live with Chemistry's new building being the highest priority for the Physical Sciences), so can this ability for compromise and barter be extended?
The new divisions will need to have a large enough critical mass, if they are to be capable of replacing the General Board's role, of providing some elasticity between subject areas. This means that the number of divisional boards in any new structure will be critical---it may be necessary to compromise with the figure of four.
One of my own worries has been the power that would reside in the proposed heads of divisions. I believe we are well used to the power vested in the office of Vice-Chancellor (although he pretends he has not got any).
But in a head of division, because of this process of devolution, we could be faced with executive decision-taking, very close to areas of interest. Conversely, the power of the Vice-Chancellor could wane over a period of time. I believe the section in the working party's report covering the accountability of the heads of divisions to their boards has been carefully drafted, but I would want to see an implementation of legislation with all democratic safeguards included, to be relaxed in favour of executive action if necessary, only on the authority of the relevant board.
It is not possible, in a document of manageable size, to work out all the details which would follow from the adoption of the revised system of governance, but with some of Burke's `compromise and barter', there seems to be plenty to commend the report for further consideration. Mr Vice-Chancellor, I beg to second the resolution.
This afternoon I would like to do two things: firstly, to explain how the Bioscience Research Board and, indeed, the scientific community as a whole, came to this view; and secondly, to set the scene for Professor Rawlins, Chairman of Planning for the Bioscience Research Board, who will explain why our board thinks that the working party's proposals for just two divisions in the sciences and medicine will not achieve the required goals (as laid out by the Vice-Chancellor just now).
As soon as it was formed, the Bioscience Research Board realised that there was a major problem in the way in which the University governed the operation of the biomedical sciences, which for many years has been the most rapidly growing part of the University. The North Commission also recognised this problem, which derives from the way in which research in the sciences is funded. In crude terms, what has happened is that the General Board no longer has control over the great bulk of the funds coming into the University for the sciences and medicine. Yet, the General Board still has to govern the science and medical departments. So, governance is getting more and more divorced from the resources available for research. As a result, decisions on academic and strategic matters are either being made without adequate know- ledge or, worse still, are not made at all.
Let me put some flesh on these statements. The figures reported by the North Commission showed that the University's research grant income was, in today's pounds, £17m in 1965 but had risen to £104m in 1995. The University's income from the Funding Council and from student fees has not of course risen at this remarkable rate. As a result, the proportion of income managed directly by the General Board has dropped dramatically and is now a mere 30 per cent of the total income. Members of Congregation, what kind of organisation is it that can manage its affairs and yet controls less than a third of its income?
Since at least 95 per cent of current outside grant income to the University is in the sciences and medicine, we must look at the proportions in these fields:
---in the physical sciences, the General Board grant comprises 27 per cent of total income;
---in the life sciences, the General Board grant comprises only 17 per cent of total income;
---in medicine as a whole the General Board grant comprises a mere 6 per cent of total income;
---while in clinical medicine the General Board grant comprises a tiny 2 per cent of total income.
In other words, in Clinical Medicine fifty times as much income comes in from outside grants as from the General Board.
These financial facts underlie the concern amongst those in the sciences and medicine that the present governance structures are not adequate to deal with their areas. It is not that we wish to have direct control over these research funds, which are of course raised by individual members of academic staff for their own research. However, we do recognise that funding on this scale has to take place within a strategic framework and that it has major implications for the management of the academic discipline as a whole. Development of the necessary strategy and the evolution of the academic base require both devolved authority and devolved budgets, as recommended by the working party.
I have so far been speaking about the internal pressures that have made us recognise the need for devolution. I would like to turn now to a few of the external pressures.
The first of these was the decision by the Government to transfer a large proportion of the research funding of universities from the Funding Councils' allocation to that of the Research Councils. Oxford was faced overnight with a shift of some £12m out of its HEFCE allocation into the more nebulous and unpredictable source of funds from the Research Councils. Secondly, many organisations that provide a large amount of research income for the University (by which I mean tens of millions a year) have spoken about the difficulty they face in finding exactly who in
Oxford represents the various sectors of science and medicine, and they also complain about a corresponding lack of research strategy in the University. Such a need is even more acute now, since central government has the habit of announcing major funding initiatives with very short deadlines and it will only be those universities that are ready to respond who will be able to benefit. Most recently, we have the Joint Infrastructure Funding initiative, in which the Government and the Wellcome Trust are making available well over half a billion pounds in order to improve research infrastructure in universities. I am sorry to say that I do not think that Oxford is as well prepared as it should be to take advantage of such an initiative and I fear that we run the risk of losing out to better-prepared universities.
I can imagine that some of you who are not scientists might think that these matters would not affect you and that the whole governance issue might be an irrelevance. Perhaps it may not have much immediate impact upon your work, but it is clear that times are changing and the welcome establishment of the Arts and Humanities Research Board will mean that you too will be faced with similar issues in the future. I believe that it is of great importance for the humanities and social sciences in this University that they are organised in such a way that they can respond effectively and rapidly to external funding initiatives. The recommendations of the joint working party do, I believe, provide the appropriate framework.
The principles of the framework are that the new divisions will be decision-making bodies that will greatly improve the efficiency, the accountability, and the transparency of decision-making in this University, exactly as the Vice-Chancellor told us. I can see five key features of the divisions: each of the divisions must be:
---academically coherent;
---close enough to the delivery of teaching and research in an academic area to be able to make well-informed decisions;
---able to respond rapidly to internal needs and to external strategic policy changes;
---of manageable size and professionally managed, with due democratic control (as the Senior Proctor emphasised);
---led by a person of stature who can represent their sector of the University to the outside world.
My colleague Professor Rawlins will show how these principles can best be implemented in the biological and medical sciences by having two divisions, one of life and environmental sciences and one of medicine; and I hope that Professor Bell will be able to speak about medicine.
I would like to conclude, however, by urging that it is in the best interests of the whole University to move in the direction of governance reform. Possibly, as the Senior Proctor implied, the rate of change could be different for different sectors of the University, but the fact is we all share a common goal: the pursuit of scholarship and research in order to discover something new. There should be no division between the arts and the sciences; we must not fall into C.P. Snow's trap of `two cultures'. The aim is the same, but the way we achieve that aim has changed radically in the sciences and medicine. Scientific and medical enquiry can no longer take place, as it did in the seventeenth century for Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke, and Thomas Willis, in the cellars of Christ Church and the pantries of University College. Today's scientists work in teams; thus, each member of the established academic staff in medicine is responsible on average for a research budget of over a quarter of a million pounds a year and each directs the work of eight other research staff.
These facts probably lie behind the phrase I have heard recently that the University is being dominated by the `Science Barons'. Mr Vice-Chancellor, members of Congregation, I regret this attitude: we all have the same aim, we are all dedicated to the highest possible standards in research and teaching. All of us, including some 3,000 scientific and medical research staff on short-term contracts (and therefore not at the moment in this Congregation), are members of the University and all are dedicated to its aims. We want the same success in scholarship and research for the arts and for the sciences.
At the Encaenia twenty years ago in this very theatre, the then Professor of Poetry, John Wain, epitomised the dynamic of this great University as `originality grounded in tradition; vitality continuously renewed'.
Mr Vice-Chancellor, members of Congregation, we are today at a watershed in the phase of renewal. If we do not grasp the present opportunity to create a new governance structure, then we run a grave risk of losing our vitality.
It is important to register my support for the working party's overall aims, and in this, I concur wholeheartedly with Professor Smith. We need strategic thinking, and the ability to make speedy and well-informed decisions. We need accountability and transparency in our governance structures. In other words, it must be clear who makes the decisions that affect our lives and how those decisions are taken. To achieve these goals, we need boards (or divisions) with decision-making powers: that, in turn means devolved budgets, so that the decisions have consequences, and divisional heads with the time and expertise to serve their boards effectively and responsibly. The working party clearly shares those goals: why, then, is there anything left for me to say? The reason is that the great majority of those of us in the life sciences believe the working party has made a crucial misjudgement, but one that is, fortunately, easy to remedy.
We do not believe that a single life sciences board as proposed by the working party would deliver the changes that the working party and we who work in the field seek to achieve. The remedy is simply to divide that board into two: a division of medicine, made up of the existing clinical departments combined with the pre-clinical departments and Experimental Psychology, and a life and environmental sciences division, built around the very large and successful basic biological sciences departments. This rearrangement would leave the proposed physical sciences board unaffected.
Why do we want to do this? Let me make two things clear at once. First, this is not a bid to achieve some disproportionate increase in influence for science, and the life sciences in particular, at the expense of other groupings. On the contrary, it is an internal structural matter. Our goal is simply to achieve a management organisation that will work effectively to let our teaching and our research flourish. We can surely trust one another to solve amicably any issues of inter-group representational balance that could arise as a result. Second, it is not driven by an unwillingness to change from the status quo. On the contrary, we see the need for change; we have argued for change; and we actively seek change. What we fear is achieving the appearance of change and not the reality.
Why do we think that in order to manage the life sciences properly we need two boards? I will outline three reasons. First, we seek coherent groupings. Second, we have to deal with the volume of research activity in the life sciences, which is extraordinarily diverse, and unmatched in its sheer scale. Third, we have the special problem faced by the clinical departments in their need to interact with the National Health Service. When the Bioscience Research Board first proposed amalgamated boards with devolved budgets (which was some time ago: I was still a brunette) we initially favoured a single life sciences and medicine board, just like that proposed by the working party. But the idea was stillborn. When we asked one another who could run it, it turned out that none of us believed that anyone could run it.
The alternative proposal, for two life sciences boards, does several things.
It creates coherent divisions of medical sciences and of life and environmental sciences. I know that you will hear the views of people who would be constituent members of both, this afternoon, so I will not represent their views in advance. But I do think that it is particularly important today to emphasise the wish to integrate the clinical departments with the pre-clinical departments into a single division. A coherent division of medical sciences would achieve that end. We do not want a separated clinical school, seeing itself as excluded from the aims of the rest of the University. We want full participation with our clinical colleagues, and that surely derives not from a single, overarching management structure, but from a shared sense of purpose and intellectual cohesion. An over-diffuse board could not deliver that.
It provides boards of a size that we know should work. We already know that the Physical Sciences Board operates effectively: that is presumably why the working party proposes to retain it largely unchanged. Our proposed boards should be able to work rather similarly. A single life sciences board would be on a much bigger scale in a number of respects that have real organisational consequences: so let us go with an experimental outcome that is already known to work. I have heard it suggested that we ought to be able to manage with a single board, because businesses that are much larger than us do not have to be subdivided. But this is a completely inappropriate comparison: we are not like a single business, with a single powerful company director allocating us to this task or that. Nor are we a single-issue research organisation. Quite the opposite: we are a confederation of separate research enterprises, rather more like lots of little businesses (each on average employing several people, as you have heard). And each member of this confederation is putting their own ideas forward, but also depends in part on what the other members are up to. This is a completely different structure from a big company, and it demands a quite different scale of organisational unit; and all that leaves out the added complexity of the need to deal with the National Health Service.
Are our conclusions simply odd or unrealistic or unimaginative? I and my colleagues have looked to see whether we can find any major research universities in Britain or the USA that have a single life sciences board that incorporates their medical school. There may be one in the USA; but it is not Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, San Diego, or UCLA; and in the UK, thirteen of the sixteen medical schools who have answered our questions separate the medical school from the biological sciences. (I am not going to provide a value judgement as to major research ratings, but Imperial College, Cambridge, UCL, Edinburgh, Liverpool, and Manchester are amongst those with separate boards.)
So we believe that we need two separate life sciences boards, and we ask you to understand our position, to appreciate its underlying reasons, and to support it. We think it is essential for our continued success. We do not believe that having two boards will create disastrous divisions between adjacent subject areas: we think that two well-informed divisional heads will do a better job of assisting co-operation and solving problems than could be achieved by one overstretched person, dashing from pillar to post. We would want cross-representation across boards, as a matter of course, in just the way that I attend the Clinical Medicine Board's Planning and Development Committee. We think that a single life sciences board would, in practice, inevitably subdivide. It would split at the interface between the clinical departments and the rest; and it would probably split again at the interface between the pre-clinical departments and the rest. In doing this, it would lose the clear identification of the decision-makers and the overall accountability that is a critical goal of the whole enterprise; and it would return to government through a maze of ad hoc committees, as at present. We must seek change, and this means that we must go for structures that will deliver the changes that we seek.
So, first, why do we need change? After eight long years on the General Board, it seems to me that, increasingly, the task we face on a weekly basis is growing beyond our capabilities, however hard we try to do it. The problem is that we always try to `micro-manage', try to set priorities for who should get money: for example, for half a secretary for a professor, for which faculty board should be specially allocated a few thousand pounds more to help them cope, or whether the wording on the further particulars for a chair is appropriate. We are well served by the officers, who do a splendid job with their background papers, but our attempt at micro-management in a complex world has two effects: it removes time and energy we could better spend on the important strategic and policy decisions that must be taken, and it sometimes results in `less than perfect decisions'. (I would hazard a guess that there may even be members here today who would agree that the General Board does not always get it right!) This is not a result of malice or, I think, sheer incompetence, but because we are people with limited time and many interests and we cannot be experts on all sectors of the University. Probably at one time when life was simple, being fully informed on all aspects was indeed possible (but I suspect that was when Woodbines cost tuppence a packet!). Now we need to devolve the decision-making to where the local knowledge is and I, like the previous speakers, strongly support the Commission's and the working party's views on this.
I also support the ideas of the Commission and the working party on the need to combine the arenas for policy decisions with those of resource management. Our present system of decoupling these makes little sense in the harsh realities of the modern world.
As any Proctor will tell you, we also need to simplify our committee structure. (I counted over fifty-three committees that we attended regularly in 1989--90 and there may well be more now!) A good example is the number of overlapping committees dealing with staff matters that I have a particular interest in: for example, the Staff Committee, Academic Salaries Committee, Academic Staff Development Committee, Appointments Committee, Higher Appointments Committee (and these are just the ones I happen to sit on!). Not all of these of course could or should become one committee, but I agree with the working party that they need rationalising and all of those I mentioned could come under the aegis of a `Personnel Committee'.
So, yes, I believe we do need change, the overall thrust of this being to:
---make decisions more rapidly;
---make better decisions more locally.
My second question was `How could divisions improve matters?' As Professor Rawlins has covered this topic for the bioscience departments I shall emphasise only two points very briefly. Divisions must be of the right size: that is they need to be large enough to even out fluctuations in supply and demand of posts and resources, but small enough to allow common interests in teaching and research to flourish. The Dean of the Medical School (Dr Ken Fleming) put this thought well, recently, in aphoristic form as `large enough to cope, small enough to care'. But they should not at the same time become castles: that is (by being well-managed groupings of the right size) they should facilitate lateral interactions between groups rather than establishing walls between the groups. My own department (Biochemistry) should be a good test of this: we have lateral interactions currently with physical sciences (particularly Chemistry), with pre-clinical and clinical departments, and with the other biol ogical science departments. For our own good, these must continue whatever governance we eventually adopt. I believe that well-managed divisions of the right size are the best way to foster these lateral interactions.
The third question was `Are the proposed divisions the right ones?' Professor Rawlins has clearly set out the thinking of the Bioscience Research Board and I do not need to repeat what he has said, other than to say that I strongly support what he did say. What I would emphasise, is that the proposed division that combines the clinical, pre-clinical, and biological science departments is just too big (with research income and research personnel so large that it would be greater than all of the other divisions put together). If you look on pp. 33--4 of the working party's report1 you see that it would contain half of the academic and research staff in the University; it would be responsible for 70 per cent of the outside grant income---and all of that in one of the four boards. That is too big.
The Bioscience Research Board's proposal of a life and environmental sciences division with the large departments of Biochemistry, Zoology, and Plant Sciences, plus Biological Anthropology together with Anthropology and Geography, would be a division of commensurate size to the physical sciences division. And this is the right size. Size is important!
A separate life and environmental sciences division also avoids spoiling the medical science teaching ethos of a purely medical school.
The constituent parts of a life and environmental sciences division, I believe, would form a stimulating and forward-looking grouping. Biochemistry, Zoology, and Plant Sciences already interact as a faculty board, and with the arrival of Professor Ryk Ward, and the interests of his group in ancient DNA, Biological Anthropology is now becoming increasingly molecular and it would fit well in this group as do environmental studies of our ecosystem.
So, in conclusion: I believe strongly that the medical division would be much better in size, managerial operation, and teaching ethos without joining up with the departments of the life and environmental sciences division. Moreover, the individual components of life and environmental sciences could interact with each other better on their own and, as a result, would be better at interacting with the other divisions such as the division of physical sciences.
First, with respect to the humanities faculties: paragraph 38 of the report recognises the likelihood that divisional structures in the arts will in practice operate differently from those in the sciences. We expect the main units of administration for many purposes to continue to be the existing arts faculty boards. That would follow from their diversity, and it would be consistent with the report's emphasis on the devolution of responsibility and decision-making down the structure to its most appropriate location, wherever that might lie. I hope members of Congregation in the humanities will find that recognition of local differences of ethos and function reassuring.
At the same time, however, I want to stress that it will be vitally important for the humanities to develop a co- operative planning mechanism at the divisional level if they are to take full advantage of the opportunities which the new structure is designed to offer: in bidding effectively for additional resources at the centre, for instance, where they will necessarily be in competition with the other divisions; and in shaping a coherent humanities response to initiatives from external bodies, not least the Arts and Humanities Research Board. As a former member of the Committee of Chairmen of Arts Boards, I do not at all underestimate the difficulties for the arts faculties in adapting in this way; it is not going to be easy for them to evolve new arrangements for the necessary two-way traffic up and down the structure. Even in my time, however, arts chairmen saw the need for joint strategies and co-ordinated responses, if their faculties were to take advantage of opportunities for development; and the opportunities are going to be much greater and much more immediate under the proposed new structure than they were before. The working party would very much welcome comments from arts boards themselves on how they would see their organisation developing within a divisional system.
The second area I want to talk about, academic services, is also one where the working party would welcome informed advice. In our remarks on this sector, in paragraphs 46--50 of the report, we have again recognised local differences. We concentrate there on libraries, museums, and information technology. All of those require, on the one hand, strategic direction and resourcing, and hence a clear input to and from the centre, and on the other, a close relationship with users at the divisional level and further down. Our remarks in the report have been particularly shaped by the plans currently being developed for a more integrated university library service with these goals in mind.
Hence the emphasis in the report on the importance of a single committee for a particular service reporting directly to Council and responsible both for strategic development and for representation of user interests; hence the report's recognition of the operational and managerial responsibilities of a professional university officer, in this case the Director of Library Services; and hence the report's stress on the need for the service to be represented in decision-making at every relevant level.
It does not follow, however, that precisely the same structure would necessarily be applicable to academic services other than libraries, although the working party was inclined to suppose that they might better fit information technology than museums. Again, we would welcome advice from these sectors on how they would see themselves best incorporated into the proposed structure.
Finally, Mr Vice-Chancellor, graduate studies. The subject is not much referred to in our report, any more than other important areas of the University's activities---the undergraduate syllabus, say, or the future direction of research activity. These were all matters considered at length in the North Report. The working party has not gone over the same ground, because its remit was narrower: to design a structure of governance which would enable such matters to be considered more effectively in the future than in the past. As a relatively new head of a graduate college, however, I have become increasingly aware of the University's particular lack of a purposeful strategy for graduate studies, and by our inability to respond quickly to a changing national and international market in this area. There is an urgent need for a sense of direction here, and, it seems to me, a danger that understandable immediate concerns---about college fees for undergraduates, for example---will keep the subject for too long on the back burner. We need to build upon the welcome local development of new one- and two-year courses, for example, to ensure that the new university graduate studentships are properly organised, and to determine the proper role of colleges in providing for our graduates.
I very much hope that the structure proposed by the working party will facilitate rapid and focused attention on these and similar issues by bringing greater coherence to broad subject areas, by introducing a formal college input into university decision-making, and by creating space for strategic thinking at the centre; it has been designed with that in mind.
Mr Vice-Chancellor, I hope that members of Congregation will welcome the general thrust of the report, and respond to the working party's invitation to comment on it.
The North Commission came to the conclusion that, with all due deference to and respect for the dedicated work currently invested in our existing administrative structures, they do need to be redesigned so that we can create a single body which shall have responsibility for the academic, financial, and administrative policies of the University. The working party has come to the same conclusion. Here I should like most warmly to endorse those comments in the working party's report which point out that such a reform would not imply any disrespect for the current General Board. On the contrary, they reflect a desire to make academic matters a core responsibility of the central governing body of the University, and to ensure that other functions of the General Board are carried out at the levels of the academic divisions proposed by the working party.
The North Commission felt very strongly that, at a time when demands are constantly being made on the University by outside bodies, it is essential that its own governing body should be able to shape policy based on Oxford's perceived needs rather than constantly being forced to react to external pressures. If that objective is to be achieved, the proposed University Council must not be overwhelmed with matters of detail delegated upwards to it from bodies which ought to be able to take responsibility for action themselves. The Commission also recommended that the University's central Council should focus its responsibility for academic development and the disposition of resources on an annual resource allocation cycle. I am sure that it is essential for a fair and efficient use of resources in the University that all funding, whatever its source, be subject the overview of the Planning and Resource Allocation Committee of the Council acting under the sovereign authority of Congregation. The proposals of the working party will provide us with this procedure.
I should also like to congratulate the working party on having put flesh on some of the rather bare bones which the Commission bequeathed to it---particularly in its analysis of the functions of the academic divisions and their relations with faculties and departments.
There are, however, two areas in which I still feel that recommendations of the Commission which the working party has discarded have some merit. I am a little worried, for example, on the stress laid on the need for impartiality on the part of the heads of academic divisions in the discussions of the Planning and Resource Allocation Committee. There are times when Olympian detachment is neither possible nor even desirable, and I think that the division heads should be able to champion the interests of their academic divisions in a fair but robust manner when the allocation of resources is under discussion. Only if that is allowed to happen will the committee itself obtain a clear overview of the issues involved, and I believe that it was for this reason that the Commission recommended that the heads of divisions should speak, but not vote, on that committee. The matter of voting may not in itself be of paramount importance, but the principle of advocacy does seem to me to be essenti al if the allocation process is to operate fairly and efficiently.
My second reservation concerns the number of divisions proposed by the working party. I warmly endorse the working party's statement that `it is important to create much larger blocks on a scale which encourages a strategic focus across broad subject areas and enables sufficiently large resources to be devolved to provide planning and operational flexibility'. I am, however, concerned that the decision to create separate divisions for the social sciences and humanities will weaken what would have been a powerful single humanities division, which would have tremendous strength in staff numbers, teaching loads, and research output, whilst being a remarkably lean---not to say bony---animal so far as its current demands on resources are concerned. I fear that two weaker divisions may suffer from underfunding and even financial rivalry, not to mention the awkwardness involved in dividing subjects such as Modern History and Philosophy from Politics or Economics.
Nevertheless, I am convinced that the proposals of the working party mark a great step forward, a step made necessary by the changing nature of the collegiate University over the last thirty years, and the developments in the environment within which this University has to operate. That environment requires responses not only to the demands of national governments but also to academic competition on an international scale. It is always tempting, when faced with the prospect of change, to decide that, after all, we are better off as we are. But when I think back on the consultation exercises carried out by the North Commission I cannot help remembering that many of our distinguished colleagues voiced serious concerns about the operation of the present system, believing that it was too slow, too obscure, and that it generated an impression---however ill-deserved---that decisions were being taken by bodies which were too distant from the needs and the interests of those who were require d to carry them out. The working party's recommendations will go a long way to remedy such defects by combining a more effective central governing body with greater devolved authority to other, clearly defined, institutions within the collegiate University.
From the Coopers & Lybrand report onwards, there has been widespread agreement on much of the analysis. It is generally accepted, as we have heard from other speakers:
---that the central bodies have been too much concerned with micro-management and too little concerned with strategic planning;
---that resource allocation has been opaque and conservative, inhibiting innovation;
---that existing structures have discouraged local responsibility and accountability;
---that decision lines have been too long;
---and that the rate of adaptation of the University to a rapidly changing environment has been unacceptably slow.
Building a consensus on an appropriate remedy has been more difficult, but significant progress has been made. The first debate in Congregation indicated that there was widespread support for the general thrust of the governance proposals in the North Report but that there were numerous concerns about the recommended structures. The Governance Working Party has responded to these concerns and has brought us closer to an acceptable solution. Following the publication of their report, which, as you have already noted, Sir, broadly endorses the conclusions of North, there seems to be general agreement:
---that we should have a single executive body;
---that there should be a relatively small number of divisions;
---and that the guiding principle throughout the structure should be that of subsidiarity.
I believe we are now in a position to argue about the details. Some of them are major details but they are not sufficiently significant to bring the reforms as a whole into question.
The first of the details I want to consider is the apparent asymmetry in the treatment of teaching and research at the centre. In the Governance Working Party's proposals, teaching would have a body of its own under the new Council, namely the Educational Policy and Standards Committee. Research would be dealt with largely by the Planning and Resource Allocation Committee but this body would also handle questions of planning and resource allocation with respect to teaching. A more natural and symmetrical division of responsibilities would be to replace the Educational Policy and Standards Committee by an academic standards committee, whose functions would be to audit both the teaching and research activities of the divisions and to respond to external auditing pressures in the form of teaching quality and research assessment exercises. These audit and response functions are quite distinct from the process of planning and resource allocation. A division of responsibilities along these lines has the attraction that both the auditing function and the planning function would echo the life of individual academics and academic units, with their dual responsibilities for teaching and research and their need to strike an appropriate balance between them.
The second detail is the one that has excited most interest in recent weeks, and indeed in this debate---the problem of choosing an appropriate number of divisions. This problem has striking similarities to one of my research interests in the field of computational geography---the problem of regionalisation (of building up a small number of regions from a large number of individual zones). Problems of this kind have several important characteristics. First, they tend to have a multiplicity of constraints and objectives. The latter are sometimes ambiguous and usually conflicting. The only solution we can hope to find is a good compromise solution. And the process of identifying such a solution involves a series of iterations, which continue until a stopping rule indicates that a satisfactory outcome has been achieved. All such processes require a good stopping rule.
The analogy with the problem of devising a new institutional geography for the University is a close one. We are on our second public iteration on the number of divisions (no doubt the working party has been round this loop many times in private) and there is considerable pressure to search for a better outcome. There is no doubt that there are ways of making the divisional structure more attractive with regard to some objectives but such an advance is likely to be achieved only at the expense of other worthy goals. Individual subject groups are keen to promote objectives that would work to their advantage but the working party, on behalf of Congregation, has the difficult task of deciding on the relative weights to be given to such objectives across the board.
In this debate, I want to promote an objective which is in danger of being neglected even though it is likely to command widespread support in Congregation. It is an objective which seems to have guided the deliberations of the working party without being made explicit. I have in mind the notion of fair representation.
It is vital to the reforms that the heads of division have a seat at the top table. The principle of fair representation suggests that the constituencies associated with those seats should be roughly equal in size. At the very least, there should not be gross over- or under-representation of any one academic group. If one looks at the bar chart in section 6 of the report showing numbers of academic staff, the four divisions are remarkably effective in achieving this goal. The picture is not greatly disturbed if one turns to the chart for RAE Category A staff. In both cases, the social sciences are a little smaller than the other divisions, so any suggestion that this group should be split to allow, say, Law or Law and Management to form a division of their own would be damaging in terms of fair representation. The effect of separating the biological and medical sciences would be similar. Of course, one could argue that both the biomedical group and the social science group should be split to give six divisions but that would leave us with the humanities (the largest division in terms of academic staff) being seriously under-represented. Academic coherence is, of course, a desirable quality but I hope that the working party will stick to its guns and continue to regard fair representation as equally important.
It may be possible to devise a fair partition of the University into more than four divisions, but the larger the number of divisions the less likely it is that there will be effective decentralisation of power and responsibility. We will lose the essential economies of scale. Whilst it is possible to imagine, say, the Surveyor being directly involved in building projects with four divisional boards (of which two would have the lion's share of university-owned space), it is increasingly likely that we would end up reinventing existing central structures with an increasing number of divisions. I have a vision of the Surveyor trapped forever in traffic around the congested University as he attempts to circle from one divisional board meeting to another.
The third point I want to make relates to the structure of the divisions themselves, especially in the arts. Here too the question of fair representation is vital but so is the objective of shortening decision lines. The working party has been reluctant to prescribe divisional structures in any detail, arguing that this should be a matter for local decision. However, the word `local' is used rather loosely. We do not have `localities' at the divisional level as yet but we do have them in individual subjects, increasingly in the form of departments. Some units, like Law, are presently constituted as faculties but could be transformed into departments, provided they were adequately resourced. I believe we should resolve to move increasingly towards departmental structures and to give departments fair and direct representation at divisional level. This would have a number of implications, including the removal of the existing faculty board layer (except where the faculty board itself is reconstituted as a department), thereby shortening existing decision lines. In the absence of divisional localities within which such structural change can be debated, I would encourage the working party to put aside its reluctance to interfere and to bring forward proposals, perhaps in the form of alternative models, for the internal organisation of divisions. I believe this would have the advantage of allaying some of the fears of individual groups, particularly in small subjects, which arise from the present uncertainties surrounding their relationship with the divisional board. To be confident that your interests will be fairly represented, you need to know how they will be represented.
In conclusion, I would like to add an observation about the stopping rule. One of the virtues of the new institutional geography we have in prospect is that it should be capable of reforming itself without a further Commission of Inquiry. If we do not get it quite right, or if circumstances change significantly, we should be able to make the necessary adjustments, including a change in the number and structure of divisions. If one of the problems we are seeking to address is the inability of the University to make timely decisions, I believe we should be consistent and adopt a fairly rigorous stopping rule for the governance debate.
On that note, Mr Vice Chancellor, and with a formal expression of my support for the resolution, I think I should stop.
Firstly, we can look at the overall structure of governance, where it stands in these proposals, and where it is going to stand in the future of this University. We should bear in mind that we live today very much in the structures recommended, or adopted I should say, post-Franks. That was thirty years ago, and doubtless these structures are in danger of having to last nearly as long again, given the nature of our processes.
Secondly, I shall want to look briefly at the interrelation between the structures involved; and thirdly, at the relationship with other structures of the University.
I think, Mr Vice-Chancellor, that when we look at the structure of the University we must also bear in mind what are our medium- to long-term goals: of course they are the furtherance of research, the study of scholarship, to be a great university. But, when I came back and heard the word `divisions', I was immediately reminded (it will not surprise you) of the University of Chicago. The University of Chicago and the California Institute of Technology are two universities, two institutions, which have divisions. Caltech is not appropriate for our consideration: it is far smaller. The University of Chicago is of a comparable size, as indeed is the university where I spent the whole of the last year, the University of Virginia. It is really looking at the latter, the University of Virginia, where I want to perhaps warn of some of the things we must avoid.
It is right that we should have a narrower structure at the top. Going back to when I was the University Assessor in the early eighties, one felt, so to speak, the two-step between Council and the General Board, which today must be rather like two elephants attempting a tango. To have a unitary structure at the top will cut through many of the divisional processes there. To have the pinnacles of the main committees is important. To have a small number of divisions is also important, but what is crucial when we get to the structure of the divisions is that they should reflect what we want this University to be about in the future, not merely the best management structures today. In this, Mr Vice-Chancellor, I think it is important to realise that this is an intellectual university, and one where I hope that we will avoid a division between what you might describe as the academic part of the University and the growth of any professional schools. The divisional structure as proposed inco rporates the aspects of professional schools (whether in medicine, management studies, or anything else that may come in the future) within them, and I think it is important to maintain the balance. I think the concept of four divisions can probably achieve that in the sense that it is important, if we are to have a strong divisional structure, that each division in fact represent a range of interests. There may be movements across the current proposals, but they should represent a range of interests so that none within a division is predominant yet there is no separate move towards the professional schools.
May I next move to the relationship between the various committee structures proposed. One of the advantages of having been Assessor, nearly twenty years ago, was that (unlike my sadly now late Proctors [Miss T.C. Cooper and Dr P.M. Hayes]) as Assessor I had time to actually sit and think, whilst I served on university committees, to actually analyse how the University's business was carried out. Indeed, I think, changes have been relatively few since then. But, in looking at the recommendations of the working party, my instinct was to actually run through their model various things that occurred when I was Assessor, and that I have seen since as a member of a faculty board and as a senior college officer---how various scenarios run through the model. I am sure that the working party tested them all itself, but there are aspects that do need further examination. It seems to me, for example, that there is a slight clash between what the Planning and Resource Allocation Committee would do and what the Personnel Committee would do. It is not instantly clear, for example, how they would actually control where the expansion took place, given the degree of devolvement. There is an overlap in their responsibilities, I think perhaps best illustrated in the chart which shows the current Planning and Development Committee of the General Board coming under Planning and Resource Allocation, yet the Joint Committee of the Senior Tutors and the Planning and Development Committee coming und er Personnel. This points, I think, to the need for more straight academic as well as financial input into planning and resources. I just bring this up as an observation.
It now brings me on to my third point, the relationship with other bodies in the University, and specifically the colleges. I had the impression looking from the distance that colleges were about to be lowered to the level of Yale colleges, in danger of eventually becoming that, when hearing of the North Report. The working party has, I am glad to say, seen the importance of the colleges, yet when you look at its report, the colleges come in sprinkled around on the charts---rather like confetti. That they should have representation is acknowledged. It is not quite clear enough where it is. Can one be certain that, in the structures proposed, colleges actually have that much of a say on the Council, when the constituencies are divided firstly by divisions and then a small group for Congregation? Doubtless, especially if Congregation votes to enlarge itself, there will be many non-divisional groups wishing to be represented. I think that more care needs to be taken as to where the colleg es fit in there.
I have remarked briefly about appointments. Appointments in this University are one of the core activities of the administration. Again, as we become a more collaborative university between the University and the colleges, one wants to be able to see greater input at that level.
These are observations I would like to make, Mr Vice-Chancellor. In general I support the working party and wish it well in its remaining deliberations, taking on board, I hope, these and many other points that are made.
The working party's solution is nicely balanced: `Authority at the divisional level must formally be vested in the divisional boards.' Boards will authorise the heads of divisions, as their chairmen, `to act on their behalf, subject to report'. Heads of the divisions, then, are thus chairmen of the boards on whose behalf they act. But they will not be elected by the members of the boards, nor by the constituencies for, and perhaps over, whom they exercise authority. They are to be `recruited' through a process of formal application to a selection board. They cannot be held accountable by those on whose behalf they are to act.
Why, if the chairmen are to be responsible to the divisional boards, should they be appointed rather than elected? Would election produce less suitable candidates than appointment? There clearly is a possibility that a diverse electorate might make an ill-informed decision. An elected candidate might seek to advance the interests of an influential section of their constituency at the expense of smaller faculties or of wider university interests. Elected heads may act in a high-handed way, though, if they lose the confidence of their colleagues, they would, presumably, have to resign. This is not necessarily the case for people appointed to positions of authority. These are in fact positions for which, we are told, potential candidates would `need to be prepared'. They are, it seems, of such a nature that arrangements would have to be made for their re-entry into academic work after they demit office. It sounds as though the people who might be recruited to these positions may be of a ra ther different species from the ordinary working academic.
Will appointment produce more suitable choices than election? At least in those parts of the University with which I am familiar, the record of appointments of heads of institutes or departments suggests that this may not be the case. There have been several cases where people appointed to head university departments or institutes have either been unable to meet their responsibilities or have lost the confidence of their colleagues. The University has had to appoint others to take over their jobs while continuing to employ them. The short term of appointment proposed for divisional heads would obviously limit the costs of such an outcome. But the importance of the position would mean that a poor decision would have very damaging consequences.
I therefore think that now and in the future Congregation should consider very carefully whether it wishes to extend the principle of appointment to heads of divisions, or whether it would prefer to identify a procedure for electing those who will act on our behalf.
I left Oxford in 1987 to become Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh. I arrived there to find the same confusing plethora of central committees that still afflicts us here in Oxford today. Clear and direct lines of accountability were largely lacking. Papers seemed to pass interminably from committee to committee, like elderly birds who had forgotten in which particular nests in the colony they should be laying their eggs.
In 1990, a situation developed in Edinburgh which made it essential that the structure of governance should be changed. And so---amongst many other matters---it was proposed that the existing faculties should be grouped into the equivalent of four academic divisions, with substantial budgetary devolution from the centre to these divisions; very similar, in fact, to that now proposed here in the working party report.
Initially, the same anxieties were expressed as can now be heard in Oxford. Small faculties in the humanities were apprehensive and even suspicious at being placed in the same division as large and politically powerful subjects like English and history. The Law Faculty was profoundly dismayed at the prospect of being grouped with the social sciences. Many academics felt the divisions too large and cumbersome. However, the university accepted the new governance structure, but subject to the condition that its operation should be reviewed after three years.
When, three years later, this review was carried out, not a single person wished to revert to the old system, and only minor changes were made. A great deal of the credit for the success of the new structure lay with the heads of the four divisions. They made sure that the interests of the smaller faculties in their divisions were fairly and sensitively protected. Mechanisms and criteria for allocating the substantial resources which had been devolved down to the divisions were devised which were much clearer and much more transparent than those which had previously existed. And most importantly, the heads of divisions worked as a close-knit team with myself and those who chaired the new central committees, with the result that the university prospered quite vigorously.
So, the role of the heads of division was crucial. But how were they selected? The Governance Working Party, in paragraph 45 of its report, proposes a system in which formal applications are considered against clear selection criteria by a form of electoral board. I have to say that, at Edinburgh, the situation of having to select between individuals of the right calibre who voluntarily applied to be in competition with each other never remotely existed. Instead, the right person had to be identified, persuaded, and invited, sometimes with some arm-twisting by their academic colleagues. The qualities required were a subtle mix of administrative shrewdness, political intuition, university experience, and most importantly, the respect of academic colleagues across a range of disciplines. Heads of divisions had to be Janus-like, for on the one hand they were perceived as representing (and answering to) a defined academic constituency, and on the other, participating in making decisions fo r the greater good of the university, even if sometimes it was to the disadvantage of their own academic constituency.
I therefore believe that the selection process proposed by the Governance Working Party lacks the proactive element of informally and discreetly trying to identify good people and persuading them to apply. But I think there is a serious risk of a far worse outcome if---as some now propose---the head of division is selected simply by holding the type of election which we presently have for the General Board and Council. This would be an illusion of democracy, since most of the electorate would not know all the candidates sufficiently well to make comparative assessments of who has the right mix of qualities to make the best head of division. Further, there is a risk of good candidates from smaller faculties losing out because members of larger faculties will tend heavily to vote for their own kind---and it will be crucial when the new governance structure is set up that the smaller faculties have confidence in it. And finally, since heads of divisions will have a responsibility in the wi der University, it is only fair that some account be taken of views in that wider University, as indeed the Governance Working Party's proposal recognises. Of course, at the concluding stages of the selection process, it will be necessary to determine that the majority of the members of the divisions do indeed have confidence in the persons proposed as their heads.
What I have said is, as I have explained, based on my experiences in an ancient Scottish university which does have some key differences in tradition and ethos from Oxford. However, in the matter of finding good divisional heads, I suspect it will be no different here. In 1986, in Oxford, I chaired an ad hoc review of Physics which recommended that the five Oxford physics departments should be combined into a single unified department. Although this was widely supported, it was not easy to identify the first Chairman of Physics. In the end, the elements of the kind of procedure I have just outlined did produce someone who proved excellent. But he had to be persuaded and invited: he would never have voluntarily applied or put himself up in competition with his colleagues in a public election.
Mr Vice-Chancellor, I very strongly support the overall thrust of the working party report because my own past experience tells me it is likely to bring about many important improvements in how this University operates. But this same past experience tells me that finding individuals good both at helping their divisions to be successful and at helping the University to prosper is a subtle and complex process. Hence, I much prefer the working party proposal, provided it has the proactive element which I identified.
It would, I think, be unrealistic to expect that next term's proposals will provide a completely satisfactory answer or that they will be adequate for what is bound to be a period of continuing internal and external change. Governance of this University will need to change in the light of experience and events. I ask that the proposals put to Congregation recognise the need for further changes and explicitly promise that there will be continuing review and refinement, especially in the early years. I think that this commitment to review proposals and develop them, to fill in the details, would allay many of the anxieties I feel about the report as it now stands.
Second, I am also concerned about some of the remaining uncertainties about central structures and particularly the lack of clarity about executive authority. It seems to me that with a very large, cumbersome executive council, and with the committee structures proposed, we may expect to see parallel lobbying, formation of sub-groups, all sorts of informal arrangements---the sort of procedures that we are not of course unfamiliar with at present. This is not perhaps a satisfactory way of running a university which is favouring decentralisation and particularly the devolution of budgets. It will also hinder us from dealing with the familiar complaint about who speaks for Oxford or for its component parts.
I suggest that there is a strong argument for defining a greater degree of executive responsibility at the centre and in the divisions, even though I accept that different parts of the University may wish to move at different speeds. We need a better definition of the role of elected members of Council and committees alongside those who have a more intensive day-to-day involvement.
My third point is the one about the divisions. Several speakers have already spoken about this in some detail. I do not want to repeat what they have said but merely to emphasise the strength of opinion with the life sciences that the present proposal for a single division is unsatisfactory. It would undoubtedly mean an extra tier of administration, indeed a barrier, between Council and the various constituent groups which would, I think, develop formally and informally at a lower level.
My final point, is related to this, and I think it is what I particularly want to emphasise, that I see the proposal for a life sciences division as extremely harmful for the unity of the University. Five years ago, I was the only member of Clinical Medicine who was a member of a major university committee, the General Board, and I then felt stranded, indeed isolated, between the centre and eight- een rather separate clinical departments. There was ill feeling on both sides, and misunderstanding on both sides. In the last few years, due to the efforts of you yourself, Mr Vice-Chancellor, the Chairman of the General Board, and others, there has been very substantial progress in establishing close working relationships with much greater personal and day-to-day contact. We have begun to overcome a very substantial geographical and political divide.
I fear that the life sciences division would reverse this trend. The pressures within medicine for a separate medical school, which have been present for a good manyyears, would substantially increase. There are many in Headington who already feel that the University means little or nothing to them; there are others who feel frustrated. I think that, within a structure in which they had even less contact with the centre, there would be more discontent and this would be greatly to the disadvantage of clinical medicine, the life sciences, and the University. Our own recent experience is that closer contact with other colleagues, South Parks Road, and the centre is of great advantage. The present arrangement offers the opportunity for clinical medicine and other sciences to be closely involved not only in matters that concern them most immediately, but also, I believe, in supporting developments across the whole range of university interests.
For example, we are in a situation in which most of my colleagues do not understand what you, Sir, referred to as the great issue of joint appointments. Very few of us know what that means: the words `CUF appointments' mean very little. We need greater integration if we are to enable medicine and the sciences to actually contribute to the University---a unified university. I see the present proposal as deeply harmful.
I hope therefore, Mr Vice-Chancellor, that the proposals we see next term will show some modifications, but that they will also be such as to allow continuing development in the light of experience.
The Clinical School has, since the Smith Report, been waiting for the opportunity to introduce an executive structure, based around an Executive Dean. This is likely to fit well with the Pro-Vice-Chancellor position which is proposed in the new structure. It will only succeed if resources won by the faculties are largely devolved to those at the coal face. We need fewer centrally programmed `five-year plans' with large, expensive central facilities supporting the likes of computing. We need an executive structure capable of taking decisions rapidly and with transparency.
There has been much discussion about the size and content of the divisions proposed by the working party. These should be determined by management issues, not simply by academic disciplines, and should be of a size that allows the term `devolution' to be properly applied to the process. The Clinical School has unique management issues and problems, clearly recognised by the original North Commission. We have complicated interactions with the National Health Service and we all must practice medicine to successfully teach and do research. The Clinical School is already very large, accounting for 40 per cent of the University's research income. Biomedical science will expand more rapidly than any other field of science in the next twenty-five years, so it is likely that the school will remain the dominant scientific research force in the University for many years to come. In the past, the voice of the school has too often been ignored. We are anxious not to be relegated into a faculty wher e we are not heard. To facilitate the integrated teaching increasingly demanded by the General Medical Council we are willing to integrate into a single medical school with the pre-clinical departments. We are, however, uniformly opposed to the concept of an all-encompassing life sciences board that would incorporate the medical school as well as all the other biological sciences. Such a structure would be so large as to be unmanageable, and the Clinical School would lose its representation---as has happened with the Bioscience Research Board, where Clinical Medicine, with more than 50 per cent of the research, has less than 10 per cent of the representation.
On the other hand, it is also unlikely that the other biological sciences departments would be particularly happy by being dominated both financially and strategically by a massive medical school: you cannot eliminate the concept of a medical school by attempting to dilute it. A single life sciences board would share little more than the nature of our scientific experiments. We have fundamentally different issues at hand and perspective compared to things like Plant Sciences. These include our National Health Service commitments, our requirement to train undergraduates and postgraduates for a professional career, and the organisation of a faculty where there are relatively few established staff but a very large research income. My department, for example, runs over £20m of research grants a year on the basis of seven HEFCE academic staff. We are very different than most of the rest of you. Any attempt to force an amalgamation would in the end lead to the Clinical School breaking free of the division and organising its own structures, as it has attempted to do in the past, defeating the whole purpose of change in governance.
I think it is important to listen to our constituency. All the departments in the Clinical School have expressed a strong preference for a unified medical school and opposed the single, large, all-encompassing life sciences faculty. These feelings are strongly held. I hope they will be carefully considered by Council and Congregation.
One is that I think we are already seeing nationally and internationally some exciting new intellectual developments which incorporate the various branches of anthropology, for which I speak. Mention has already been made earlier about the importance and the links of Biological Anthropology with the biosciences, and one should also mention that in a sense all branches of anthropology, and there are a number of branches of anthropology apart from biological, are concerned with evolution in some way (evolution of society as well as evolution of persons and species). I think that that has to be considered as reasonably central to the whole outlook of the subject.
But of course it incorporates, within all that, the study of material culture, and from that of course museum ethnography and archaeology, the human sciences, and, I would also argue, environmental change as a facet of geography. All these together constitute the basics, the rudiments, of an exciting new general thrust in scholarship, perhaps echoing the heyday of some nineteenth- century scholarship, but obviously with modern implications.
The second is related to one issue that came up, which was the whole question of representation; and the third to collaboration, over and against the fear of isolation by divisions, and the lack of contact between them. It seems to me that a new life and environmental sciences division would in fact be pivotal if it were the fifth division---pivotal in a sense in which (if I may be so bold as to take one of my own subjects, medical anthropology) it draws upon both the medical and indeed the physical and biological sciences on the one hand, but also draws upon, shall we say, the history of medicine and developments in the arts and humanities on the other.
This breadth might not apply to all aspects of the new division, but issues like environment, and subjects such as the human sciences and anthropology, clustered as they are around the biosciences, do lend to this division that special quality of being intermediary, perhaps even a fulcrum, which may militate against isolationism, and also provide for some degree of representation which would not be imbalanced.
Remarriage is now perhaps much in fashion, but not necessarily with the use of a marriage broker. We have heard from representatives of both the physical and the life sciences of the Physical Sciences Board's wish to remain the same and to continue to govern itself the way it does now. But, of course, the proposals we have before us are for combining Physical and Mathematical Sciences. As a former Chairman of the Mathematical Sciences Board, may I say that the divorce which occurred in 1963 was because we were in some ways very different. We continue to be rather different, and indeed Mathematical Sciences has within it these days three rather different departments, not only the Mathematical Institute but the Computing Laboratory and a small unit, the Statistics Department. We shall need to be very careful about how they are represented, in the same way as care will be needed in the arts in determining how one can meld and mix the various arts faculties into the new divisions. I share the optimism of the President of Wolfson that when we look round in a few years, we shall be full of praise for the foresight of North, and indeed of your own working party; but there will have to be some decisions soon, not only about the way in which we meld physical and mathematical sciences, but with all the arts as to how reassurance is given to smaller units and to bodies which have been used to working very differently. Mathematics, for example, with its thirty CUF lecturers, is so unlike any natural science department.
I would wish the working party to think a little further as to whether it is really safe to let the divisions work out afterwards, on their own, just how these matters are to be managed, and to what extent some guidelines need to be laid down beforehand. I hope that the divisions will be small enough to cope and not so large as not to care.
One further problem I would like to highlight, very briefly, is that, like many structures within the University, the museums and collections have individually either Visitors, Trustees, or other types of `management' groups. While these bodies have been of such assistance in the past, they do not seem to have been integrated into any proposed structure. In addition, it is not clear how `devolution' would extend down to structures such as a museums and collections committee. There must be many proposed committees within the new scheme without a natural figurehead (like the Chairman of the Libraries Board) who would have responsibility for organising the strategic planning and funding of the particular constituencies. Thus, in circumstances where you have a fairly disparate grouping brought together, and the resources devolved down to that level, there is a real danger of committee members entering into continous conflict over resources. Now, some might regard this as a good thing, but common sense dictates that you must have a small amount of distance between the people who actually produce the plans, and those who approve and resource them. I am not sure that the working party has yet given sufficient thought to the problem.
Now, Mr Vice-Chancellor, I am going to change my hat and speak as a member of the Faculty of Biological Sciences. At the momemt we remain transfixed by our health, and justifiably so. Much public money goes into health (some might argue: not enough) and looking after all aspects of the National Health Service. Of course this has impacted favourably on our medical school, which has done so spectacularly well, and I underscore everything that has been said about the necessity of bringing the pre-clinical and clinical sciences together to an integrated whole. By bringing the pre-clinical departments into the fold, it also welds a crucial link between South Parks Road and Headington, and of course brings much more of a university dimension (as one of our previous speakers has mentioned) into medical activities. However, I would predict that, perhaps in twenty-five or thirty-years' time, the tables will be turned, and it will be the position of the planet's resources that will be the focus of our attention. How are we going to feed ourselves? How are we going to eke out the remainder of the very finite resources we have on the planet's surface? How are we going to deal with the large numbers of people that will appear in just about every continent? How are we going to deal with spectacular environmental change? I am sure we will see massive levels of public resource diverted into this area and progress in the `life and environmental sciences' will be recognised as absolutely crucial for the survival of our race on earth. Our desire for such a `division' is based not on convenience—but on very real need, particularly in teaching.
On reflection, we probably have not talked enough about teaching here; we have talked about resources, we have talked about planning, we have talked about responsibility, but at the end of the day most of us are teachers and our duty is to teach and enthuse the students as they come through, and to ensure they make a difference to the world around us.
No notice of opposition having been given, Mr Vice-Chancellor then declared the resolution carried without question put under the provisions of Tit. II, Sect. v, cl. 9 (Statutes, 1997, p. 12).