Emerging from the depths

Both Reivers and I have been absent from this blog for a while now. Frankly, there has just been too much to do to blog (see the previous post). There is still too much to do, but one or two things caught my eye recently that I thought I would share. 

A new HE institution in the UK

Various articles on the BBC website and the Sunday newspapers report  the foundation of something called the ‘New College of the Humanities‘ under the mastership of A.C. Grayling whose brainchild it is. The college intends to charge fees of £18,000 per year for courses in humanities subjects, along side ‘professional skills’, mainly relating to business and government. Aside from Grayling, there are thirteen other professors, including Richard Dawkins, Nial Ferguson, David Cannadine and Linda Colley (the only woman), plus some ‘convenors’ (two out of the three listed are women) who will be in charge of the subject areas and teaching staff (not listed). Degrees will be validated by the University of London

It goes without saying that I have some major problems with this set up. I don’t believe in for profit education.* Universities are not nurseries for training graduates for prospective employers in job-specific skills. Distinguished does not mean inspiring, or even effective, on the teaching front. More contact hours does not mean better teaching. How will these degrees prepare students who wish to go on to do research? How much teaching will these distinguished professors actually do?

I shall watch developments here with interest and probable unease. At the moment, and I should be honest about this, I’m struggling to say or think anything sensible due the power of instinctive gut reaction based on strong political sensibilities.

*I may be wrong about this point, but it seems that only part of the college is governed by a charitable trust as suggested by a post by someone listed as A.C. Grayling on the Student Room:

We have set up a charitable trust alongside the College to raise money in order to make as many places free or affordable as possible.

Haldene principle ‘clarified’: trampled all over and dumped in the bin more likely.

I am incandescent, disbelieving, upset and depressed all at once. I didn’t actually think I could be shocked any more than I already am at government policy and then I read this. Here is the second paragraph,  just to give you a flavour:

The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) will spend a “significant” amount of its funding on the prime minister’s vision for the country, after a government “clarification” of the Haldane principle – a convention that for 90 years has protected the right of academics to decide where research funds should be spent.

Apparently, this is ‘non-negotiable’. I cannot recall, but am willing to be corrected, any government in recent years tying in research funding so closely to a particular ideology. Even if we leave on one side for time being the fact that this ideology is mendacious, pernicious and many other things ending in ‘ious’, the principle that a government can override academic freedom in this way is absolutely terrifying.

I hope to blog about this issue in more detail later, but thought it worth flagging now.

EDIT

The AHRC today issued a denial of The Observer‘s allegations, which you can read here. Although there is clearly more to this than meets the eye, I am still suspicious, mainly because of information located on this page. The fact that so  many people chose to believe yesterday’s article speaks volumes about the way the AHRC is currently regarded by those of us who have to deal with it. You can find more comment with links to other blogs at Guy Halsall’s Historian on the Edge.

Why I stood on a picket line yesterday*

Yesterday, the University and Colleges Union staged a national strike to protest against changes to pensions (both USS and TPS). As I work at a pre-1992 university, I belong to USS. Changes to this, and it is is important to stress this point, privately-funded scheme, would see a two-tier system introduced. New entrants would find themselves on a career average related earnings pension, while those currently in the scheme enjoy the benefits of a final salary scheme. The attack on our pensions is part of a wider scaling back of such benefits across all sectors, as well as the general funding crisis in higher education more broadly.

So for a large part of yesterday I stood on a picket line with a handful of my colleagues for the following reasons.

• A two-tier system is deeply unfair and will disproportionately affect those who are not luck enough to leap straight into a nice permanent job after completing their doctorates. Someone with my career path would be screwed.
• Society as a whole cannot sustain continued attacks on occupational pensions. Someone, somewhere has to draw a line and say ‘enough’. We were picketing yesterday not just for our pensions, but for those of our students and generations to come.
• Academic working conditions/work-life balance are going down the plug hole rapidly. I have no doubt that I would be a more effective teacher and researcher if I wasn’t so bloody tired all the time.
• To protest to any passing managers (they seemed to keep their heads down).
• To raise awareness of cuts more broadly.

Well, I don’t know what sort of effect we had. Two students who crossed the picket line to attend a class asked that the seminar be given over to discussing public sector cuts and others seemed supportive. Our admin colleagues (who are facing an equally tough time) were also supportive; representatives from Unison came round with doughnuts. The bin men gave us the thumbs up and a dog peed on one of our placards, which we took as an endorsement of sorts.

Protests continue on the larger scale with the TUC demo on Saturday.  I won’t be able to make it, so I will just have to continue raising awareness and talking to people I meet about the effect the cuts will have on all areas of society. For those reading this I hope you can go/have been. If not, please also spread the word: it may be a small thing, but it’s something we can all do.

*’On a picket line’ rather than ‘strike’ because I am part time. As the strike was on one of my non-paid days, I couldn’t technically strike. I don’t suppose that will stop the university docking a day’s pay though.

The Vikings are coming!

Many things have been happening in the lives of Reivers and myself lately – some good and some bad and which I am not going to talk about here. On the wider stage, parliament has decided that higher education is no longer a public good; more locally an extremely tiring and unusually busy term finally grinds to a halt today. This at least means I have a small amount of time in which to update those of you who are interested in teaching on some very exciting developments that I’ve been involved in and, in a small way, leading.

Wailing, gnashing of teeth and general anger, but what are we going to do about it?

I have been undeniably absent from this blog for a while now, despite half-hearted promises to write up the Clerical Cosmos symposium in Oxford, the Battle Conference outing to Castle Acre and many other exciting episodes in the life of a medievalist. I may yet do some, all or none of these things in due course, but in recent weeks I have been overwhelmed by a combination of work and personal circumstances while I watch aghast and horror-struck as the coalition government systematically dismantles the welfare state and UK university system.

Taking-stock: thinking space and random thoughts

I read about space, I think about space and I write about space, but lately it feels like I have no space to read, write or think! It’s been very quiet on the blog front lately. May/early June is perhaps the busiest time of year for anyone working in British HE. Reivers and I are beginning to emerge from under piles of scripts, spreadsheets and administrivia, in the process discovering we are human again. It’s a time to reflect on what has happened over the past year, see what we’ve achieved and decide where to go next. This process of assessing and questioning is essential to the way we develop as academics and, crucially, teachers. What follows is an end of year stock-take.

Palaeography threatened!

Cuts in academic posts at King’s College, London mean that, at the end of this academic year, a specialist chair in palaeography (the only one in the UK) will no longer be funded: the current holder is David Ganz. The implications of this decision are serious and deeply worrying. Without our specialists in palaeography and the textual understanding they bring to medieval studies, none of us (or very few) would be able to do our own research, and that’s even before we get started on how we train the next generation of medievalists.

This story has been picked up by other bloggers, notably Mary Beard. If you want to protest, the please write to Prof. Richard Trainor, the principal of Kings and copy your letter to Professor Jan Palmowski, Head of the School of Arts and Humanities.

We face worrying times in British HE at the moment, and I am fully aware that I have not blogged as much as I would have liked on these issues – it’s all too depressing for words.

Edit: here’s the link to an online petition.

Further edit: the petition has now reached over 6500 signatures. Informed and intelligent comment can be found at Magistra et Mater and on Jonathan Jarrett’s blog. Jonathan has also compiled a handy list of blog posts on the subject.

Impact

If you keep up with the Higher Education pages in the UK newspapers, you will know that there has been a great deal of comment on  a mysterious entity called ‘impact’ lately. Impact is the latest government and research council buzz word for why our research must have some definable economic or social goal: where is the next technological gadget or government initiative coming from in otherwords. Impact will also replace esteem in the REF, which in itself, replaces the RAE, except with a bigger percentage

In praise of teaching

There has recently been a series of articles in the Times Higher and in other places reflecting, bemoaning and sometimes downright scaring on the state of higher education and universities in the UK. At the core of these debates is the question of what are our universities for? Are the people who comprise the faculty an elite squad of researchers who happen to pass on the benefits of their expertise to students in their spare time? Are they teaching, or, rather, instructing machines? And that’s before we even get to the admin.