subtext 120

29 May 2014

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'Truth: lies open to all'

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Every three weeks during term-time.

All editorial correspondence to: subtext-editors@lancaster.ac.uk

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CONTENTS: editorial, promotions, fass dean, your new library, who pays the piper, griffin, more about leicester, links, letters

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EDITORIAL

All change at the top. Subtext is pleased to welcome four new shiny faces to Lancaster to help us, we are told, to drive the University’s ambitious strategy forward.

Professor Stephen Decent joins us from Dundee to take up the post of Pro-Vice-Chancellor Research. Professor Sharon Huttly, previously at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has been appointed to the newly created role of Pro-Vice-Chancellor Education Professor Simon Guy has been appointed as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences – see below. In addition, Lancaster receives another chap from Warwick; Professor Neil Johnson joins Lancaster as Dean of Health and Medicine in August 2014.

Yet to be formally announced is the appointment of our new Provost of Colleges, Student Experience and the Library. Of interest to subtext is the term of office for this role (if any!) and how it might correlate to the term of office for the role it sets to replace (Pro-Vice Chancellor Colleges & the Student Experience). Professor Chetwynd has, at this point, served the full four years plus one renewal that the PVC role affords her. subtext has no knowledge of the applicants for the Provost role, but also no knowledge of any specification as to whether the incumbent holder of the soon to be redundant role can re-apply. If there are no such specifications, and if the salary for the role remains the same (despite a clear demotion of status between Pro-Vice Chancellor and Provost), then it certainly raises questions as to whether or not the rationale for such a drastic change to the role is another exercise in obfuscation.

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PROMOTIONS

subtext hears rumours about the promotions process: that, despite written assurances to the contrary, promotions committees are taking non-inclusion in the recent REF into account in decisions; that some apparent slam-dunk senior lectureships are being refused; that Lancaster is in general stingy with advancement compared to its peers. We're not in a position to evaluate these rumours – anecdotes aren't data, we know – but not being in a position to check led us to wonder whether there are publicly-available statistics about promotions over the whole university and over time. We'd love to hear if so. In their absence, we'd also like to hear more anecdotes: stories of successful and unsuccessful promotion attempts welcome, to the usual email address.

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FASS DEAN

Simon Guy, currently Head of the School of Environment, Education and Development and Head of Architecture at Manchester, will take over from Tony McEnery as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences on 1 October. We in FASS look forward to meeting him – in the meantime, subtext's Manchester-based sources cheeringly report that Professor Guy is 'sane' and 'not one of those management robots'. Readers can get a preliminary sense of his style athttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-Pu30Wqqgk

The outgoing Dean Professor McEnery has had a long run, including his most recent period after the embarrassing non-hiring of the 'Grim Reaper', Professor Nancy Wright. He'll leave behind a radically transformed faculty: some closures (the Institute for English Language Education, Applied Social Science, Music), some mergers (LICA, PPR). subtext intends to offer a fulsome godspeed in a future issue.

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YOUR NEW LIBRARY

As readers will have noticed, the Library is being refurbished. subtext understand that the whizzy plans for renovation will result is a substantial reduction in actual shelf space, particularly in subjects such as modern languages. subtext does not have any figures for this, but presumably the Library does...

Do you remember when we were promised the paperless office? Are we on the road towards that other oxymoron the bookless library?

The first such facility in the UK is likely to be at Imperial College, London, which last year announced that over 98% of its journal collections were digital and that it had stopped buying print textbooks. Of course the USA has got there before us. Texas hosts the nation's first bookless public library: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/01/04/san-antonio-bookless-public-library/4310655/

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WHO PAYS THE PIPER...

The Students' Union has suffered financially this academic year – it is currently running a deficit of well over a hundred thousand pounds. subtext understands that the union is taking steps to right the ship, and that there is no threat to jobs. While we don't want to speculate about where the fault lies, we do want to point to some contributory factors and to a worrying possible result.

First, there are the unavoidable losses suffered by the Union's commercial arm. For example, subtext readers will recall the clearing students of summer, spawned by the University's annual policy of expansion and resulting annual housing crisis. In recent years, clearing students without accommodation were hoovered up by LUSU Living, the Union's letting agent. But this tradition was bucked last summer when the University started love-bombing potential clearing students with perks such as free bus passes and waived College memberships as part of offers of accommodation in City Block, Cable Street or University of Cumbria accommodation. Students who accepted the latter were also afforded catering cards to dine at the UCUM refectory. For reasons not clear to subtext, LUSU Living's rooms were not included in this package. Empty rooms and a subsequent financial deficit are the result. Then there's the Sugarhouse, the Union nightclub, which isn't exactly bucking the national trend of students going out less. Come September 2014, maintenance loans will rise by all of £55, so the trend doesn't look set to change, and it bodes appallingly for the future. The Sugarhouse's rapid decline has led to the Union cancelling its Wednesday nights for the foreseeable future.

A significant portion of the Union's funding is derived from unrestricted block grants from the University, currently totalling £619,857, and the University have offered gradual increases year on year. These increases have previously been made with the Union's finances in good shape, but with a recognition of the rise in student numbers and a need to keep student spend per head proportional to previous years. It strikes subtext as a civic duty to be fulfilled by the University – if the University will continue to expend, then it must ensure that the Union has the ability to offer the same wares at the same price to larger numbers.

Grant increase time is coming around, and this time the Union is in dire need. Although still in the very early stages, and still pending any kind of negotiation, subtext is aware that the University are offering an increase on block grant funding and a plugging of the Union's leaky dike with a caveat – the creation of an oversight committee, perhaps made up of the Vice-Chancellor, the University Director of Finance, the Pro-Vice Chancellor for Colleges & The Student Experience and a couple of LUSU bods. While this body cannot legally have oversight of particular Union spending, it is still a worrying idea. To repeat, there are as yet no solid terms of reference for such a committee, but one would hope that the ongoing discussions of its creation raise the following questions:

1) How else might the University be able to apply 'off-the-record' pressure?

2) Will the Union be placed in the strategically uncomfortable position of having to declare in advance certain political activities that they would prefer to spring on the University?

3) Does the University distrust the Union’s trustee board and accountants who are the incumbent sole 'overseers', and will trustees and sabbatical officers even be party to discussions that may take place on such a committee?

4) Is the real intention to meddle with and blockade the Union, which this year has grown some teeth and started to actively and openly criticize the University?

5) Will the money be paid all in one go, or will the Union have to meet 'key performance indicators' (management speak for potentially, and perhaps deliberately, unachievable or undesirable targets) in exchange for a small, staggered drip-feeding of funds?

6) If the answer to (5) is the latter, might that be a way in which the University could punish the Union for 'bad behaviour'?

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GRIFFIN

Let's all just take a moment to say 'thank goodness Nick Griffin is no longer one of the North West's MEPs'. Then perhaps start to worry that Griffin was right, replying to the question 'whether the people of the north-west had rejected his party's racist and fascist policies' that 'They've voted for UKIP's racist policies instead' (http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/may/25/nick-griffin-concedes-mep-seat-european-elections).

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WE LISTEN TO OUR READERS

Following encouragement from one of our readers (subtext issue 119) we return to the subject of the city of Leicester in order to provide a seamless segue into a new subtext feature. The sporting prowess of that city (subtext issue 118) is commemorated by a statue entitled Sporting Success which has become a popular spot for photo opportunities for local shoppers. Situated on the east side of Gallowtree Gate, near its junction with Humberstone Gate the statue comprises a group of three sportsmen in action: a cricketer, a footballer and a rugby player. The commission of the sculpture followed something unique in sporting history in the UK - a successful season by all three local teams in the 1996-97 seasons.

Leicester has more recently been in the news concerning the High Court decision to give King Richard III a 'dignified reburial' in Leicester Cathedral, The King's (alleged) remains were discovered under a council car park in the city back in September 2012, but it has taken almost two years to reach a decision about where he should interred. Three judges have rejected a bid by distant relatives of the King, who formed the Plantagenet Alliance, to force Justice Secretary Chris Grayling to set up a public consultation to decide where he should be buried. This is good news for the local hostelries who had already taken the opportunity to 'update’ their pub names to ‘The Last Plantagenet' or (less imaginatively) Richard III.

Recent academic news from Leicester is the University of Leicester's student union decision to offer stressed out students bubble wrap and dog petting sessions to help them relax as exam season kicks off. The union claims the 'instant gratification' of popping bubble wrap can help anxious students cope with stress and reduce tension. They ordered hundreds of metres of bubble wrap and installed 'popping' stations on campus. Puppies have also been brought in, with students paying £1 to pet them to relieve stress. The Union said it was also offering more conventional support during exam season, including free cups of tea, dedicated quiet revision spaces, longer opening hours at the student bar and board games for those who want a break from revision and exams. Lessons for Lancaster here?

Less well known but arguably more interesting is the fact that Leicester is home to the best and most extensive collection of ceramics by Pablo Picasso in the UK. All of Picasso's activity with ceramics centred around the Madoura pottery factory in Vallauris, France where Picasso had been working for several years with Georges and Suzanne Ramié. Picasso made plates, jugs and tiles but he also designed new forms combining aspects of painting and sculpture in ceramics.

The exhibition can be found at the New Walk Museum & Art Gallery. It is a permanent gallery of selected key works from the collection of Lord and Lady Attenborough. Leicester's most famous son Richard Attenborough and his wife Sheila Attenborough paid their first visit to the Madoura pottery in 1954. The Attenboroughs started with modest purchases, leading to a collection numbering some 150 pieces.

The majority of the collection consists of Editions and Original Impressions; multiple works that Picasso insisted the pottery should produce and sell inexpensively, so that everyone could own a 'Picasso'.

This intimate permanent exhibition shows a changing display of around forty works selected from the unique collection, curated by renowned Picasso expert, Dr. Marilyn McCully.

In 2007, Lord and Lady Attenborough announced that their Picasso ceramics collection would be entrusted to the City of Leicester to commemorate the lives of their daughter, Jane Mary, and their granddaughter, Lucy Elizabeth, who perished together in the Asian Tsunami on 26th December 2004.

The recent death of Leicester's most famous daughter, author Sue Townsend prompts subtext to offer a new feature: a very irregular and intermittent 'Secret Diary of a Contract Researcher'.

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A RESEARCHER REPORTS

Is Contract Research the Modern Day Domestic service? Are contract researchers the equivalent of the domestic servant under the stairs of the University? Are they invisible, underpaid and mainly female? That does seem to be the case at Lancaster. Let us take the description one by one.

Invisibility is achieved as we do not appear as academics in documentation as we are named as 'researchers', 'other', or dissolved into another category. For example the time allocation survey does not have a category for researchers: we have to pretend to be 'lecturers' for this exercise. Also it is not unknown for researchers not to be involved in departmental policy development, not to appear in departmental documents, or not to be invited to departmental meetings. We come and go unseen. 

We are the ghosts in the machinery.

Underpaid and lacking hope - There is rarely a well-paid researcher post advertised. Many posts are now Grade 6 and often part-time. This constant relegation of research to the lowest pay grades creates little hope of pay parity with 'academic' staff and thus careers stagnate. Researchers patch posts together operating as administrators, research managers and researchers to make a wage. Once we drop below Grade 7 then we are unable to enjoy the benefits of the USS pension scheme. As one moves across research contracts the salary often decreases as we slide down the career snake watching the ladders being pulled up in the name of 'limited funding'. The expectation is that we wish to become lecturers and move up the system through the lecturing route. However for some of us research is what we do, it is what we are good at, and we have specialist skills and knowledge that enables us to do a good, if not excellent, job. That is another point - we find we have 'jobs' not 'careers'.

Mainly female – two years ago the UCU produced a report based on research carried out at the university into the nature of the workforce. It was found that researchers were mainly female and rarely on a permanent contract even though they are likely to have worked at the university for many years. We do not bounce through the system with the freedom of researchers working in large urban areas. Often there are family responsibilities to consider when thinking about a post in another county or indeed country.

It will be argued that Lancaster is no different to many other Universities across the UK but does that mean it is right? Those who argue that poor practice is the way to go during a time of limited resources may like to note that these practices were taking place during a time of plenty. In the past researchers wrote about oppression, discrimination, and injustice. Now it would appear that we live it.

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LINKS

Report from the Guardian on low-quality private higher ed: http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/may/22/watchdog-investigate-private-colleges-potential-misuse-millions 

Relatedly, government plans to sell off the student loan book, to lift caps on student recruitment and on fees, and to open higher education provision (and access to tax-payers’ money in the form of tuition fees) to more commercial providers are being followed in detail by Andrew McGettigan at http://andrewmcgettigan.org/.

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LETTERS

Dear subtext,

Whilst I doubt not that Lancaster indeed achieves much in the way of social inclusion, successive governments' idiotic choice of State v. Independent schooling as a measure of this ought not to be allowed to pass.

Let me illustrate what I mean from three different angles.

First, all of my form group of eighteen pupils at my sixth-form college would count as State educated – including the ones who had come to the college from: King's School, Chester (2 of them); Queen's School, Chester; King’s School, Macclesfield; Stockport G.S. (an independent like the others); Mount Carmel School, Alderley Edge; Cransley School, Great Budworth; Grange School, Northwich (2 of these); Repton School; Stonyhurst College; and Tudor Hall School. Likewise, my neighbour here in Lancashire, who took her A Levels at Runshaw College because Benenden didn't offer the combination she wanted. A fine list of disadvantaged underprivileged kids, I'm sure you'll all agree!

Second, most large independents, particularly those we think of as Public Schools, offer considerable bursary and scholarship funds. Around 2/3rds of boys at Eton, for example, are in receipt of financial aid from the school and the school runs a scheme to provide scholarships to boys direct from local authority primary schools in several counties, which also covers two years at prep school to bring them up to speed by the time they get to Eton. Eton is the biggest example, but very much not the only one.

Third, I ask you to imagine a fairly typical middle-class family. Say, a couple of academics or schoolteachers. In the 21 years between the birth of their first child and the departure for university of their second child, they stay in the same house instead of moving three times to climb the property ladder. Each time they don’t move they save around £12,000 in estate agents' selling fees, solicitor's fees and disbursements, mortgage arrangement fees, Stamp Duty, survey fees and removal expenses (to say nothing of the extra saved by not increasing their mortgage every time). That's £36,000. By buying a 5-year-old car and keeping it until it is 10 instead of getting a typical family MPV new on personal contract hire every three years, they spend approximately £28,000 on depreciation and maintenance for cars instead of £88,200, a saving of £60,200. By taking a week's annual holiday in a cottage in Wales instead of a fortnight in Europe, they save (including spending money) around £52,500. If they keep the TV they had when baby number 1 was born instead of buying a new, bigger one every 3 years, they save a further £3,500-ish. Totalling £152,200. Or enough to pay for two children each to have their entire 7 years of secondary education at a typical independent day school in the North West of England, with about £12,000 left over to help with university living expenses. A great many families who send their children to independent schools afford it by making savings in precisely this way.

Whether someone is applying to university from a State or an independent school says little or nothing about social and economic circumstances. He or she might be the child of the Duke of Westminster (all of whom were sent to comprehensives). She might be a girl from a wealthy family who has gone from an independent to a fashionable local sixth form college for the better choice of A Levels or the more relaxed atmosphere, or someone from an average home whose parents have scrimped and saved because they liked what their local independent offered, or a factory-worker's son who's gone to Eton on a scholarship from an LEA primary school. There have got to be better ways of measuring social inclusion than this.

Regards,

Richard Austen-Baker

Law

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In re last issue's letters column:

'the true reason is more banal – if subscribers don't delete their fortnightly feast of verbal pyrotechnics, it will clog up our internal emailing system.'

Technology, and IT infrastructure, marches on. We currently each have 9GB of space on Exchange (thank you, ISS!).

A back of the envelope calculation therefore suggests that – should we desire! – we can each keep a personal archive of every issue of subtext for the next twelve and a half thousand years before clogging will become a serious issue.

Best,

Andrew Hardie (LAEL)

The collective replies: thanks, good point. We've removed the outdated advice from the header.

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The editorial collective of subtext currently consists (in alphabetical order) of: Sam Clark, Mark Garnett, George Green, Ian Paylor, Ronnie Rowlands, and Martin Widden.