Oxford reaps reward of its conservative myopia

Last month those who care about these things - which seemed to be most of the British media - were greatly exercised by the governance proposals put forward by the University of Oxford’s Vice-Chancellor, John Hood. Dr Hood’s plan to try and drag the University kicking and screaming into the modern world was defeated by the University’s Congregation, the so-called ‘Parliament of dons’.

Those of us who supported his reforms (the ‘Hoodies’) argued they were the best way in which the University could maintain and enhance its independence from government, and retain its position as a top 10 global university in the increasingly competitive world of higher education.

The joyless conservatives who prefer Oxford to stick in the mud seem to think the University has no reason to be accountable to the outside world - even though the government (and, therefore, the British tax-payer) is the biggest single investor, and even though the University’s charitable status confers on it huge tax advantages. They were warned that unless Oxford proved itself capable of reforming itself from within, it risked having reform imposed from outside.

Well, HEFCE (the Higher Education Funding Council for England) has now fired the first warning shot across the University’s bows. A letter from its Chief Executive, Professor David Eastwood, to Dr Hood makes clear HEFCE’s disappointment with Oxford’s backward-looking rejection of the Vice-Chancellor’s governance reforms:

As you know, HEFCE is the single biggest investor in the University and we assume the lead regulatory role on behalf of all your public sector funders. We set the accountability framework for the HE sector, and within that framework it is a condition of grant that the University has a sound system of governance. We look to the University, its Council, and its Audit and Scrutiny Committee to provide assurance about the system of governance.

Under the recently-rejected proposal the membership of Council would have fallen from 25 to 15 with seven internal members and seven lay, plus a lay chair. The adoption of this arrangement would have given the Council a lay majority for the first time. There is, we believe, a broad consensus across all sectors that corporate governance is enhanced by the external membership and, more particularly, by the discipline and advocacy that non-executives and externals bring to the corporate life and governance of a university.

This has been reflected in reports over the years, including those from Dearing in HE and Turnbull in the private sector. The sentiment is embedded in the Lambert Report and embodied in the good practice guidance to universities published by the Committee of University Chairmen.

The University has accepted that its Council is its single governing body responsible for academic and strategic matters (albeit that Congregation remains the supreme legislative assembly) but has rejected a particular proposal that would have delivered a lay majority. HEFCE takes the view that its investment of public funds must be subject to effective governance oversight, and that this oversight needs to be largely external and demonstrably free from potential conflicts of interest.

I, of course, recognise the academic excellence of Oxford and the effectiveness of many of its operations. I also understand that opponents of reform associate success with the University's governance tradition and consider that fundamental governance changes would undermine continuing success. I consider that argument unproven, and note the performance and progress of some of your competitors who have more modem governance arrangements. I would also remind you that the University's accountability failed as recently as 2003-04 when the accounts were audited and finalised many months after the deadline.

In March of 2006 the HEFCE Assurance Service issued its report on risk management control and governance at the University. We will be following up this report by April 1, and will be seeking assurance about governance arrangements. It would be helpful if you could give this letter your attention before that time.

There will be some who argue that this is ‘government bullying’, that HEFCE has no right to try to meddle in how Oxford University runs itself. They are wrong. For as long as the University is publicly funded, those bodies which dish out taxpayers’ cash have every right to be assured that their money is being well-spent in the wider public interest. I have no doubt Oxford can prove that, in spades; but, by refusing to account for itself in the way every other charitable institution is expected to, it has weakened its position.

There is, of course, an alternative open to Oxford. It could refuse to take the public money HEFCE distributes, and set its own tuition fees at the market rate. Then the University would be free to ignore outside interference (though would still be answerable to the Charity Commission). Many of those who were most passionately agin the Vice-Chancellor’s reforms advocate precisely this.

However, if they think the University could continue to operate as it does - elevating academic self-government above business reality - in the ‘real world’ of tough global markets, without any state subsidy, they are deluding themselves. A private university would be far less tolerant of loss-making academic subjects than a publicly-funded university is able to be. Independence is not the silver bullet for Oxford as it is sometimes portrayed.

The conundrum is clear. Accept state money, and you accept the state’s right to have a say in how you are managed. Reject state money, and you accept the university must manage itself in a far tougher, leaner way.

The Vice-Chancellor saw this dilemma clearly. He proposed governance reforms which would have allowed Oxford to keep its public money, retain its academic self-government, while satisfying HEFCE that Oxford was serious about becoming more open and accountable. It would have also strengthened the University’s decision-making processes, making it easier for Oxford to become increasingly self-reliant, and less dependent on state hand-outs.

Dr Hood’s opponents are delighted at their victory. Their delight may prove short-lived, and they will have only themselves to blame.

The Blair legacy project - will he walk the talk?

At last, a Blair legacy policy in the truest sense… Yesterday’s Times reports that the Prime Minister is planning to offer tax relief to those who wish to leave their homes to their former universities to help create Ivy League-style endowment funds.

It’s a sound idea (and one, incidentally, which should long ago have been championed by the Lib Dems if the party is ever to have a higher education policy which adds up) - and should, of course, be extended to all charitable institutions.

But it begs one big question. The Blairs’ residence in London’s Connaught Square - inside the ‘bonus belt’ - is reputed now to be worth some £4.5m. What better way could there be for the Prime Minister to lead by example than to offer to bequeath his home to his (and my) alma mater?

PS: the boringly obligatory declaration of interest. I’m a professional fundraiser working for St Anne’s, one of Oxford’s 39 colleges.

Once more unto the polls

The Oxford governance debate rumbles on… Following last week’s defeat of the Vice-Chancellor’s proposed reforms, over 200 members of Congregation (the University’s ‘parliament of dons’) have triggered a postal vote of all 3,700 electors.

Ballots will be mailed to us within the next few days, and close of voting is 4 pm on Monday, 18th December.

I would be surprised (though delighted) if the short-sighted rejection of the Governance White Paper were over-turned. I suspect the fear of the future on abundant display among the joyless conservatives at Congregation will continue to hold sway.

The University is a publicly accountable charity, and, if it fails to become publicly accountable of its own volition, risks forfeiting the very academic independence the rebels claim to be defending.

Though it might be the Vice-Chancellor who loses this battle, it will be Oxford that loses the war.

Oxford clutches to the past

For those who’ve been following the ‘Oxford governance reforms’ story, today was the day of the crunch vote.

I trooped along to the Sheldonian Theatre this afternoon late enough to avoid much of the debate - which fell a long way short of any Socratic ideals - to mark my ‘X’ backing the Vice-Chancellor’s attempts to drag my alma mater and employer-at-one-remove kicking and screaming into the modern world. (About which I posted in more detail here.)

He, we, lost. Which is the problem with democracy, really - it throws up some bloody silly decisions. Not sure what happens next…

But if the Vice-Chancellor, Dr John Hood, is considering his options (and I wouldn’t blame him for a moment) he should remember there’s now a vacancy at the BBC.

Here’s some footage of the moment the vote was announced. Unfortunately I got the zoom and on/off buttons confused when the result was read out. Still, it gives a flavour of proceedings.

Can Oxford decide how best to decide?

I don’t often write about my day job. Partly that’s because politics, and this blog, is a refuge from my work. Partly because it wouldn’t often be appropriate. Mainly because it would be dull for you to read, and for me to type. (All or some of which may apply to this post, too.)

I work as development director for St Anne’s College in the University of Oxford, responsible for fundraising, alumni relations and communications. I’m not an academic - I know my limits - but, as a fellow of the College who serves on its governing body, I am a member of the University’s Congregation, the ‘parliament of dons’ as it is usually referred to in the press. It’s not that exclusive a club - over 3,000 members - and I’ve never yet had cause to attend one of its meetings, as Congregation is a democratic ‘back-stop’, with most decisions delegated to the University’s Council.

But tomorrow afternoon I will be there, along with hundreds of other members of Congregation - many bussed in from the medical research facilities in and around my Council ward of Headington - to vote on proposed reforms to the University’s governance. To which your response might very well be, ‘So what?’

If so, I’d sympathise with you. I’m not sure quite why the internal rumblings of Oxford are of national interest. But if you read the papers today, and over the week-end, you’d be forgiven for thinking there is no bigger issue in higher education today. (And it can’t all be put down to the usual Oxbridge stranglehold on the media. Cambridge doesn’t score anything like the column inches Oxford does when it comes to negative publicity.)

The Financial Times carried no fewer than three articles today, analysing the issues at stake: here, here and here. The Times a mere two; though The Sunday Times also covered the story. And The Sunday Telegraph and Economist couldn’t resist tossing in gobbets of their own.

Why the fuss? Well, partly it’s an old-fashioned bust-up, and I guess everyone loves one of those no matter what the institution. That it’s an ancient university like Oxford allows journalists to indulge their love of stories laced with plummy vocab like ‘cloisters’, ‘dreaming spires’ and ‘Sheldonian’.

On the one side you have the Vice-Chancellor, John Hood - a tough, taciturn outsider, who has taken the University by the scruff of its neck, and told a few home truths - and on the other side you have traditionalists pithily characterised by one of my colleagues (a proper academic) as ‘joylessly conservative’. Which side of the debate am I on? Go figure.

The dispute - and let no-one kid you it’s been anything other than a daggers-drawn, deeply personalised duel - centres on whether the University’s Council should comprise a bare majority of external lay members.

To the ‘Hoodies’ - as those of us who support the Vice-Chancellor are casually referred - this is, in part, about the public accountability of a private institution in receipt of public funding, and now accountable to the Charity Commission. Oxford has to demonstrate, unabashedly and transparently, that it is acting in the public interest. Ensuring there are lay members with ‘disinterested’ objectivity able to vouch for this is important to the University’s confidence in itself, as well as to public confidence.

More importantly, it is about ensuring the University has the appropriate skills to govern itself. Oxford has an annual turnover of £500m and an endowment of £3bn, employing 15,000 staff, and with 25,000 students. It is a complex and international institution. The idea that academics - who devote their lives to teaching and research - have the time, inclination or expertise to master the intricacies of (for example) its investments, risk management or IT strategies is unrealistic. Yet the University needs to ensure it can call on the advice of highly competent people who do understand these issues, and who are able to hold to account the Vice-Chancellor and his executive team.

For those ‘joyless conservatives’ worried this smacks of a takeover by outsiders insensitive to Oxford or to academia there are two very deliberate safeguards in place.

First, the external lay members of Council will be alumni of the University, some of them distinguished academics from other institutions. They will be elected by, and accountable to, Congregation, and their role will be to act as ‘critical friends’.

Secondly, Council cannot itself initiate any proposals – it can only respond to proposals made by the Academic Board, which is entirely comprised of internal members, 35 of them, representing the various parts of the University: the colleges, academic faculties, and university administrators. This body will be the key to the success (or not) of these reforms.

The central tension at Oxford is exemplified by tutorial fellows who are employed by both their college and their department, and often find themselves pulled, simultaneously, in different directions. The Academic Board is the place where a truly Collegiate University must come together to determine its academic strategy and priorities. That such a body doesn’t already exist can be seen either as an amusing quirk of history, or a gaping void in the University's structures.

I should declare, of course, that there is a fundraising angle to this: donors will not give to an institution they do not believe is well run. I think the governance reforms set out how the University can be better run, and therefore will spend its scarce resources more wisely. That makes my job, of soliciting gifts from St Anne’s alumni and friends, a little bit easier.

Oxford is, in domestic terms, a wealthy university; internationally it is dwarfed by Harvard, which commands a £13bn endowment. And as in Premiership football, so in premiership academia: the talent follows the money.

Oxford, like any other university which wants to succeed in the international market-place of higher education, needs to generate more cash in order to offer bursaries to the best students regardless of background; to be able to recruit and retain the best staff from all over the world; and to provide all who work here with first-class facilities. Anything less is failure.

Oxford is not a business, nor should it be run like one. But it needs to be business-like in its attitude. And that means knowing when to make its bloody mind up. Tomorrow would be a start.

PS: for the record, wearing academic gowns to Congregation is voluntary, and I shan’t be wearing mine. Though not on this occasion because of quibbles that it re-inforces a ‘them and us’ symbolism - all members are entitled to wear an academic gown, after all. It’s just that it’s pretty uncomfortable, gets caught in doors, and looks damn silly when riding a bike.

Simon Jenkins: writing with forked pen

As the voice of Liberal England, Jonathan Calder, noted a couple of days ago , Simon Jenkins appears charmingly content to fit his voice to his readership. On Wednesday, he biffed Blair for giving parents some say in their kids’ education:

The education white paper offers a vision of a "parent-led" state secondary-school system. Its key institution is the "self-governing school free to parents", a copy of the Tories' grant-maintained school that Labour once derided. Parents will be able to control a school's "ethos and individualism". As one parent briskly put it to me, "We can keep out the blacks."… Most parents cannot and do not want to roam the country in search of the "school of their choice", even if the transport system could stand the strain. They want the school closest to where they live to be an excellent one, period.

Of course, the best state schools already have a pretty effective racial screening process: it’s called the housing market, and it means that the poorer communities too often don’t get a look in.

And of course parents would prefer their local school “to be an excellent one, period”. Who knows, though, they might even prefer the option of two excellent local schools offering different curriculums, a different ethos, different extra-curricular activities, etc.

Perhaps Mr Jenkins doesn’t feel parents should bother their little heads with such minor concerns?

But all this then made for a bizarre experience today to read Mr Jenkins’s article for The Spectator, headlined Independence for Oxford. Here we read:

The government last week proposed what is a de facto voucher scheme for English secondary schools. They can be self-governing institutions with the freedom to determine their ethos and accept [financial] contributions from parents and others. Oxford would be no different in principle.

So let me get this straight, Mr Jenkins: you are happy to champion independence for educational institutions which are free to determine their own futures when writing for The Spectator – but equally happy to diss it as terrible idea when writing for The Guardian? It's one way of achieving balance, I guess.