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subtext issue
68 2 December
2010 ***************************************************** 'Truth:
lies open to all' ***************************************************** Every
fortnight during term-time. All
editorial correspondence to: subtext-editors [at] lancaster.ac.uk. Please
delete as soon as possible after receipt. Back issues and subscription
details can be found at http://www.lancs.ac.uk/subtext. The
editors welcome letters, comments, suggestions and opinions from readers. subtext reserves the right to edit submissions. subtext does not publish material that is submitted
anonymously, but is willing to consider without obligation requests for
publication with the name withheld. For
tips to prevent subtext from getting swept up into your 'junk email folder',
see http://www.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/dejunk/. ***************************************************** CONTENTS:
editorial, news in brief, the sciences will hurt too, UK VCs on Browne,
university council, senate report, jubilee science park, 1966 and all that,
letters ***************************************************** EDITORIAL 'subtext 68' - is it just us, or does that have a kind of
insurrectionary ring to it? It may be
numerology, it may be coincidence, but in this issue we report increasing
unrest about the coalition government's plans to slash its funding of
university teaching and transfer the costs to students. In advance of MPs' vote on the proposals
later this month, pressure to get the proposals rejected or amended is
stepping up. Cardiff Liberal Democrat
MP Jenny Willott is widely expected to vote against
the proposed rise in tuition fees, and may even resign her government post as
Parliamentary Private Secretary to Chris Huhne. There are rumours that Vince Cable has been
wobbling on the £9,000 fees cap, and considering lowering it to £7,000. Campaigning groups have been set up by
academics, including the Campaign for the Public University. But it has been students and school pupils
who have been taking the lead - and we should all be paying attention. It
all started of course with the official national demonstration on 10 November
(see last issue). Then on 19 November
we saw a local 'manifestacion' of the growing angry
mood as around 100 students attempted to disrupt Lancaster University Council
to call Vice-Chancellor Paul Wellings' bluff after
his plea for 'constructive debate'.
But it was on Wednesday 24 November that things really started to get
interesting. On
that day around 50,000 students and schoolchildren staged walk-outs and
improvised demonstrations in town centres up and down the country, organised
through Facebook and Twitter. Lancaster itself saw about 300
schoolchildren from the city and surrounding towns marching noisily around
the town centre several times.
Thousands protested in Westminster.
Eight UK universities saw sit-in protests overnight - and on the
Thursday morning, students were still demonstrating in lecture theatres and
other sites at Edinburgh, UCL, Oxford, Cardiff, SOAS, Newcastle, Manchester,
Plymouth and Essex. As subtext goes to
press some occupations are still continuing.
The
National Union of Students, which quickly distanced itself from the occupiers
of 9 Millbank on 10 November, clearly realised they
were in danger of losing any claim to represent the student body. So on Sunday 28 November NUS president
Aaron Porter performed a volte-face, apologising for his earlier 'spineless'
lack of public support for university occupations http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/nov/28/student-leader-apologises-over-dithering). But there was still an overwhelming sense that
the NUS were at best trying to catch up with a runaway grassroots phenomenon. Monday
29 November saw an interesting new tactic, as a flashmob
of UCL students occupied a Top Shop store on Oxford St, using the slogan 'you
marketise our education, we educate the
market'. A number of sympathetic
members of the public were moved to join in.
Another national day of walk-outs and marches took place on Tuesday 30
November, with thousands taking to the streets despite the cold,
and large demonstrations in Manchester, Birmingham, Oxford, Brighton,
Bristol, Newcastle, Cardiff, Leeds, Sheffield and Edinburgh. The day saw over 180 arrests - mainly of a
group of protestors in Trafalgar Square who refused to leave at the official
end of the demonstration. That day
also saw an unpleasant hardening of police tactics, including charges by
mounted police and the return of the discredited tactic of 'kettling' of protestors for hours - particularly
disturbing with young schoolchildren and in cold weather. It
has been a long time since we have seen anything like this level of student
mobilisation. And, unlike most of the
UK's Vice-Chancellors (see report below), the students and schoolchildren
seem to be in step with public opinion: a survey carried out by Ipsos MORI shows strong support for public investment in
higher education, with 80 per cent saying that it should either increase or
stay the same (http://www.hefce.ac.uk/news/hefce/2010/publicatt.htm). Beneath the more vocal argument about fee
levels and student debt lies a deeper disquiet about the distorting effects
that the imposition of a privatised, market model will have on higher
education itself; the students seem to 'get' that as much as anyone. We may not agree with every single tactic
being used during the protests, but they certainly deserve praise and support
for making such a defiant stand. ***************************************************** NEWS
IN BRIEF The
curious case of Lancaster University and the Work Foundation With
the acquisition of the Work Foundation, Lancaster University is now able to
claim an association with three of the UK's top 20 HR thinkers, according to
HR magazine (see http://www.mostinfluential.hrmagazine.co.uk/2010-results.aspx).
Will Hutton at number 2 joins Cary Cooper at 7 and Paul Sparrow (a new entry
to the charts, pop pickers) at 13. It
has also presumably acquired London offices and a platform from which to seek
to influence policy and engage in consultancy close to the seat of financial
and political power. But, musing in
the subtext warehouse, we have been struck by the lack of information in the
university about the terms of the takeover. Since the Work Foundation was
apparently insolvent, with its pension fund in particular trouble, the terms
of the acquisition were presumably favourable. But has the university taken on any
liabilities along with the undoubted assets?
Is the acquisition the unproblematic gain for the university which it
has been presented as being? More
information about the terms of the transaction, and just what the
'synergistic' benefits to the university are, would no doubt help to assuage
such anxieties. ****** Library
restructuring subtext has been receiving disquieting news about staff
restructuring of some grades in the Library.
Well known across the university for the excellent service that staff give to everyone who comes near the Library, they are
now to be required to change working practices in significant ways, and their
numbers reduced. The unions are
involved in a consultation process, but the concern is that some underlying
choices, said to have already been approved by UMAG, will not be much altered
as a result. ****** The
V-C speaks The
Vice-Chancellor is interviewed in the latest issue of Scan, and shares some
of his thoughts about the Browne Review and student protests (http://scan.lusu.co.uk/news/2010/11/30/vice-chancellor-i-didn%E2%80%99t-say-don%E2%80%99t-march/). Apparently, the university is only at the 'operational'
end of education policy, so presumably there's no point discussing all this. ****** March
against the cuts There
will be a march in Lancaster city centre against the proposed cuts in public
services on Saturday, organised by coalition group Lancaster and Morecambe
Against the Cuts (http://www.lmatc.org.uk/). Meet at 12.00 noon in Thurnham
Street Car Park, Lancaster (opposite the Revolution bar). ****** University
in Crisis The
third in the series of talks on 'The University in Crisis' will be held next
Tuesday (7 December) at 5 pm in the Marcus Merriman Lecture Theatre, Bowland North.
Laurence Hemming will be talking to the title '"You owe it to
us." Why university?'. ****** USS
pension 'consultation'. Readers
with USS pensions will have heard about the proposed major changes to the
scheme that USS are tying to push through, despite the fund having moved back
into surplus, and despite the proposals having been rejected by all the UCU
representatives on the Joint Negotiating Committee (http://www.uss.co.uk/news/Pages/StatementfromUSS.aspx). USS have refused
to hold a ballot of members over the changes, and instead have employed a PR firm
to carry out a consultation. Scheme
members have until 22 December to express their views (http://www.uss.co.uk/howussisrun/schemereview/Pages/default.aspx).
***************************************************** THE
SCIENCES WILL HURT TOO The
outcry against the planned cut in government funding of university teaching
has focused on the potential impact on the arts, humanities and social
sciences. There is certainly a widespread
sense that the coalition government is continuing the prioritisation of the
STEM subjects that was supported by Peter Mandelson
in his Higher Ambitions report, on the grounds that they are of greater
strategic importance to the economy.
But the reality is more complex, and suggests that we should be wary
of invoking any us-and-them language between C. P. Snow's 'two cultures'. What
Minister of State for Universities and Science David Willetts
promised to protect is not the Block Grant funding for STEM teaching per se
but merely the extra cost of teaching those subjects over those in the arts
and social sciences (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11627843). Readers may be aware that subjects are
currently divided into four price groups or bands, starting with the most
expensive ones: A Clinical stages of medicine etc (4) (The
numbers after each category represent the current 'cost weight' - so for
example the HEFCE funding for each band A student currently brings in four
times as much as that for a band D student.)
It is expected that subjects in Bands C and D will have their entire
teaching grant removed, and that funding for subjects in bands A and B will
continue, but at amounts reduced by approximately the amount currently
received by band C, to make it possible to retain more-or-less equal fees
across the different subjects without affecting science teaching. So
while the 'hit' suffered by FASS and LUMS will be proportionally larger, in
absolute terms the cut in teaching grant per student is likely to be the much
same across all faculties. The worry that
many HE institutions that offer predominantly band C and D subjects will be
particularly hard-hit by the proposed new arrangements is arguably more to do
with their ability to demand higher fees - especially if students expect to
see higher education more as an investment on which they expect a return -
than any differential treatment of disciplines per se. In
the area of research funding the runes are harder to read. Research Council funding will not be cut,
remaining flat over the next few years - and there is no sign, yet, that the
proportion spent by the different councils will change. But many areas of science depend crucially
on high levels of capital spend, and capital allocations are being
drastically cut, particularly affecting the Science and Technology Facilities
Council (STFC). So 'big science' may
suffer greatly. What is likely to be
better supported will be any subjects that promise application - and
preferably ones that are less expensive - which could include design,
management and areas of the social sciences as much as medicine, science and
technology. At
Lancaster the relative balance of power between the hard and softer
disciplines, in terms of their perceived potential to deliver financial
stability and prestige, has shifted this way and that. But one of Lancaster's greatest strengths
has been close relations amongst the disciplines and faculties, a principle
that was indeed enshrined in concrete in the original plan of the campus. We should not allow ourselves to be picked
off one by one: we should maintain solidarity, and stick up for our
colleagues in whatever discipline. ***************************************************** UNIVERSITY FUNDING: THE BUDGET AND BROWNE - PART III:
FOLLOWING OUR LEADERS While
we're on the subject of divide and rule, subtext has been taking a look at
how the various university Vice-Chancellors across the UK have been
responding to the Browne Review of university funding. The
VCs have generally been responding through their university 'mission
groupings', such as the 1994 Group to which Lancaster is said to belong. In one of the most interesting breaking of
ranks from that pattern, Sir Peter Scott (VC of Kingston University)
dismisses these groups as 'victim-support groups for anxious vice-chancellors,
where they could whinge safely in private about the government, the trade
unions - and, of course, the other clubs with their snobs and upstarts'. Scott suggests that no individual
university has as a body agreed to join any of the groupings - and that that
the reliance on these 'VC's clubs' has allowed the government to play them
off against each other, meaning that they have offered at best weak
resistance and at worst active collaboration with cuts which have been far
higher in higher education than in any other area of the public sector (http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/nov/22/tuition-fees-higher-education).
There
are currently four such groupings, which, at risk of perpetuating the elitist
self-descriptions of the 'top' layers, can be arranged in order as follows: -
The Russell Group - 20 'research-intensive', generally older universities,
with an emphasis on medical schools, science and technology, including of
course Oxford and Cambridge The
official statements of these groups on the cuts follow a predictable gradient
as one moves 'up' or 'down' the list. However, whether it's the University
Alliance and million+ that can be seen as breaking ranks by criticising the
government proposals, or the Russell and 1994 Groups by supporting them,
tends (depressingly) to depend on where one is positioned in the layer cake. Most
critical has been the million+ group. In their 3 Nov press release they argued
that 'the Government appears to believe that higher education is only of
value to the individual and not to society and the economy. This is not an
approach which is being followed in any of the UK's competitor countries. The
big risk is that participation and social mobility will be damaged.' Particularly in their more recent
announcements, they have also argued that the government's modelling of
impact is wrong, in that the cost to students of the debt, and to the government
of writing off the interest before students earn over threshold, will be
significantly higher than predicted, jeopardising the promised
cost-savings (http://www.millionplus.ac.uk/press/coalition-should-think-again-on-university-fees). Nine
of the million+ VC's (those of Central Lancashire, Leeds Metropolitan,
Kingston, Wolverhampton, Middlesex, East London, Southampton Solent,
Greenwich and Bedfordshire) went further, signing a letter published in the
Guardian on 10 Nov, repeating many of these arguments and suggesting that MPs
should 'vote for additional funding for teaching, and for the costs of
teaching a wider range of students to be fully covered' (http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/nov/10/higher-education-universities-fees-cuts).
The
most outspoken of these have been Peter Scott (Kingston - mentioned above),
Malcolm McVicar (UCLAN) and Tessa Blackstone
(Greenwich). McVicar
has criticised Browne as elitist and flawed in its picking out of the STEM
subjects as particularly necessary for a modern economy and in its acceptance
of lower student numbers, and has castigated other VCs for their 'rush to
welcome much higher student fees and the acceptance of massive cuts in public
investment' (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/03/browne-review-elitist-flawed). Blackstone, a former Labour education
minister, appeared on Radio 4's Today programme arguing that the proposals
should be replaced by a graduate tax and a small fee rise. Out
on a rather different limb is Terence Kealey, the
rather, ahem, 'eccentric' Vice-Chancellor of the private University of
Buckingham. Kealey criticises the government's
plans - not for being too market-based but as not market-based enough, and as
a disguise for greater state intervention into HEIs. He argues that the proposed merger of all
the higher education institutions into a single Higher Education Council will
concentrate political power over universities, for example making it a
condition for them to receive state funding that they 'scour inner-city
estates' for more working-class students, and 'require all new academics with
teaching responsibilities to undertake a teaching-training qualification
accredited by the HE Academy' (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/higher/terence-kealey-leave-our-funding-alone-lord-browne-2143040.html).
The
University Alliance group have also criticised the proposals, but their
rather muted complaining looks like bluster or at best an awkward compromise,
particularly as each of their press releases ends with the boilerplate
statement that 'Alliance universities are strong and popular institutions and
will of course engage with any new system of higher education funding ... '. The
1994 group (chair and spokesperson, Paul Wellings)
and the Russell Group have both been solidly supportive of the raised
fees. Back in January, the Russell
Group's Chair, Michael Arthur (Leeds), and its Director General, Wendy Piatt, argued forcefully against impending cuts in a
front-page article in the Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/11/universities-face-meltdown-britain-suffer). But once it became clear that the Browne
Review might provide a mechanism for more than filling that gap, any
criticism of the cuts became highly muted, in case the government's trajectory
was diverted. Some of the Russell
Group universities were thought to have been exploring the possibility of
going private, and the raising of the cap to £9,000 may have been a sop to
try to keep them in the public sector.
But the Group are understood to regard the £9,000 merely as stage one
of a two-stage process leading to even higher fees, and already to be
actively lobbying for the fee cap to be raised further. You have been warned. As
mentioned in the last subtext, the Campaign for the Public University have been encouraging people to write to Russell Group VCs
demanding that they explain their complicity with the cuts. But some individual Russell-Group VCs have
made some nuanced and interesting statements about the university funding
crisis and the idea of the university, which is more than can be said for the
1994 Group VCs. Keith
Burnett (Sheffield) blogged perceptively about the subtle damage to the
culture of the university that might be wrought by judging some disciplines
to be more valuable than others and by adopting a narrow sense of what HE is
for. He considered how 'gutted' he
would feel if his subject, physics, 'had been identified as fundamentally
unimportant to the UK, or at least unworthy of its investment, in the way
that many of our colleagues' subjects have been.' He defended the idea of a university 'where
knowledge is multi-faceted, not divided by impermeable walls', and
particularly mentions the value of the arts and humanities: 'One of our most
powerful resources as a country, and as a University, is our cultural
insight, our deep questioning of our own society and ideas - perhaps we have
never needed that analysis more as we consider how best to go forward' (http://www.shef.ac.uk/vc/blog.html). It
was another Russell Group VC, Nigel Thrift (Warwick), who wrote a prescient
article in Times Higher Education back in March. He argued that universities were far too
close to government, suggesting that instead 'we need to start saying
"no"'. Thrift called for the
establishment of a commission that would defend the values of the university
against the tendency to reduce everything to the 'bottom line'. His own preferred vision for the higher
education sector was more like that of the USA, with a range of universities,
both public and private, with greater diversity of form and function. He suggested that such a system would be
less hierarchical and (perhaps naively) more likely to be characterised by
'parity of esteem'. But achieving any
common vision, he argued, would require universities to cooperate as a whole,
overcoming their tendencies to divide between the different mission
groups. Without renewed cooperation
and a dramatic revisioning, he suggested, 'each
group will seek its own salvation, gradually producing a more and more
Balkanised landscape' (http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=410613§ioncode=26).
Thrift's
warnings seem to have been ignored, his suggestions dismissed, and his direst
predictions are now coming true. We
have been let down badly by our Vice-Chancellors - by their neglect of the
opinions and values of their own university communities, by their seduction
by 'mission groupings', and by their inability to work together in the
interests of higher education as a whole.
And even Thrift seems now to have ducked back below the parapet, with
his public statements since the publication of the Browne Review and the
Comprehensive Spending Review showing little more than passive acceptance of
the course on which the government seems to be headed. ***************************************************** UNIVERSITY
IN CRISIS On
18 November the 'University in Crisis' series of lectures presented its
second speaker, Professor Maureen McNeil, who was invited to talk about her
experience of working in universities over the course of her career. Her
research is at the intersection of cultural studies, feminist studies and
science and technology studies: she was part of the Centre for Contemporary
Cultural Studies in Birmingham that was closed in 2002, amidst protest, under
the rubric of 'restructuring'. Her
talk, on the changing nature of the university, was entitled 'From
Gentlemen's Clubs to Entrepreneurial Hubs to ... ?' She
started by taking about the danger of idealising the past of the British
university, which was deeply hierarchical and reproduced the gender, class
and other inequalities of wider society.
In this context, the ongoing problems are not patterns of 'crisis'
only. Then, she gave an account of the shift towards the 'entrepreneurial
hub' as the dominant image of the university, one which emphasises business
models, productivity, profit, accountability and employability. She pointed out that there were good sides
to this shift, but described some problematic syndromes that it has also
encouraged: a pre-occupation with competitive metrics of performance such as
league tables, REF, impact and completion rates, which create ever higher
levels of work and anxiety; a buy-out, grant-getting culture, which devalues
teaching and can be counterproductive for writing and thinking; and a
university-publishing nexus which absorbs large amounts of invisible and uncosted labour in refereeing and strategising, and ties
university standards and research decisions too closely to what is going on
in the publishing market. All these
dimensions of the commercialisation of the university were contextualised in the
re-definition of higher education, marked by the retreat of the state from
the financial responsibility of it and the development of an entrepreneurial
mindset in universities. Turning
to the question of what the university would evolve into next, McNeil
suggested that the Browne Review might enthrone the student-and-their-parents
as an entrepreneurial consumer which would determine the fate of the
university. But it might also have the
perverse effect of intensifying inequality, and reversing some of the
progress that has been made in dismantling barriers to wider access. By
coincidence, the talk occurred during 'Global Entrepreneurship Week' at
Lancaster University, which FASS marked by holding a discussion called
'Should FASS be open for business?', with a focus on working with local
companies and increasing student employability. Professor McNeil's talk was a timely
response to the growing precedence of a business-like mentality over other
ways of understanding the value of a university. ***************************************************** UNIVERSITY
COUNCIL, 19 NOVEMBER The
latest meeting of University Council took place to the background beating of
war drums and the tribal chanting of disgruntled students. The students were protesting not only about
the proposed government cuts in HE funding but also
about the University management's constant refusal to include students in
discussions and listen to their concerns. A
presentation was made to Stanley Henig on the
occasion of his final Council meeting and the Chairman thanked him for his
many years of outstanding service to the University. The
meeting started with a Presentation from the Director of Alumni and
Development about 'Lancaster's Jubilee' plans. This was followed by the Vice-Chancellor briefly
reporting on various meeting he had attended and confirming the appointment
of Professor Steve Bradley as the new Pro Vice-Chancellor
(International). The Director of
Finance presented the 2009 financial accounts and also the financial
forecasts for the next three years.
The University made a surplus of £7.4 m (4%) in 2009/10. Future predictions imply that a student fee
of £7,000 would just about reach the break-even point covering lost HEFCE
income. The V-C carried this
discussion forward stating that Lancaster was in a relatively strong position
and even if HEFCE funding for band D and C students is completely removed
there would be no plan to change the academic mix of the university. The
President of LUSU confirmed that LUSU has now been awarded full charity
status. Lancaster students were well
represented at recent student demonstrations in London with over 250 students
attending the demo. It was also
announced that LUSU will make a presentation to Peter Diggle,
who recently resigned from Council, to thank him for his contribution. The
Director of Planning presented a set of data summarizing Lancaster's
performance in the national and international league tables. In several areas Lancaster outperformed the
vast majority of the Russell and 94 Group universities. The
Chief Operating Officer reported that most of the building programme is
running to schedule, the exceptions being the Carter Building and the HR
refurbishment. The University has now
submitted a new planning application for a single wind turbine which will be
discussed by Lancaster City Council in January. Council
then approved the appointment of two new members to their ranks, Dr Ruth Boumphrey and Mr William Bingley. The
Council meeting finished without any controversy and even the student
protesters had by then dispersed ***************************************************** SENATE
REPORT The
meeting of the Senate on 24 November coincided with a day of widespread
student protest. All, however, was
quiet in Bailrigg, a low-key security presence in
the Management School Extension the only sign that anything untoward was
anticipated. Inside Lecture Theatre 2,
proceedings were similarly tranquil. Professor
Wellings reported that the final outcome of the
Comprehensive Spending Review had been more favourable to university research
than he had expected. The details of
the distribution of QR income would be revealed in mid-December. Asked about the distribution of spending
cuts across the sector, he said that T funding would be managed by setting
Bands C and D (Arts and Social Sciences) to zero, on which basis Lancaster
would do slightly worse than average.
Imaginative redefinition of some subjects as sciences (without the
'social'), to bring them into Band B, was likely; the sector, Professor Wellings noted, had always been good at interpreting
rules creatively. The timing of the
cuts was still a mystery, but they would probably begin in earnest in
2012-13. On the Browne proposals,
there would be a parliamentary vote on fees in mid-December, followed by a
White Paper in February and legislation in July. Questions about the future of university
governance and how much central direction there would be were still
unanswered. Fiona
Aiken said that the target figure for an immigration cap just announced by
the Home Secretary was not as bad as she had feared. There was still argument within the
coalition about numbers: the Conservatives seem not to have known that
two-thirds of the much-quoted figure of 200,000 immigrants
were students. There would
certainly be tighter scrutiny of educational institutions, and it was
important to maintain the university's status of Highly Trusted Sponsor. It was therefore also important to keep
accurate records of attendance and performance. Students who are not here to get a
Lancaster degree would not count as migrants as long as they did not remain
in the UK for more than a year and a day. Senate
was briefed on the University's relations with regional and sub-regional
bodies. These were becoming more
complicated with the dismantling of regional structures, which meant (for
example in the NHS) that it was difficult to know what the contact points
should be, although it was certain that there would be more of them. The Northwest Regional Development Agency
would be closed in April 2012: replacements in the shape of Local Economic
Partnerships had been approved for most parts of the north west, but not for
Lancashire. The
proposed new procedures for undergraduate assessment were presented again,
probably for the last time, with some clarifications sought at the May
meeting of Senate. They will be
introduced from 2011 for entrants into both first and second years. Gavin Brown said that he and Ian Denny
would be glad to attend departmental meetings to advise
on implementation. It seems likely
that this offer will be taken up: while one of the virtues claimed for the
new procedure is greater simplicity, this characteristic is not immediately
obvious from the documentation (see subtext 64). The
last major item was on the REF and how to prepare for it. Professor McMillan's paper noted that the
measurement of 'impact' would make demands on our institutional memory (which
in subtext's view was formerly incarnated in Marion McClintock, but may no
longer be so readily accessible). More
use was likely to be made of data on grant income and postgraduate research
students. A senator asked if there
would be guidance on what proportion of staff to include. Professor McMillan said that HEFCE had
finally concluded that this was not a factor in the 2008 assessment, because
of the poor quality of the available data, but there was increasing talk of
'critical mass', and panels could use the proportion of staff included as a
measure of 'research environment'. He
thought external advice might be helpful in deciding on who should be in what
unit of assessment. There
was, finally, a brief discussion of league tables, domestic and
international. The international
tables tend to favour large, science-heavy institutions, making it difficult
for Lancaster to improve its standing in them. A top 100 place in the Times Higher ranking
was a realistic aspiration, however - though there were some oddities in its
table, such as the non-appearance of Bath, Cardiff and Warwick, that suggested
room for methodological improvement. ***************************************************** LANCASTER
JUBILEE SCIENCE PARK subtext readers returning to campus at the end of the
summer vacation were greatly surprised to see the brand new science park
lying on what used to be open fields to the north of campus. Because of the financial crisis, plans have
had to be amended somewhat. The
original architectural plans were scrapped in favour of what is known as 'Permatecture', or 'no-build architecture', which involves
not actually breaking the ground or constructing anything, but instead just
appreciating what is already there and probably can't be improved on. So
at first glance you might not think there is a science park there, but we
have been assured that it is. Oh
yes. Indeed, academics from the newly
merged Department of Pataphysics, Pragmatics and
Rituality have come up with a neat proof: 1)
the science park was always going to be the best of all possible science
parks The
main reason for the new design is of course the economic downturn and the
impending demise of major sponsor the Northwest Development Agency NWDA. This is to be ceremonially slaughtered in
2012, broken up, wrapped in black plastic for a few months, then ploughed under to enrich the fields as manure. The
design team has certainly done a great job in preserving the aspect and not
obstructing the views East from the A6 - you'd hardly know they've been
there. And, though it may look like a
mere rural idyll, we are told authoritatively that there are a lot of sciencey things going on - photosynthesis, peristalsis,
digestion - you name it, and it's almost definitely going on there. They've even been trying for a bit of 'blue
sky thinking', but the Lancashire location and the sheep neatly rule that out
between them. Nevertheless, there's
certainly been a lot of 'carnal knowledge transfer' going on - the impact
factor is indicated clearly by the amount of blue dye on backside. The
park will be officially launched in 2014 as Lancaster Jubilee Science Park,
inspired by the instruction in Leviticus 24 to leave the land to itself every
50th year. 'Ye shall not sow, neither reap that which groweth of
itself in it, nor gather [the grapes] in it of thy vine undressed', but 'the
land shall yield her fruit, and ye shall eat your fill, and dwell therein in
safety.' Amen. ***************************************************** 1966
AND ALL THAT - CHAPTER ELEVEN David
O'Dell was amongst the first students to study at the newly-founded
University of Lancaster. Here we continue his story - as he remembers it. Year
3: Summer Term 1969: 'Days I'll remember all my life ...' * Easter disappears in a flurry of second
interviews, hockey and a not inconsiderable amount of revision for finals
which are now just six weeks away, * After last year's
tour of Ireland, the Hockey Club decides to spend some time in the
Hertfordshire countryside, a county in which I have spent most of the last 20
years anyway. It is very cold, I lose a toenail in one game, damage my thumb
in another and then my hand turns black. Still, LUHC is the highest scoring
club in the North-west this year and has lost only two games since
November. It says so in the paper. * Second interviews
are fun, as long as you don't care whether you get the job or not. They are
lucrative as well because the firms pay expenses. I discuss the importance of
R&D in product development at Ford's, the future of the British aircraft
industry at BAC and the causes of war at Marconi's. Pressed Steel-Fisher
subject us to three hours of IQ tests and then take us out drinking in
Oxford, Rolls-Royce pick us up in a Bentley and show us around their factory
in Crewe and Elliot Automation finally admit they have no idea why they
invited me for a second interview. * Many of my fellow
interviewees are doing the same circuit and we swap tales of management
trickery. When the phone rings in a room of twenty of us at Ford's, we decide
as a group not to answer it, in case it is a test. This is a mistake. Twenty
minutes later some one comes in and asks why no one answered the phone: our
lunch is going cold. * When the dust
settles I am offered several jobs. The best is with Ford's who are willing to
pay me £1,197 a year, four times the size of my grant, as a starting salary.
Even more gratifying is the information that only six of the 24 of us being
interviewed were made an offer. * Meanwhile in Dolphinhome
,the three of us have made a solemn pact, sealed in Boddingtons, to try and
make up for three years of minimal effort: - we
will revise in our own rooms between 8.00 and 10.00, 10.30 and 12.30, 1.30
and 3.30 and 4.00 and 6.00, a total of eight hours a day; - in
between revising we will have tea, play cards and kick a ball around in the
field outside; - in the evening we will go on a three mile run and then
down the pub. * And it works.
For six weeks we revise, play Chase the Lady, drink gallons of tea and kick a
ball around. So predictable does our routine become that the neighbour's dog
is always waiting outside for us at lunchtime for the kickabout. 'Mitch' is the size, shape and texture of a
stiff yard broom, but never seems to tire of being tackled or thrown into the
river to retrieve the ball. * In mid-May the
Lancaster-York weekend comes as a pleasant diversion. Dick and I play for the
1st XI for the last time as we beat York 3-1 in front of 300 people. We
reject the chance of spending the rest of the weekend in York and drive back
to Lancaster to carry on revising. What has happened to us? * Monday 19th May,
1969. Finals. Eight papers in 11 days,
including a Saturday and the Whitsun bank holiday. Some go well, others less
so. And then it is all over. The sense of anti-climax is prodigious, but that
does not prevent numerous lunchtime toasts being drunk in the Lancastrian on
the last day. There is nothing to do
now but wait for the results which are not due out for another four weeks. * The Dophinholme Village Sport's Day is held on the Sunday
after Finals on the field at the back of our house. We throw ourselves
enthusiastically into the fun and are rewarded with 2/- each for coming
second in the tug-of-war. * Time now passes
like some long, hot, Edwardian summer as we return to our default settings of
accustomed idleness: it is hot, we play tennis and cricket, sit in pub
gardens and try not to think about the future. * Playing cricket for
a scratch team against the Ring o' Bells, Lancaster, I take my first-ever
wicket. Steaming in off a three pace run-up, the ball slips out of my hand
and climbs 30' into the air. The batsman dances down the wicket to hit me for
six but, never having faced such a delivery before, over does it and in
trying to turn quickly to regain his ground, trips and collapses in a heap in
the middle of the pitch. The ball, meanwhile, oblivious to the farce that is
being played out below, falls almost vertically on to the stumps. Much
laughter ensues, my embarrassment made worse by the fact that my victim is
the landlord and the only man on the field wearing white. The umpire calls
'over' even though I have two balls left to bowl. * The Graduation
Ball at Bailrigg is a marvellous affair. Nearly all
the men are in evening dress and the women look stunning. We drink champagne,
reminisce and talk of the future until morning. Mick and Anne get engaged. * Tuesday 24th June.
The results are due to be put up on the Politics Dept notice board at 5.30
but don't arrive until 6.30, by which time I am 99% water. No firsts have
been awarded, but I am one of six 2.1s. History will record that this was the
best performance by a County undergraduate this year. It will also record
that you can count the number of County undergraduates this year on your
fingers. The rest of the evening passes in a blur. * The Graduation
Dinner for Bowland and County graduands
is held two days later. Amongst much rejoicing and back-slapping, the
Principal of Bowland proposes the toast to the
Queen, The Duke of Lancaster, Dr Hamer to the Graduands of 1969, Ray Walker to Bowland
and myself to County. The unexpected brevity of my speech is
well-received. At 4.00 in the morning our party, still in evening dress,
drives to the Forton Service Station on the M6 for
breakfast. * The day before I
graduate I make one final trip to Bailrigg to empty
my pigeon hole and find a letter from the Principal of County, Brian Duke.
Annie and I are to share the Principal's Prize for services to the College
and in particular for our work on Pendragon. A
cheque for £4.10.0 is enclosed. * All that is left
now is the Degree Congregation. My parents and I are amongst the group of graduands and their families invited to lunch with
Princess Alexandra before the ceremony. I must have made an impression
because when I mount the stage to receive my degree she expresses the hope
that my mother and father have good seats. * And that really
is it. 'Tis done. I have a job with Ford's if I
want it, an SSRC grant to go to Aberystwyth and another grant to go to the
New University of Ulster in Coleraine. Or the
British government will give me taxpayer's money to spend two years in
Jamaica at the University of the West Indies. What to do? ***************************************************** LETTERS Dear
subtext, I
have read that Charles Clarke has been appointed a visiting professor to the
newly merged Department of Philosophy, Politics, and Religion. I am
not aware of his academic credentials.
I am aware of his past advocacy of the elimination of, for him,
worthless subjects like classics and medieval history [Eds:
see http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2003/may/09/highereducation.politics]. No
self-respecting university would honour a person of this ilk. I daresay that whatever courses he offers
will not take their departure from Plato's REPUBLIC or Aristotle's POLITICS. During
my last year at Lancaster, the University hosted a lecture by David Blunkett. After
all his years in politics, he had nothing of substance to say. As was said of the French aristocracy after
the downfall of Napoleon, he had learned nothing - and doubtless had
forgotten nothing. Of Clarke, can
anything different be expected? Robert
Segal, Chair in Religious Studies, University of Aberdeen ***************************************************** The
editorial collective of subtext currently consists (in alphabetical order)
of: Noel Cass, Rachel Cooper (Philosophy), Catherine Fritz, George Green,
Gavin Hyman, Peter Morris, David Smith, Bronislaw Szerszynski and Martin
Widden. |