Intelligent life in retreat

Sadly, it seems that in my posting of last September 22nd, 'Signs of intelligent life in Scotland', I was far too optimistic.

For by now, even before the on going review of higher education funding in Scotland has been completed, all the main political parties in Scotland have come out firmly against student fees, whether payable up front or after graduation. One suspects there is a touch of electioneering in the various pronouncements, given the forthcoming Holyrood elections due in the Spring. And some of the recent announcements have also claimed to find support in a recent Universities Scotland paper on the so called 'funding gap' facing the universities. The trouble is, this report came up with a range of numbers starting at roughly £100 million per year, rising to well over £200 million per year. Those against fees have opted to accept the lower estimate, because they think such a gap is just about manageable, though universities themselves seem to think the upper end of the range is more plausible.

So it's all looking very messy and unclear - and definitely not a comfortable time to be a university principal! This is not helped by the latest wheeze from our education minister, Michael Russell, suggesting that our university principals could be elected - presumably by staff (and students?) at their respective institutions - and could be subject to recall if their performance proved unsatisfactory. I know there have been complaints of late about the pay and perks enjoyed by some principals, especially at a time when staff lower down the hierarchy are being made redundant, but that's surely a matter for university courts to handle (perhaps more sensitively than they have in the past), and I'm very sceptical whether elected principals would perform noticeably better than the bunch currently in post.

That aside, where do we stand now as regards university funding in Scotland? The emerging model seems to rest on three pillars:

(1) block grant from Scottish government (paid through the Scottish Funding Council);

(2) fees paid by English and Welsh students studying in Scotland;

(3) fees paid by non-EU overseas students studying in Scotland.

Note that neither Scottish students, nor students from other EU-member states, would pay any fee (though for the latter, the Scottish government does make a payment to the universities).

Given the UK-level squeeze on public spending, item (1) in the above list is going to come under massive pressure. Hence unless Scotland proves to be staggeringly successful under item (3), our universities are heading for trouble, with budgets and staffing levels declining. Hence it is hard to disagree with Brian Monteith in today's Scotsman newspaper ('Vicious circle for Scottish universities', p27), where he sees our universities facing increasingly tough competition over attracting good academic staff and the best students. For universities south of the border will be increasingly well resourced and they will naturally tend to attract the best staff and students.

This decline in the relative competitiveness of Scottish higher education will not happen overnight, of course; these things take time. So for a while, our universities will keep going and in many ways they will look OK. Under the surface, though, teaching and research quality will slowly decline as existing highly rated staff retire or move away, and institutions prove unable to recruit staff of similar or better quality to replace them. Look ahead a decade or two, and Scotland's position in the world of higher education could easily have slipped back a good deal. That can't be a happy prospect for Scotland's students, or indeed for the wider economy.

Politics and higher education

Most of the time, teaching and researching in UK higher education, we like to think of politics as one world and university life as another world, a world that is both different and separate from that of politics. One expression of this viewpoint is the oft heard claim that our universities should conduct their academic work dispassionately and objectively, while taking care to remain politically neutral. Would that it were so simple.

For the still on going Libyan political crisis/popular uprising has already brought great embarrassment to one of our most respected institutions, the London School of Economics (LSE). LSE had not only granted a doctorate to one of Col. Gaddafi's sons, a degree that is now being queried on the grounds of possible plagiarism and even ghost writing (though to my knowledge, nothing improper has yet been proved); but it has also accepted significant funding from Libya - via the same son - and was proposing to deliver leadership training to senior Libyan officials.

Now, when all this was agreed, Libya was well on the way to achieving international 'acceptability', having abandoned its support for terrorism as well as its programme for developing weapons of mass destruction. At the same time, it was common knowledge that the regime remained a pretty nasty dictatorship, but that sad fact has never stopped us doing business with lots of quite unpleasant governments/countries around the world. Hence it's not clear that LSE has actually done anything wrong, unless we think that higher education ought to operate with higher ethical standards than other sectors of the economy. Regardless of that point, one can see why LSE might now feel embarrassed about its close engagement with Libya in the light of recent events. As ever, hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Closer to home, the Edinburgh Business School at my university claims to operate a policy of strict political neutrality. One aspect of this arose for me in late 2009, when I was starting to advise a potential DBA student on his research proposal (note - I have changed some details in what follows to protect student anonymity). The student wanted to do work on his home country, Zimbabwe, and was thinking of studying aspects of the country's monetary policy in the preceding decade. I advised him that such a study would be quite difficult, given the poor data and worsening inflation over the decade, resulting in severe hyperinflation. I commented that the dreadful political situation in the country rendered the study of past monetary policy fairly meaningless, and suggested instead that he should look forward - assuming the domestic political situation continued to appear more stable - and consider what a sound monetary policy would look like for his country.

In my view, the advice I gave was accurate, fair and reasonable in the circumstances. However, I was (mildly) reprimanded by the School for making political comments that were considered to depart from the official policy of strict neutrality. Two things about this episode worried me. First, it became apparent that my e-mails back to the students whom I was supervising for the School were being read by a senior supervisor, something I consider quite unethical. Previously, I had been aware that some monitoring of correspondence between students and supervisors took place, but had thought it was merely done to check that we responded to student queries within a reasonable period. Second, it appeared that in order to operate within the official policy of neutrality I was expected to lie to my student, or at least find some 'non political' way of conveying my concerns about the student's proposed research. It seemed to me that the School's approach here was not particularly honest, and this whole (albeit in itself minor) episode is one of the reasons why I ceased to work for the School last Spring.

As a third example, a few years ago I was asked to contribute to a training programme for senior North Korean officials, funded by the Swiss Government and taking place in Geneva. Given that North Korea is a seriously unpleasant place, politically, what are the ethics of my taking part in such an event? I'm sure there are many who would have advised me not to touch such a project, but I decided to go on the grounds that by exposing these folk to some ideas about economic reforms, we might prepare the ground for future reforms in the country - sooner or later. But I acknowledge the moral ambiguity about all this. Moreover, my involvement nearly gave rise to a diplomatic incident, since our topic of economic reform was rejected by the North Korean embassy in Switzerland, but insisted upon by the Swiss Government: in the end, we compromised by agreeing to talk about economic change, which satisfied everyone. At the actual event, the officials concerned turned out to have surprisingly good English and were far more open minded than we had been led to expect - and they were seriously interested in economic reforms, having no hangups at all over the word 'reform'. Only their political minders had been worried about what we might say.

From these examples - and it's easy to think of many more - it is apparent, I think, that the whole notion of political neutrality is quite an elusive and slippery one. Political issues can arise in many areas:

1. Recruiting students from countries with 'unpleasant' regimes;
2. Deciding whether and under what conditions to accept research money or other funding from such regimes (and some of the same issues arise over funding from companies);
3. Deciding whether to undertaking training activities that benefit such a country; and
4. Deciding whether to accept a consultancy contract in or concerning such a country.

Some of these decisions or choices are matters for individual academics (provided that what they do does not put their institution's good name at risk), some are rather matters of institutional policy. In practical terms, it seems to me quite impossible to operate a higher education institution in such a way that it would only do business with 'nice' regimes, not least because there are too few of these around the world, and exposing people from 'nasty' regimes to a liberal higher education can surely only help to open dialogue, promote understanding, etc. Hence institutions need to be pragmatic rather than totally idealistic, given the diverse and sometimes horrible world we live in.

But let's not kid ourselves that what we do in higher education amounts to political neutrality. That's a nice sounding slogan, but not a very honest one.

More on research 'impact'

Research 'impact' is something that I've written about or referred to before in previous posts, but the topic just keeps on popping up. Two things have brought it back to my attention recently.

The first was a request within my School at Heriot-Watt University for examples of research that could be said to have made an impact - we came up with various topics to do with studies of transition economies and the policy advice that resulted from this work, but there were plenty of other things we could have mentioned. The second was the announcement by HEFCE, reported in the latest issues of Times Higher Education, that research impact would have a lower weighting in the first REF (Research Excellence Framework) exercise in 2014 than previously planned - 20% instead of 25%. Apparently research outputs will be weighted at 65%, and the research environment at 15%.

According to current plans for the REF, impact in the assessment period, January 2008 to July 2013, will be based on research carried out over the previous 15 years, reflecting the fact that impact sometimes takes a long time to come through. Departments will be expect to provide an 'impact statement' explaining how they have supported and encouraged 'impact', and they will have to submit 'impact case studies'.

Of course, these days academic departments are pretty good at jumping through hoops, so we shall no doubt think of something to say, possibly even something mildly sensible, to meet the impact requirements of the new REF. But seriously, does anyone really think that all this stuff about impact can possibly make much sense? The underlying agenda, it seems to me, is the current obsession with efficiency, accountability, and justifying what we do in universities both to politicians and to the general public. In other words, what we are being asked to do is play the currently fashionable political game.

But it's a pretty silly game, and I hope the fashion soon changes to something more meaningful. After all, what we're supposed to do in a university is undertake research in all sorts of areas that interest us, and that we have the talent and skills to undertake. Mostly, when we embark on a new project, we have no idea whether or how it will be 'useful' or have an 'impact', and very often the research that does turn out to have a big impact was not initially expected to do so. Often we just don't know, and more importantly, can't know, where impact will show up. That's part of what makes academic research so endlessly fascinating!