The School of Music at UEA is under threat of closure. A BBC Norwich report on the planned closure is here and a Huffpost article by Bill Vine, a PhD student in Music at UEA, is here. Campaigners to save Music at UEA have set up a facebook page and have gathered more than 4000 signatures on their online petition:
http://www.facebook.com/SaveUEAMusic

Professor Stefan Collini will give the first of six lectures on “The Idea of the University” at CRASSH, The Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities at Cambridge University. Professor Collini’s lecture will be on Tuesday, 11 October 2011
17:00 – 19:00
Location: Lady Mitchell Hall, Sidgwick Site

Apparently I am a bunny hugger who exists only to get in the way of development, while experts in climate change are equally unhelpful of development.

According to an elected Member, one Alan Melton, who is leader of Fenland District Council, his local authority will ignore government guidance on the investigation and protection of the historic environment.

You can read the whole sorry affair here.

This is a remarkable performance that is, to date, the heritage sector’s most outrageous manifestation of the disregard in which humatities are held. Thinking kindly, maybe the councillor was relaxed following a nice lunch with his friends from business and was playing to the gallery but it prompts a few questions.

Does the elected Member not think that understanding the heritage of his area matters to many of the inhabitants in his authority? Does he not understand that heritage is a tourism draw? Does he not think that the mechanisms governing archaeology within the planning process – coincidentally developed by the Thatcher goverment – are there to proect the developer from nasty and expensive surprises? Does he not remember the debacle of the Rose Theatre or the uproar surrounding the destruction of heritage on the major road schemes at Newbury, Bath Easton and the like? Does he not remember an ailing Lord Olivier supporting the pickets at the Rose, or Swampy and co?

Probably not, because that would be History and he clearly cares nothing for that.

I hope the good folk within his area, who are members of archaeological and local history societies, who belong to the National Trust and who care about the warp and weft of the nation tell him exactly what they think.

I hope also that my learned friends will be watching for the first breach of the law made under this on-the-hoof policy fiasco.

The British Academy will hold a discussion and debate on the Haldane Principle on 20 June at the Academy at 6pm.

To register and for more details visit here.

The Haldane principle is that decisions on individual research proposals are best taken by researchers themselves through peer review. For discussion of this see Peter Mandler’s discussion from earlier this year.

No one needs telling these are strange days in higher education, but the last week, and more, has been stranger than most.

First Howard Hotson in the London Review of Books tore a stinging series of strips off the government’s endorsement of American-style ‘competitive’ Ivy League style universities. Hotson’s major point was that one needed to calibrate assessments of ‘competitiveness’ against GDP and expenditure on education – and that one needed to look not just at the pinnacle of Ivy League achievement, but at the overall economy of education further down the league tables where the majority of students are educated. He pointed out that per unit of GDP, the UK has (had) two times as many top 20 universities as the USA; that despite far higher levels of investment the “UK has somehow managed to maintain top-ranked universities for only about a fifth of the US price”; and that, factoring in population levels and looking at public universities, “UK citizens have 20 times more opportunity to study at first-class public universities than their American cousins”. On the whole, if “value for money is the most important consideration…the American model might well be the last one that Britain should be emulating”, deduced Hotson.

He followed this up a little later with the uninspiring story of the private Apollo Group, profit-making owners of American universities including the enormous University of Phoenix. According to Hotson, Apollo’s boasts can include student degree completion rates of 9%; student debts double or triple that of other American private (non-profit) or public universities; and a series of legal investigations into “possible deceptive practices in its student recruiting and financing”.

Then, with the timing of an expert comedian, A. C. Grayling promptly announced his plans for the private, £18,000 p.a. New College for the Humanities. The ‘New College’ (Sir Curtis Price of the ‘other’ New College has wondered about the name) is intended to be profit-making and to prevent British, alpha students fleeing to universities abroad because of the crowded top end of the UK education sector. Eminent scholars will lecture for an hour a year and core teaching staff will be young newcomers promised an administration-free career. As to the fees, Grayling aims for 20% of students to have bursaries, and 6.66% of them to pay nothing. As for those paying the full fee, “it seems like a lot of money from one point of view, but if you’re really committed, you’d do anything to provide your kids with a good start”. Strikingly, the ‘New College’s’ degrees will be awarded by the University of London, which has – or does – employ a number of the high profile academics Grayling has secured, either itself or at its ‘constituent’ colleges. The fees at these institutions are not £18,000.

Tuesday 7 June then saw two serious critiques of the government’s plans delivered to head and groin, respectively by the Public Accounts Committee and the Congregation of Oxford University. The latter was administered by numerous senior academics, led by Robert Gildea who described the proposed restructuring of higher education as “reckless, incoherent and incompetent”. Oxford’s Congregation passed a motion of no confidence in the Minister of State, David Willetts (King Edward’s, Edgbaston; Christ Church, Oxford), and in the Coalition Government’s higher education policy. It will be delivered to the Minister.

The less dramatic, if no less serious, assault came from the House of Commons’ Public Accounts Committee (PAC). It confirmed what was long-foretold when the Browne Review first appeared: namely that with fees set at at a ceiling of £9,000, universities would inevitably float towards it, thus popping Browne’s bubble dreams whose economics were predicated on a strictly limited number of universities charging the full £9,000. With a majority of institutions proposing to charge the full £9,000, the economics consequently becomes a disaster for the Government who will pay upfront for the cost of students. The PAC estimated that there would be a several hundred, million pound funding gap as a result.

What has been less remarked upon was the government’s floated response to this. That is, despite widespread expectations that the cap on student numbers nationwide would be lifted given the ideological preference given to a notional ‘market’ system, the Government’s response to the PAC report was that the cap on student numbers might be lowered. That is, in an ostensively ‘free’, competitive, market system in which universities are able, within limits, to charge whatever cost students will bear, the government suggested that the demand in this market be artificially depressed. The logical, as well as the ideological, coherence of this is not clear. What is clear is that, of course, universities’ incomes would be further stripped out. Instead of those universities who could attract more students being free to do so, they would lose not only their teaching grant, but also the scope to re-balance that loss by expanding student recruitment. Money follows the students, as the Coalition is fond of repeating, but not if the students must be turned away.

Finally, yesterday, the former Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Oxford, and the current Archbishop of Canterbury argued in the New Statesman that in a number of areas, notably education and health, “with remarkable speed, we are being committed to radical, long-term policies for which no one voted”. Williams turned out to have relatively little to say on higher education specifically, but the swingeing intervention from Lambeth has clearly stung.

In the shadow of all this, it will be interesting to see what comes out of the Prime Minister’s high-level summit with university leaders. Meanwhile the long-expected White Paper on Higher Education remains never present but ever imminent. Whether ‘some earthquake will astonish’ here, either in its content, or in the effectiveness of the response to it, remains to be seen. But it must be hoped that those opposed to these plans can draw lessons from the apparent success of those in the health sector who have made parallel critiques of Andrew Lansley’s plans to restructure the NHS. Only then will it become, in some part, clearer what sort of dull dog-days we really are under.

Toby Young has been promoting the March Against Debt, held on Saturday in London, for some weeks. Unfortantely his Daily Telegraph blog said that he wouldn’t in fact be able to attend on Saturday because:

“I’m committed to attending a family preview of a Pirates exhibition at the Museum of Docklands tomorrow morning with my four children and won’t be able to get to the rally until 1.30pm.”

Interesting.

Is that museum a state-funded, free-to-enter museum? Are it’s curatorial staff highly-trained professionals who studied to degree and post-grad level to provide the service you expect? Were their studies, for the most part, in subjects like archaeology, social history and conservation? Are these the sort of subjects likely to be adversely affected by the high levels of fees, by a reduced levels of jobs and wages in a cultural sector hit by cuts?

Just asking…

Museums do not run themselves, nor do their staff spring fully qualified from the womb. While you can do much with your museum volunteers you need a skilled core team to organise, support and lead. They will, in turn rely on conservators and other specialists to provide a good visitor attraction.

Does any of this matter?

Museums add a huge amount to the cultural life of the country but more importantly, they are part of our “tourism offer” and contribute an emormous amount to the economy, both directly through the shop and tea room but also indirectly through visitor spend outside the museum.

Let’s hope the pirates stay in the museum!

In an interview in the Guardian today, the Vice Chancellor of London Metropolitan University, Malcolm Gillies, explains why, despite having ‘spent a lot of my life arguing for the strength and diversity of the humanities’ he has decided to close history, philosophy, Caribbean studies, theatre studies, trade union studies, dance, parts of multimedia and performing arts.

John Coffin Memorial Lecture, Tuesday 3^rd May 2011
Lecture, 6pm, Beveridge Hall (Senate House), Wine reception, 7pm, Macmillan Hall (Senate House)

Speaker: Professor Stefan Collini (Cambridge)
Title: ‘The Idea of the University: Newman and Now’

Admission is free and all are welcome to attend.
If you would like to attend, please contact the IHR Events Office at IHR.Events@sas.ac.uk or on 0207 862 8756.

The Observer reports today that Cambridge University’s submission to the Office for Fair Access (Offa) acknowledges that £9000 fees will deter poorer applicants. Despite government claims that universities would be allowed to charge the maximum fee only if they demonstrated that they were increasing access from under-represented groups, Cambridge’s minimum aim is apparently only to maintain the status quo.

All universities will charge a minimum of £6000 from next year. All Russell Group and 1994 Group universities will charge £9000. Several of the Million+ group of universities are planning to charge £9000 as well. Data on university fees is here.

The Observer reports today that the Arts & Humanities Research Council’s (AHRC) funding of research will be “significantly” tied to projects which study “the Big Society”. The AHRC is the major funding body for the Arts, Humanities and many Social Sciences.

Professor Peter Mandler, of Cambridge University and Humanities Matter, said that the Department of Business and Innovation “have got the AHRC over a barrel and basically told these guys that they cannot have their money unless they incorporate [these] research priorities.” The AHRC’s c.£100 million p.a. research budget comes from the Department.

The unnamed head of an Oxford college said “”With breathtaking speed, a slogan for one political party has become translated into a central intellectual agenda for the academy.” There has been repeated confusion amongst voters, civil servants and the media about what the “Big Society” means since it was first put forward as a policy agenda.

The Royal Historical Society described the decision as “gross and ignoble”.

A government spokesperson said however that it was the AHRC itself which had proposed the “Big Society” as the umbrella for funding. The Chief Executive of the AHRC will shortly take up the post of the umbrella group for all the UK’s Research Councils, ‘Research Councils UK’.

The news comes after Professor Mandler’s recent attempt to signal the seriousness of the proposal to abandon the ‘Haldane Principle’. The ‘Haldane Principle’ established the principle that “decisions on individual research proposals are best taken by researchers themselves through peer review”. The Government’s redefinition of the Principle is set out here. The Haldane Principle is 90 years old. There has been negligible coverage of this part of the Coalition Government’s wider plans to drastically reform British Higher Education.