Emeritus Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London Predicts The Future for UK Universities in 2007. (January 5, 2007)

    John Sutherland is Emeritus Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London and among other pursuits is a regular columnist for The Guardian.

Shortly before Christmas Professor Sutherland contributed "The best of worlds, the worst of worlds" which opens with, "It is not often that a character in a Voltaire novel gets the chance to contribute to the debate about the future of our universities. Nevertheless, as 2007 approaches, I thought it appropriate to seek the views of that famous fictional academic Dr Pangloss - whose baseless optimism in the face of impending disaster is perhaps the perfect tonic to the events of 2006.

    "Here are Dr Pangloss's [ten] predictions for the best of possible university worlds in 2007. This will be the year, Dr P prophesies, when everything will go right. What follows is the bright shining future, about to dawn in two weeks' time. Rejoice!"

Here are just two of the Sutherland/Pangloss predictions; go to "The best of worlds, the worst of worlds" to read the rest:

4. 2007 will be the year in which the RAE* [Research Assessment Exercise], however redesigned, will take into consideration outstandingly learned colleagues - whether or not they have a sackful of publications. The government recognises that such colleagues are among the most valuable assets higher education can have. Their value is currently invisible. "Learning" will be assessed by tactful oral interview.

 

6. The RAE regime has, over the last decade, inhibited new-blood recruitment. "New blood" in most cases translates as "no publications"; a colleague whom you must nurse until, at some unspecified time in the future (while your RAE score plummets), they "come through" - and then is headhunted by some other bastard department. In 2007 an aggressive programme of recruiting pre-doctoral, and non-doctoral candidates is launched. Colleagues will be sought who are not, as is presently customary, 30-something and set in their intellectual ways, but still flexible and adaptable to rapidly changing circumstances. The PhD, in short, will no longer be regarded as a sine qua for academic appointment. Such "young blood" colleagues will be regarded as "score neutral" in RAE assessment for 10 years, or two RAE cycles. The medium-term aim should be to reduce the average age differential between taught and teachers in higher education by a decade. Currently, most undergraduates are being taught by wrinklies - a situation which, without the 2007 reform outlined here, will get worse with the abolition of age-mandated retirement.

Professor Sutherland than returns to the real Britain:

So much for Planet Pangloss. But what will happen in the real world of higher education in 2007?

More and more teaching will be offloaded onto underpaid hirelings. Morale will plunge, as academic salaries stagnate to sub-professional levels. Universities will continue to produce 10 times as many PhD graduates as there are worthwhile jobs. Grade inflation and plagiarism will continue their cancerous erosion. Students ("customers") will rebel at stadium-sized lectures, over-crowded seminars, and increasingly less face-time contact with their tutors. The new RAE -metrics and "light-touch peer review" - will be a shambles. The Russell group and Oxbridge will make moves to secede from the state system. The university system as a whole will continue its slow decline from world leadership to top of the second division. The minister for higher education will be a Grade Z nonentity, with no clout in cabinet or name recognition among the electorate.

Rejoice? Forget it. Roll on 2008.

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*The RAE (Research Assessment Exercise) is the British scheme to determine how public research block funding should be distributed among British public universities. The Australian Government has decided to implement a similar scheme it calls the Research Quality Framework (RQF). After twenty years the UK government, uner constant pressure from the university sector, has decided the RAE, as it is presently designed, is far too cumbersome but mechanisms suggested to revamp it have met with severe criticisms in British Academe. Those difficulties have not dissuaded the Australian Coalition Government from its determination to proceed with its version, the details of which are still far from complete.