British Labour MP: Universities Are Punching Below Their Weight. (January 21, 2011)

British Labour MP Barry Sheerman (70) has represented Huddersfield since 1979, and is the former head of the parliamentary education select committee.

Mr Sheerman got his BSc, Economics in 1965  from the London School of Economics  and MSc from the University of London two years later. In 1966 he took up a lectureship at the University of Wales, Swansea where remained until his election to parliament in 1979.

While attending a Higher Education Policy Institute seminar at the House of Commons last week Mr Sheerman vented his annoyance with the tertiary sector's supine response to the draconian funding cuts being imposed by Britain's coalition government and is reported by The Times' Rebecca Attwood as saying: "[I am] really just so worried by the lack of punch in the higher education community."

He went on to tell the attending vice-chancellors, academics and sector leaders: "You really do punch below your weight. This is a political world... you don't lie down and let things roll over you -- you articulate, you engage, you put the alternatives... [in short articulate] with a voice that is clear and powerful enough."

John Coyne, vice-chancellor of the University of Derby as if taking his cue from the MP for Huddersfield made the point that during the seminar, entitled Higher Education in the Age of Austerity, concurrently one division of one bank was to approve bonuses that would see a few thousand people share a sum equivalent to twice the amount the higher education sector would lose in cuts over four years, and in his opinion piece in this week's Times Higher Education Professor Coyne asks: "What is the implied value judgement that sits behind this decision? What is it telling us about the inherent value seen in the one activity and not in the other in its contribution to the society and economy we are trying to build... Do we have ourselves to blame? Have we been complacent in assuming that all the good things that the sector contributes are as well understood as they should be? The benefits we bring should be shouted about loud and often."

Is Australian academe really that much better off -- and aren't our political masters, on all sides, correct in assessing the mood of the Australian voter as being quite disinterested in the well being of the nation's universities?