SRHE News Issue 33-July 2018 - Society for Research into Higher Education
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SRHE News Issue 33–July 2018
SRHE News 33: July 2018
Editorial: Doing academic work
Summer holidays may not be what they were, but even so it is the time of year when universities tend
to empty of students and (some) staff - an opportunity to reflect on why we do what we do. What do
universities do? They do academic work, of course. What exactly does that involve? Well, as far as
teaching is concerned, there are six stages in the ‘value chain’. For every teaching programme a
university will:
Design the programme
Validate it
Teach
Assess students
Certify achievement
Evaluate, review, redesign the programme
Universities often subcontract elements of that chain. They may allow professional bodies or consortia
of academics to steer curriculum design. They bring in people from outside the university to contribute
to teaching. They may involve members of relevant professions in assessment, and in evaluating and
reviewing programmes. They often seek additional recognition for their awards from other bodies.
But they never subcontract validation and certification. Those are the stages which any university
worthy of the title will keep to itself, because they guarantee the academic autonomy of the
institution. They are the ultimate protector of core academic values.
It follows that if you work in quality assurance you are at the absolute heart of the academic
enterprise. Quality assurance is fundamental to the standards and health of the university. This may
be an unpalatable truth to some people in universities, whose default setting is complaining about
pointless bureaucracy. My experience of multiple full-time and part-time roles in universities of all
kinds has shown me that the people most likely to talk proudly about the centrality of educational
values in connection with their everyday work are the porters, the cleaners, the estates managers, the
administrators, the committee secretaries … all those working in roles that tend to be labelled by
reference to something they are not: ‘non-academic’, ‘support’ or ‘back office’. The best efforts of
SRHE member Celia Whitchurch to articulate the dimensions of the ‘third space’ have not yet managed
to rebrand workers in universities in a way which does not instantly reveal whether they are above or
below the salt. Even the grandly-styled Council for the Defence of British Universities seems more
inclined to defend just some: “Our founding members include past and present presidents of the
British Academy, the Royal Society of London, the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Learned Society
of Wales, as well as Nobel laureates, former principals and vice-chancellors”. No ‘support staff’ here.
Paul Greatrix, Registrar at the University of Nottingham, has often written about the ‘us and them’
mentality which still pervades universities. In his latest blog for WonkHE on 21 May 2018 he compiled
some recent academic broadsides and concluded that:
“Anyone who sees administrators either as merely lovely and well-meaning or as semi-literate
philistines but in either case ultimately expendable really does need to think a bit more about how
universities really work. We are all pulling in the same direction and administrators, whatever their
roles, are dedicated to enabling institutional success not preventing it.”
1
In these unbundled times ‘academic staff’ increasingly refers to people with only a partial connection
with the full range of a university’s academic work: research staff, teaching fellows, educational
developers, associate deans, pro vice-chancellors and others, all properly and necessarily focused on
just one part of what makes the university what it is. Too many ‘academic staff’ are less likely to see
the bigger picture, and more likely to weaponise educational and academic values for some real or
imagined battle with ‘the university’ or one of its malign manifestations: ‘the management’, ‘the
admin’ or sometimes just ‘them’. But it does not need to be like this. As Charles Knight pointed out in
Times Higher Education:
“I truly have never felt that at Edge Hill University there is this hard divide between academics and
administrators – and that doesn’t just refer to processes; it’s about culture and values. … if your
university does feel as if it’s a protracted conflict between two tribes, then I’d suggest that your
problem isn’t your administrators – it’s your culture; and everyone has a part to play in changing
that.”
Everyone has a part to play.
Contact us
SRHE News Editor: Professor Rob Cuthbert
rob.cuthbert@uwe.ac.uk (00 44) 1275 392919
Rob Cuthbert is Emeritus Professor of Higher Education Management,
University of the West of England and Joint Managing Partner, Practical
Academics rob.cuthbert@btinternet.com.
Editorial policy
SRHE News aims to comment on recent events, publications, and activities in a journalistic but
scholarly way, allowing more human interest and unsupported speculation than any self-respecting
journal, but never forgetting its academic audience and their concern for the professional niceties. If
you would like to suggest topics for inclusion in future issues, to contribute an item, or to volunteer a
regular contribution, please contact rob.cuthbert@uwe.ac.uk. We aim to be legal, decent, honest,
truthful, opinionated and informed by scholarship. We identify named individuals with their
employing institutions. News content is written by the editor except where authors are identified or
sources are acknowledged. Comments and suggested additions to editorial policy are welcome.
Future editions of SRHE News
Copy deadline for SRHE News Issue 34: 30 September 2018
The SRHE Blog
We welcome contributions from SRHE members at any time for the SRHE Blog, which is now read in
more than 100 countries across the world. Blog posts may also appear as items in SRHE News, and
vice-versa. Some blog posts are now being published in more than one language, and contributions
may be submitted in languages other than English. Please email contributions, in any language, to
rob.cuthbert@uwe.ac.uk or rob.gresham@srhe.ac.uk.
2
Contributions and comments from SRHE members keep News in touch with what is going on in higher
education research around the world: please let the editor know of any personal news or contributions
you would like to submit for future issues. Just email rob.cuthbert@uwe.ac.uk
3Contents
Editorial: Doing academic work ........................................................................................ 1
Government and Higher Education Policy ......................................................................... 6
Policy and funding in England ................................................................................................... 6
The HE Finance Review ................................................................................................................... 8
Office for Students .......................................................................................................................... 9
Policy and funding in Scotland .................................................................................................. 9
Policy and funding in the USA ................................................................................................. 10
Private and for-profit colleges ................................................................................................ 10
Strategy, Leadership, Governance and Management ...................................................... 10
“Your papers, please!” by Paul Temple ............................................................................... 13
VCs’ pay ......................................................................................................................................... 14
Staff ....................................................................................................................................... 14
UCU strike over USS pensions ....................................................................................................... 14
Teaching, Learning and Assessment ................................................................................ 15
The Teaching Excellence Framework ....................................................................................... 15
Peer Observation of Teaching – does it know what it is? by Maureen Bell ....................... 16
Access and widening participation .......................................................................................... 18
Students ................................................................................................................................ 19
Quality, Standards, Performance, Evaluation .................................................................. 20
Quality and standards ............................................................................................................ 20
Performance, evaluation and rankings .................................................................................... 21
Research ........................................................................................................................ 21
What does ‘learning organisation’ mean? ....................................................................... 21
Are two authors better than one? Or even three? by James Hartley ................................ 22
Research into higher education .............................................................................................. 22
Powerful knowledge in the fishbowl by Jim Hordern......................................................... 22
Boundaries, Buddies, and Benevolent Dictators within the Ecology of Doctoral Study by Kay
Guccione and Søren Bengtsen ................................................................................... 22
Staff academic writing: why write? by Amanda Roberts and Joy Jarvis ................ 23
Publishing ...................................................................................................................... 23
Ethics and Academic Freedom ........................................................................................ 24
Ethics and Integrity ................................................................................................................ 24
What is Times Higher Education for? by Paul Temple ......................................................... 25
Global Perspectives ........................................................................................................ 26
Africa ..................................................................................................................................... 26
Benin ............................................................................................................................................. 26
Asia ....................................................................................................................................... 26
China ............................................................................................................................................. 26
Pakistan ......................................................................................................................................... 27
Singapore ...................................................................................................................................... 27
Taiwan ........................................................................................................................................... 27
Australasia ............................................................................................................................. 28
New Zealand ................................................................................................................................. 28
Europe ................................................................................................................................... 28
4Hungary ......................................................................................................................................... 28
Netherlands................................................................................................................................... 28
Sweden.......................................................................................................................................... 28
North America ....................................................................................................................... 29
Canada .......................................................................................................................................... 29
United States................................................................................................................................. 29
Society News .................................................................................................................. 29
SRHE Annual Research Conference: 5-7 December 2018 ......................................................... 29
SRHE Newer Researchers Conference: 4 December 2018 ........................................................ 29
SRHE Research Awards 2018 (Member and Scoping Awards) ................................................... 29
SRHE Newer Research Awards Winners 2018 .......................................................................... 30
Membership rates for 2018-19................................................................................................ 30
Forthcoming Events for 2018 .................................................................................................. 30
Small ads ........................................................................................................................ 31
Mind your language........................................................................................................ 31
What’s in a name?.................................................................................................................. 31
And finally ...................................................................................................................... 32
Brenda Leibowitz 1957 – 2018...................................................................................................... 32
Ian McNay writes … ........................................................................................................ 34
5Government and Higher Education Policy
Policy and funding in England
Universities no longer required to set up schools
The Government’s response to the consultation on Schools that work for everyone, published in
September 2016, was slipped out in May 2018, conceding that it was not such a good idea to require
every university to set up a school. Now, universities are merely encouraged to do so; if not, then they
should support state schools through ‘sustainable and reciprocal partnerships’.
Stephen Topping reported for The Chester Chronicle on 26 June 2018 that Education Minister Nick
Gibb had announced that University Church of England Academy (UCEA) in Ellesmere Port, after
Ofsted judgments that it was ‘failing’, will be ‘re-brokered’ - meaning it will be taken off the hands of
the University of Chester Academies Trust (UCAT) and handed over to another multi-academy trust.
NAO says Government failed to oversee the Student Loans Company effectively
The National Audit Office issued a report in May 2018 which criticised the government for failing
effectively to oversee the Student Loans Company during the tenure of former chief executive Steve
Lamey. Mr Lamey was dismissed from the SLC in November 2017 for gross misconduct in public office,
as Ellie Bothwell reported for Times Higher Education on 11 May 2018. Civil servants had advised that
his appointment a year earlier would be ‘too risky’, but were overruled when an unnamed special
adviser in the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills argued he had been described as a ‘top
performer’ at HMRC in 2011-2012 and suggested his HMRC reference had been ‘unfair’, as reported
by Robert Wright for The Financial Times on 10 May 2018.
Public Accounts Committee says the HE market isn’t working to benefit students
A Public Accounts Committee report published on 15 June 2018 found “no evidence greater
competition between providers will improve quality of education they provide … The original aim of
introducing a market into higher education was that student choice and competition between
providers would improve quality and value for money. In reality the planned-for competition did not
emerge.” The OfS welcomed the report but denied its observation that the OfS is not working with
the NUS. Wonkhe commented that the Committee had failed to draw the obvious conclusion that
perhaps a market is not an appropriate way to organise an HE system, preferring to aim to ‘improve’
the way the market functions.
Universities UK and Freedom of Information
A petition to make UUK subject to the FOI Act has been rejected by the government.
Who can save the Open University?
Pam Tatlow, until recently chief executive of Million+, was unimpressed (in her THE article on 10 April
2018) by MPs who in July 2017 voted for the HE and Research Act, promoting market forces to improve
failing universities, but less than a year later were calling for government intervention to save the
Open University.
University of London
A University of London Bill before Parliament in April 2018 proposed to modernise the process for
making statutes for the university. It’s that word ‘modernise’ that makes you suspicious.
6Not the Real Madrid University
Not the real Manchester University either, but two institutions in Manchester now have ‘university’
in their title with the blessing of the DfE, as John Morgan reported for Times Higher Education on 19
April 2018. The artists formerly known as UCFB are now the University Campus of Football Business,
thanks to a partnership with the new University of Buckingham. In 2017 a venture by Gary Neville and
the University of Lancaster was permitted to call itself University Academy 92.
HEFCE chief executive had her contract paid up, and no more
John Morgan breathlessly reported for Times Higher Education on 12 April 2018 that after much
digging he had induced HEFCE to reveal that chief executive Madeleine Atkins, who lost her job when
HEFCE was closed on 31 March, had been paid to the end of her contract period, a total of £178,000,
but had not taken any redundancy payment, and her bonuses had in the past been donated to charity.
Not the most sensational bit of news this year.
T-levels prompt a Ministerial Direction
The timetable for introducing the government’s T-levels reform to schools and FE was such that the
DfE Permanent Secretary, Jonathan Slater, advised against it, and - when Secretary of State Damian
Hinds pressed on - Slater required a Ministerial Direction to proceed. This is a rare event in Education,
as the Institute for Government website explains. The letters published on 24 May preserve an
intended 2020 start, whereas civil servants had advised a delay to 2021, meaning further slippage
after the original 2019 target. Richard Johnstone reported for Civil Service World on 25 May 2018 that:
“Slater’s direction is the fifth received by a permanent secretary this year, with a majority relating to
authorising Brexit-related spending that lacks legislative consent.” FE Week’s Billy Camden reported
on 25 May 2018 that: “The Institute for Apprenticeships is giving the FE sector just five working days
to respond to its consultation on the draft content for the first three T-levels – during half term. … It
is asking for views ahead of their planned roll-out in 2020, but it has sensationally set a consultation
deadline for June 4. … Mark Dawe, the chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning
Providers, branded the deadline as “staggering”.”
Gyimah grabbing headlines again
Universities Minister Sam Gyimah was at it again on 3 May 2018, with a story in The Times by
Rosemary Bennett about a supposed ‘Crackdown on students who silence free speech’ through ‘tough
guidance’, which he intended the OfS to implement. His predecessor Jo Johnson also often highlighted
the supposed dangers of ‘no platforming’. A solution in search of a problem, or perhaps not even a
solution – Amatey Doku of NUS was soon tweeting that he had attended the meeting and ‘no new
duty, rule or legislation was announced’. Once again Gyimah had manufactured a headline out of a
consultative meeting.
Chris Parr reported for *Research on 17 May 2018 on a Westminster Hall debate on the findings of
the Freedom of Speech in Universities report by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which Harriet
Harman MP chairs. Harman said that: “The previous minister [Jo Johnson] spoke a lot about [freedom
of speech on campus], but I couldn’t detect any action,” she said, whereas current minister Sam
Gyimah “is actually doing something about it”. Gyimah made a speech at the University of Buckingham
on 15 June 2018 in which “he said a student made a complaint against a King’s College London lecturer
for “hate speech” after taking the side of the British when teaching the Berlin Blockade.” But Eleanor
Busby reported for The Independent that King’s said they had no record of any such complaint and
denied it had happened.
One more time: neoliberalism is to blame
SRHE Vice-President Roger Brown made yet another return to the fray in ResearchResearch on 26 April
72018, railing against neoliberalism and marketization. Brita Bergland (Oxford/King’s College London)
argued in Educational Philosophy and Theory (online 17 July 2017) that the incompatibility of
neoliberalism and interdisciplinary development in HE might be resolved by the “(Re)introduction of
a feminist ethics of care into the university, as suggested by the feminist slow scholarship movement”.
Post-New Public Management?
New Public Management is, well, old now. Are we past it? The literature review by Renate Reiter
(Leipzig) and Tanja Klenk (Helmut Schmidt University/University of the Federal Armed Forces,
Hamburg) in the International Review of Administrative Sciences (online 21 May 2018) said: “so far,
the post-New Public Management idea has been very influential as an ‘ideational weapon’ to indicate
a crisis of the New Public Management model. The use of the post-New Public Management idea as a
blueprint for future reform, however, still needs further treatment.”
The HE Finance Review
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) launched an international investigation of how governments
treat income-contingent loans in April, after Parliament’s Treasury Committee issued a critical report
in February 2018. The ONS also declared that the December 2017 securitisation of loans was a genuine
sale and that the company created to arrange the sale was a ‘financial corporation outside the public
sector’. Andrew McGettigan, who gave evidence to the Treasury Committee, blogged on 24 April that
he was happy about the former but not the latter, which he has asked ONS to explain.
Ariane de Gayardon (UCL) looked at international experience and argued in University World News on
15 June 2018 that abolishing tuition fees, as in New Zealand, is likely to lead either to systematic
underfunding of institutions or to limitations on access.
Rob Brelsford-Smith (Swansea, Director of Finance) blogged for Wonkhe on 21 May 2018 with a sharp
corrective to recent misleading media stories about universities ‘hoarding cash reserves’.
Mike Boxall of PA Consulting tried to demolish some misconceptions about HE funding in his article
on 29 May 2018 for Times Higher Education, in particular he argued against thinking that: “Students
are customers of universities … Students pay £9K for their degree … Tuition fees pay for teaching …
Taxpayers are subsidising students”.
Jack Britton and Chris Belfield (both Institute for Fiscal Studies) blogged for Wonkhe on 7 June 2018
about graduate earnings for different kinds of course and university.
Alison Wolf (King’s College London) and Andrew Jennings (UCL) had an article in Higher Education
Quarterly (online 19 April 2018) reporting research on university fees in England, suggesting that
“Public universities with high rankings in global league tables and on domestic measures can command
teaching income per student which is very much higher (in this case typically more than a third) than
lower‐prestige institutions”.
Former SRHE Scoping Award winner Ceryn Evans (Cardiff) and Michael Donnelly (Bath) wrote in the
Journal of Youth Studies (online 28 March 2018) that “‘debt commentaries’ play out very differently
across schools according to the nature of their catchment and the sorts of views staff hold about pupils
in relation to their fear of debt. Furthermore, students’ views on debt largely contradict these popular
‘debt-as-deterrent’ narratives and instead are often characterised by acceptance, ambivalence and at
times positive orientations towards the prospect of debt.”
8Nevertheless, Danny Dorling (Oxford) argued at a CGHE seminar on 14 June 2018 that we should write
off student debt to mark the Queen’s 70th jubilee in 2022, because “the English student income-
contingent university loan and fee system is unfair, inefficient and unsustainable.” Andrew McRae
(Exeter) was justifiably scathing about a report from the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee,
Treating Students Fairly: The Economics of Post-School Education, in his blog for Wonkhe on 19 June
2018.
Office for Students
The Office for Students published its Strategy and Business Plan on 30 April 2018. It will distribute £1.5
billion for the 2018-19 academic year across four key areas of activity: £1,290 million for recurrent
teaching grant; £47 million for knowledge exchange; £51 million for national facilities and regulatory
initiatives; and £150 million for capital funding.
Gill Evans (Cambridge) doesn’t think the OfS as worked out what ‘governance’ and ‘management’
means, as she argued persuasively in her blog for Wonkhe on 23 May 2018. What’s more: “The Office
for Students may find it challenging to understanding fully how the “public interest” registration
requirements operate across an increasingly diverse sector.”
Former QAA head Peter Williams said the OfS guidance to institutions published on 1 April 2018 was
“extraordinary” in requiring institutions to deliver successful outcomes for all students. He said it was
sloppy drafting and ‘dangerous nonsense’, as Jack Grove reported for Times Higher Education on 10
April 2018.
Almost all universities and some other HE institutions are ‘exempt charities’ - exempt from registration
with and direct regulation by the Charity Commission, but regulated instead by the OfS. Guidance
issued in May 2018 by OfS explains that: “The OfS has adopted a different approach to its role as
principal regulator from that taken by HEFCE. In line with its legal duty, the OfS will focus on promoting
compliance by a charity’s trustees with their legal obligations in exercising control and management
of the administration of the charity. The OfS has removed many of HEFCE’s disclosure requirements
for exempt charities and will require only those disclosures that are legally required. This will reduce
regulatory burden for those providers that are exempt charities.”
A Statutory Instrument which proposed to release student data held by the OfS to other organisations
was temporarily blocked by Labour Party intervention, as Camilla Turner reported for The Telegraph
on 18 June 2018. The SI would have been approved on 18 June but Labour’s intervention required a
debate in Parliament. Data would have been given to a range of other organisations including the
private organisation Pearson Education, as well as HMRC, the Student Loans Company and the
Competition and Markets Authority. OfS chair Michael Barber was Pearson’s Chief Education Advisor
from September 2011 to March 2017.
Policy and funding in Scotland
On 13 June 2018 the Scottish Information Commissioner published a scathing report on the Scottish
Government's practice and performance in terms of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests.
Journalists had complained about delays, and the headlines in the Commissioner’s report were that:
“It is an important principle of FOI law that, in most cases, it should not matter who asks for
information. The practice of referring requests for clearance by Ministers simply because they come
from journalists, MSPs and researchers is inconsistent with that principle. The Scottish Government's
9FOI policies and procedures are not clear enough about the role of special advisers in responding to
FOI requests. The Scottish Government takes longer to respond to journalists' FOI requests than other
requests …”.
Policy and funding in the USA
Fake Cloud – no silver lining
LendEDU is a student loan refinancing company whose ‘spokesperson’ Drew Cloud became a widely-
quoted expert on student finance. But Drew Cloud was an elaborate fiction, despite a biography and
picture on the company website, The Student Loan Report. The company founder Nate Matherson
apologised in late April 2018 for inventing ‘Drew Cloud’ as a pen-name to cover contributions by a
range of contributors.
Private and for-profit colleges
EdX’s free MOOCs won’t be free any more
In a blog post on 3 May 2018, EdX CEO Anant Agarwal said that from that day EdX would be “starting
to test the introduction of a modest support fee in some of our courses. The support fee will enable
EdX and partners to continue to invest in our global learning platform.”
US for-profits continue to decline
The annual report from the National Center for Education Statistics showed 2,791 for-profit colleges
eligible to award federal financial aid in 2017-18, compared to 2,899 the year before and 3,436 in
2014-15. The reduction in the number of colleges is paralleled by a fall in enrolments.
Strategy, Leadership, Governance and Management
A jungle of ego and a desert of usefulness
Marketing guru Gerry McGovern, speaking at the annual conference of the European higher education
PR and communication network, EUPRIO, in Seville, Spain, on 4 June 2018, described universities as
lagging badly behind the times in marketing. University websites are “a jungle of ego and a desert of
usefulness” without authentic student reviews of their experience alongside all the positive messages
from the university, as Nic Mitchell reported for University World News on 13 June 2018.
UK senior appointments
Koen Lamberts, VC at York, will become VC at Sheffield after Sir Keith Burnett steps down in November
2018. Lynn Dobbs, Provost at Roehampton University, is to be the next VC for London Metropolitan
University, taking over from John Raftery in October 2018. Gill Aitken, HMRC’s General Counsel and
Solicitor, has been appointed as Registrar at the University of Oxford.
Pro VCs Education don’t need to know about education
Gustave Kenedi (King’s College London) and Anna Mountford-Zimdars (Exeter) reported their research
on Pro VCs (Education) in the Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management (online 25 April
2018): “the PVC Education role requires managerial skills, usually acquired in previous headships, as
well as academic credibility and knowledge of institutional processes rather than particular expertise
in education.”
10Horrocks resigns as Open University VC
Peter Horrocks announced on 13 April 2018 that he would stand down with immediate effect, as an
official statement from the University confirmed. His announcement followed months of controversy,
prompted by the VC’s proposals for radical restructuring and some unfortunate gaffes by Horrocks in
meetings in Parliament and in a meeting with OU students. The announcement suggested that the
restructuring would continue, but the interim VC then announced a ‘pause’ in implementation.
NMITE leader resigns unexpectedly
Janusz Kozinski, the first president of the Hereford-based NMITE, has resigned for personal reasons,
after just a year in post, to return to Canada. NMITE is a new-build institution which promised to
introduce a radical new engineering curriculum. Kozinski is to be replaced by Elena Rodriguez-Falcon,
a former professor at Sheffield, as Jack Grove reported for Times Higher Education on 18 June 2018.
UCL ructions lead to governance commission
UCL staff successfully called a special academic board meeting on 14 May 2018 which established a
commission aimed at ‘re-establishing academic values’ in UCL. The move followed UCL’s plans to build
a new campus in East London to allow expansion to 60,000 students and a notorious email circulated
in March 2018 by UCL’s director of media relations, Charles Hymas, who has now left the university.
The motion to establish the commission also referred to the university senior management’s position
on the controversial USS revaluation, which was ‘withheld’ from academic board.
US senior staff departures
CL Max Nikias resigned as president of the University of Southern California on 25 May 2018, after
prolonged criticism and pressure from USC staff who said he had mishandled numerous recent cases
of sexual harassment and misconduct at the university.
Gregory J Vincent, President of Hobart and William Smith Colleges, resigned on 13 April 2018, just
weeks after anonymous allegations that he had substantially plagiarised parts of his doctoral
dissertation at the University of Pennsylvania, which awarded him a doctorate in education in 2004.
The Colleges appointed Pat McGuire, an emeritus professor of economics, as interim president, as
Fernando Zamudio-Suaréz reported for The Chronicle of Higher Education on 13 April 2018. But
Vincent will keep his doctorate. He posted to Facebook a statement from Pam Grossman, dean of
Penn's Graduate School of Education, in which she said that Vincent's dissertation and questions about
it were reviewed by faculty members. Based on their recommendations, "Vincent will be given the
opportunity to make revisions to the literature review portion of his dissertation, under Penn
Graduate School of Education faculty supervision, which, when completed to our satisfaction, means
his degree will stand."
The University of Dallas announced on 13 April 2018 that the institution needs "a change in
leadership," and that President Thomas W Keefe would leave at the end of the current academic year,
as Scott Jaschik reported for insidehighered.com on 16 April 2018. Keefe had encouraged the
university to consider new educational and financial models, expressing concern that the current focus
on a traditional liberal arts model might not be viable by itself in the long run.
Jabari Simama, the president of Georgia Piedmont Technical College, was given notice to quit in mid-
April by officials of the Technical College System of Georgia after federal and state investigations into
the college's finances found problems, as Eric Stirgus reported for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on
13 April 2018.
Beverley Anderson, Chancellor of the Tennessee system’s flagship at Knoxville, was abruptly fired after
just a year in post, with the President of the Tennessee system, Joseph A DiPietro, writing a scathing
11letter making it very personal, accusing her of being a poor communicator, a bad team player, and
someone resistant to necessary professional coaching. As Jack Stripling reported for the Chronicle of
Higher Education on 2 May 2018, there seemed to be a lot of politics involved as well.
Sergio A Garcia, chief of staff at the highly-regarded Upstate Medical University, which has 9500 staff,
part of the SUNY system, made a speech last Autumn in which he made a series of claims about his
experiences in Afghanistan while he was working for the State Department. He said he was in a convoy
which suffered a bomb attack in which a young mentee of his was killed. The woman he named did
indeed die in a bombing, but Garcia was not involved, and seems not to have been her mentor. Garcia
has also claimed he is an attorney, but he is not, and made many other claims which proved to be
untrue about his previous experience. A day after the story by Brendon J Lyons appeared (20 May
2018) in Times Union, Garcia resigned from his post at the request of the university president.
Former Papua New Guinea VC arrested
Albert Schram was arrested at Port Moresby airport in May on his return from a brief trip to Australia,
charged with ‘false pretence’ over his academic credentials. He was controversially dismissed from his
job as VC of Papua New Guinea University of Technology in February 2018 by the university council,
which accused him of having unverified academic credentials, spending too much time travelling and
failing to win benefits he had promised for the university. A senior colleague had alleged Schram did
not have the PhD he claimed, but this claim was refuted by Australian academics, who pointed to
Schram’s popularity in his university and questioned the rule of law in the country. Tim Dodd had the
story for The Australian on 12 May 2018.
New Dean for Harvard Graduate School of Education
Economist Bridget Terry Long will be the next dean of Harvard’s Graduate School of Education,
succeeding James E Ryan, moving to be president of the University of Virginia. Long was HGSE's
academic dean from 2013 to 2017 and the faculty director of the research doctoral program from
2010 to 2013. She works on college access and affordability, financial aid, the effects of postsecondary
remediation and the impact of institutional initiatives aimed at reducing inequality in outcomes.
How to behave in committees
David Farris (George Mason) identified a set of positive behaviours contributing to exemplary
organizational citizenship in university committees in his article in the Journal of Higher Education
Policy and Management.
Guardian University Awards
In Brighton’s local paper The Argus, Josh Walton reported that 100 Brighton University staff had
written to VC Debra Humphris calling on her to withdraw from a Guardian-run competition in which
she had been shortlisted as an ‘inspirational leader’. The staff said that neither they nor students had
been involved or consulted. The university said she would not withdraw. But just when you finally
decide all awards ceremonies are a complete waste of time, the Guardian gets one right and votes
Mary Stuart (Lincoln) the winner in the Inspiring Leader category. There were some thoughtful
comments from Mary Stuart in her blog for Wonkhe on 10 May 2018. The THE Leadership and
Management Awards were announced in June 2018.
Hereditary Chancellors at Derby
In choosing university chancellors, you need an impeccable figurehead with connections in high places
who can be a credible ambassador for the university. Tricky for post-1992 universities, who wanted
simultaneously to emphasise their complete university-ness as well as their differences from the rest.
In 1995 Derby hit on the ruse of appointing Sir Christopher Ball, former chair of the National Advisory
Body (NAB) which once directed funding for polytechnics, who was the leading establishment-based
12critic of the university establishment. In 2003 Sir Christopher’s former NAB colleague Leslie Wagner
CBE, VC of North London and then Leeds Metropolitan (now Leeds Beckett), was a safe pick to succeed
him. Five years later the University was searching again, this time wanting to send a different message:
to show some history and tradition. The Duke of Devonshire, Peregrine Cavendish, just about top of
the aristocratic hierarchy, was installed as chancellor on 6 November 2008. When the Duke stepped
down, who better to pick than his son and heir William Cavendish, Earl of Burlington, installed at a
ceremony held in the Devonshire Dome (of course), at the University’s Buxton campus on Thursday
15 March 2018. Of course, everyone knows that Chatsworth House, the seat of the Duke of
Devonshire, is in Derbyshire and the Duke of Devonshire is not to be confused with the Earl of Devon,
a lesser aristocrat.
Solent – no-one likes us, we don’t care
Theo Paphitis has been installed as Chancellor of Southampton Solent University, the Southern Daily
Echo reported on 30 May 2018. He was for 8 years chairman of Millwall FC, the notoriously unpopular
London club, but as a noted entrepreneur, Dragon’s Den performer, parent of twins who graduated
from Solent, and a longstanding supporter of the university, he seems an excellent choice.
Boston faculty vote no confidence in Massachusetts system president
Gintautus Dumcius of masslive.com reported on 14 May 2018 that the Massachusetts-Boston Faculty
Council on 14 May 2018 had voted no confidence in their system’s president, Marty Meehan, and
board of trustees, arising from the board decision to buy the campus of the recently-closed Mount Ida
College – and use it as a satellite for Massachusetts-Amherst, even though Mount Ida is in Boston
territory. The vote came at an awkward time, as the president and board considered three finalists for
the vacant post of President at Boston.
Public universities, managerialism and the value of higher education
Rob Watts’ book Public universities, managerialism and the value of higher education, Palgrave
Macmillan: London, 2017 was reviewed by Fiona Robson (Roehampton) for Management Learning
(online 20 June 2018). The Palgrave Series editor was John Smyth, whose own book in the series, The
Toxic University: Zombie Leadership, Academic Rock Stars, and Neoliberal Ideology Palgrave
Macmillan) was reviewed by David Wheeler (previously VC, Cape Breton University, Nova Scotia) for
Times Higher Education 10 August 2017, alongside a feature quoting Smyth: “The new era of “generic
management” meant that nobody needed to know anything about the real work of universities – any
fool could do it! This separation of decision-making and management from any profound
understanding embedded in and emerging from academic work destroyed the collegial basis of
universities with a single blow and ushered in what I consider to have become the sinister and toxic
culture we now have.”
“Your papers, please!” by Paul Temple
I’ve never been a big fan of HR (or Personnel, as they used to be) departments, in
universities or elsewhere. This may result from the tendency of HR people to
patronise those they’re dealing with: “We’ve been considering your career options”,
“Are you really a team player?”, and so on; and because, however matey the
conversation, you need to remember that anything you say may be taken down and
later used in evidence against you. The problem isn’t at all confined to universities:
Lucy Kellaway used to write a workplace agony aunt column in the Financial Times which featured a
running gag on the lines of, “Whatever your problem, going to HR will only make it worse”. Roger
Watson and David Thompson vented their accumulated irritations about university HR departments
in a piece in THE on 8 March this year, arguing that the various “downward-spiralling” HR nonsenses
that they listed “are just another symptom of the managerialism that is now the norm in UK
13universities”. Perhaps; but I don’t think that explains why HR departments are, apparently, more
afflicted than Student Services, say, or Finance … Read more on the SRHE Blog.
VCs’ pay
John Rushforth, Executive Secretary of the Committee of University Chairs (CUC), blogged on 5 June
2018 for Wonkhe about the HE Senior Staff Remuneration Code published by the CUC: it is ‘principles-
based’ (nothing about absolute levels of pay), emphasising fairness, transparency and independence.
Sector reaction was generally favourable, if lukewarm. The UK media in general were less impressed.
The Office for Students then published ‘Regulatory advice’ on 19 June 2018 which “requires providers
to supply a range of information about the financial arrangements for their head of institution,
including: full details of the total remuneration package, including basic salary, any performance-
related pay, pension contributions, and other taxable and non-taxable benefits; a justification for the
package; the relationship between the head of provider's remuneration and that for all other
employees in their institution, expressed as a pay multiple. The justification must include an
explanation of what value the head of institution has delivered, and the process by which their
performance was judged. Providers must also disclose the number of staff (anonymised) with a basic
salary of over £100,000 per annum, broken down into bands of £5,000.”
Cue complaints by students and staff that this is no substitute for their representation on
remuneration committees, which it isn’t, and sotto voce muttering by VCs and some governors about
micromanagement. Expect formulaic expressions of how VC performance was judged, very soon.
Jack Grove continued his admirable digging into the pay of HEI senior staff with a story in Times Higher
Education on 21 June 2018 about pay in for-profit UK HE institutions which receive public money. Even
Bath would be swamped by some of those pay levels.
In Canada, Advanced Education Minister Marlin Schmidt announced on 10 April 2018 that Alberta will
bring in a ‘pay grid’ for the leaders of its 20 post-secondary institutions, fully in effect in 2020. The new
rules mean a maximum salary of $536,000 for heads of the Universities of Alberta and Calgary,
currently paid over $800,000, as Dean Bennett reported for The Star Edmonton on 10 April 2018.
There were (bush)whacking pay rises for Australian VCs: John Ross’s report for Times Higher Education
on 7 May 2018 detailed the eye-watering pay levels for many Australian VCs, with institutional leaders
in Victoria’s 8 universities averaging over £500,000.
And in the US Rachel Leingang reported for azcentral on 1 June 2018 that Arizona State University
President Michael Crow will receive a 15% increase raise in his base salary to $690,000, backdated to
January 2018, but his total compensation could be more than $1.1 million, combining his salary,
housing and vehicle allowances, benefits and additional pay from the ASU Foundation. ASU is the
largest public university in the US with more than 100,000 students.
Staff
UCU strike over USS pensions
The Office for Students issued a statement on 11 April, giving notice that OfS would expect institutions
to avoid or minimise disruption to study: “In particular, we will be expecting providers to make clear
14to students what the impact of the industrial action will be and how any disruption will be mitigated,
in accordance with their responsibilities under consumer protection legislation. Students should be
told where to go for advice, and who to contact to discuss the impact of the industrial action on them.”
Gill Evans (Cambridge) had some caustic comments about ‘grubby ambulance-chasing’ firms touting
for student clients to seek compensation, in her blog for WonkHE on 29 April 2018. Peter Fleming (Cass
Business School, London) said the USS strike had showed academics that their managers held staff in
contempt, in his article for Times Higher Education on 27 May 2018.
What motivates people for public service?
Xavier Ballart and Guillem Rico (both Autonomous University of Barcelona) analysed motivations in
their article for Public Administration (online 23 April 2018).
Teaching, Learning and Assessment
Measuring teaching intensity
Which idiot dreamed up the teaching intensity measure which the government seems so keen on?
Well, there were four of them, actually, and their article finally appeared in a scheduled issue of Fiscal
Studies (the Journal of Applied Economics) (39(2): 241-264 June 2018), having been published online
on 7 July 2017. The guilty parties are Gervas Huxley (Bristol), Jennifer Mayo (Michigan), Mike Peacey
(New College of the Humanities) and Maddy Richardson (Cambridge): “We find that how much
teaching students receive is uncorrelated with tuition fee; that teaching has little predictive power in
explaining student satisfaction; and that physics students consistently receive more teaching than
either economics or history students.” Gosh.
HE teaching is emotional and moral
Kathleen M Quinlan (Kent)’s article in Studies in Higher Education (online 5 April 2018) followed her
research into “66 case examples of teachers’ emotional experiences to see whether and what kinds
of moral concerns underpin those emotional moments”.
The Teaching Excellence Framework
All shall have prizes (except FE colleges)
Louis Coffait and Arthi Nachiappan of Wonkhe quickly crunched some numbers and examined some
hypotheses after the TEF3 results were published, in their blog on 6 June 2018. Most institutions
decided to stick with their 2017 results but, of those that didn’t, 22 improved; the only sufferers were
FE colleges, which in two cases went down from silver to bronze. SRHE member Paul Ashwin
(Lancaster) argued in *Research on 10 June 2018 that TEF is still not fit for purpose.
What do teachers think of teaching assessment?
The article by Christine Teelken (Vrije) in the European Journal of Higher Education (online 20 June
2018) said that: “… teaching assessments in … three countries have become more institutionalized, as
scepticism of their principles have been replaced with resilience and pragmatism in assessment
instruments and, among individual instructors, with sharpened focus on the operational side of
teaching. Although faculty members acknowledged benefits of teaching assessments, they could not
envision how the assessments would improve the quality of teaching. In response, we offer a
theoretical explanation of those trends that extends the development of micro-institutional theory.”
15Peer Observation of Teaching – does it know what it is? by Maureen Bell
What does it feel like to have someone observing you perform in your teaching
role? Suppose they tick off a checklist of teaching skills and make a judgement as
to your capability, a judgement that the promotions committee then considers in
its deliberations on your performance? How does it feel to go back to your
department and join the peer who has written the judgement? Peer Observation
of Teaching (POT) is increasingly being suggested and used as a tool for the
evaluation, rather than collaborative development, of teaching practice.
Can POT for professional development co-exist with and complement POT for evaluation? Or are these
diametrically opposed philosophies and activities such that something we might call Peer Evaluation
of Teaching (PET) has begun to undermine the essence of POT?
I used to think the primary purpose of peer observation of teaching (POT) was the enhancement of
teaching and learning. I thought it was a promising process for in-depth teaching development. More
recently I have been thinking that POT has been hijacked by university quality assurance programs and
re-dedicated to the appraisal of teaching by academic promotions committees. The principles and
outcomes of POT for appraisal are, after all, quite opposite to those that were placed at the heart of
the original POT philosophy and approach – collegial support, reflective practice and experiential
learning.
In 1996 I introduced a POT program into my university’s (then) introduction to teaching course for
academic staff. Participants were observed by each other, and myself as subject coordinator, and were
required to reflect on feedback and plan further action. It wasn’t long before I realised that I could
greatly improve participants’ experience by having them work together, experiencing at different
times the roles of both observer and observed. I developed the program such that course participants
worked in groups to observe each other teach and to share their observations, feedback and
reflections. A significant feature of the program was a staged workshop-style introduction to peer
observation which involved modelling, discussion and practice. I termed this collegial activity ‘peer
observation partnerships’.
The program design was influenced by my earlier experiences of action research in the school system
and by the evaluation work of Web and McEnerney (1995) indicating the importance of training
sessions, materials, and meetings. Blackwell (1996), too, in Higher Education Quarterly described POT
as stimulating reflection on and improvement of teaching. Early results of my program, published in
IJAD in 2001, reported POT as promoting the development of skills, knowledge and ideas about
teaching, as a vehicle for ongoing change and development, and as a means of building professional
relationships and a collegial approach to teaching.
My feeling then was that a collegial POT process would eventually be broadly accepted as a key
strategy for teaching development in universities. Surely universities would see POT as a high value,
low cost, professional development activity. This motivated me to publish Peer Observation
Partnerships in Higher Education through the Higher Education Research and Development Society of
Australasia (HERDSA).
Gosling’s model appeared in 2002 in which he posed three categories of POT, in summary: evaluation,
development, and fostering collaboration. Until then I had not considered the possibility that POT
could be employed as an evaluation tool, mainly because to my mind observers did not need a
particular level of teaching expertise. Early career teachers were capable of astute observation, and
of discussing the proposed learning outcomes for the class along with the activity observed. I saw
evaluation as requiring appropriate expertise to assess teaching quality against a set of reliable and
16valid criteria. Having been observed by an Inspector of Schools in my career as a secondary
school teacher, I had learned from experience the difference between ‘expert observation’ and ‘peer
observation’.
Looking back, I discovered that the tension between POT as a development activity rather than an
evaluation tool had always existed. POT had been mooted as a form of peer review and as a staff
appraisal procedure in Australia since the late eighties and early nineties, when universities were
experiencing pressure to introduce procedures for annual staff appraisal. The emphasis at that time
was evaluative – a performance management approach seeking efficiency and linking appraisal to
external rewards and sanctions. Various researchers and commentators c.1988-1993, including
Lonsdale, Abbott, and Cannon, sought an alternative approach which emphasised collegial
professional development. At that time action research involving POT was prevalent in the school
system using the Action Research Planner of Kemmis and McTaggert. Around this time Jarzabkowski
and Bone from The University of Sydney developed a detailed guide for Peer Appraisal of Teaching.
They defined the term ‘peer appraisal’ as a method of evaluation, that could both provide feedback
on teaching for personal development as well as providing information for institutional or personnel
purposes. ‘Observer expertise in the field of teaching and learning’ was a requirement.
In American universities various peer-review-through-observation projects had emerged in the early
nineties. A scholarly discussion of peer review of teaching was taking place under the auspices of the
American Association for Higher Education Peer Review of Teaching project and the national
conference, ‘Making Learning Visible: Peer-review and the Scholarship of Teaching’ (2000), brought
together over 200 participants. The work of both Centra and Hutchings in the 90s, and Bernstein and
others in the 2000s advocated the use of peer review for teaching evaluation.
In 2002 I was commissioned by what was then the Generic Centre (UK) to report on POT in Australian
universities. At that time several universities provided guidelines or checklists for voluntary peer
observation, while a number of Australian universities were accepting peer review reports of teaching
observations for promotion and appointment. Soon after that I worked on a government funded Peer
Review of Teaching project led by the University of Melbourne, again reviewing POT in Australian
universities. One of the conclusions of the report was that POT was not a common professional
activity. Many universities however listed peer review of teaching as a possible source of evidence for
inclusion in staff appraisal and confirmation and promotion applications.
My last serious foray into POT was an intensive departmental program developed with Paul Cooper,
then Head of one of our schools in the Engineering Faculty. Along with my earlier work, the outcomes
of this program, published in IJAD (2013), confirmed my view that a carefully designed and
implemented collegial program could overcome problems such as those reported back in 1998 by
Martin in Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 35(2). Meanwhile my own head of
department asked me to design a POT program that would provide ‘formal’ peer observation reports
to the promotions and tenure committee. I acquiesced, although I was concerned that once POT
became formalised for evaluation purposes in this way, the developmental program would be
undermined.
Around 2008 my university implemented the formal POT strategy with trained, accredited peer
observers and reporting templates. POT is now accepted in the mix of evidence for promotions and is
compulsory for tenure applications. In the past year I’ve been involved in a project to review existing
peer observation of teaching activities across the institution, which has found little evidence of the
use of developmental POT.
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