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issue 47 22 January 2009 ***************************************************** 'Truth: lies open to all' ***************************************************** Every fortnight during term-time. All editorial correspondence to: subtext-editors [at] lancaster.ac.uk. Please delete as soon as possible after receipt. Back issues and subscription details can be found at http://www.lancs.ac.uk/subtext. The editors welcome letters, comments, suggestions, and opinions from readers. subtext reserves the right to edit submissions. subtext does not publish material that is submitted anonymously, but is willing to consider without obligation requests for publication with the name withheld. For tips to prevent subtext from getting swept up into your 'junk email folder', see http://www.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/dejunk/. ***************************************************** CONTENTS: editorial, news in brief, Golinka, RAE, central admin review, toys, letters (none). ***************************************************** The words printed on the orange-painted wooden panels in Alexandra Square which hide the work being done to create the new 'Learning Zone' are worth a look. (We predict it'll be called 'The LZ', pronounced 'El-zee' as US Marines do in Vietnam films. You read it here first.) A number of people who care about such things have objected to the Blair-ite use of individual words as if they were complete and coherent sentences. (Remember all that? 'Community. Responsibility. Fair play.' And so on. Makes you feel good at the time, doesn't mean a thing.) Further, if we are to accept that words can be used in this way, some would suggest that at the least they should be grammatically consistent. The words 'Relaxed. Comfortable. Supportive.' presumably describe the character and atmosphere that the LZ's planners hope it will engender. Or perhaps the chairs. Or the sandwiches. Or the dress code. But what, by the same token, does 'Communication' suggest? Presumably the intention is to say that 'The LZ will have a relaxed atmosphere, and inter-personal communication will be possible'. In which case it might have been an idea to separate them. And what does 'Contemporary' mean in this context? Modern? Relevant? Painted white? Not full of antiques? Round-the-clock Big Brother on plasma screens? We dunno. An additional source of wonderment is what the words actually suggest about the proposed 'relaxed and comfortable atmosphere'. It will, apparently, be 'student-run', which is clear, and it will involve 'social learning', which is not necessarily to everyone's taste but fair enough. It will also be 'social', which must presumably be something different from 'social learning', and it will, apparently, be 'developmental', which after several hours of debate has officially been declared 'utterly meaningless'. It will in addition be 'interactive', which could mean all sorts of things depending upon who and what is interacting with who and what, and it will be 'flexible', which may mean that the furniture won't be fixed to the floor though one suspects it's just a buzz-word. (Perhaps the chairs will move around the room, nudging students with cognate research interests together and bringing them fizzy drinks and snacks.) If some of the new 'flexible' teaching rooms in County and Bowland North are anything to go by, 'flexible' actually means 'quite well suited for many things, but not ideally suited for anything'. We shall see. And finally we are told 'Phones Allowed'. Oh goody. One wonders if there will be 'Quiet Areas' like there are on trains, or if the assumption is that everyone is by now so inured to other people bawling into phones nearby that they simply filter the noise out without damage to their concentration. In which case they could surely be allowed in the library and during seminars. So, what can we glean from the words used to describe the LZ? It's a student-run café open all hours in which people can sit around and chat about stuff, or, if they wish, they can do some work, and, if they wish, they can then talk to each other about the work they are doing. Which is all fine, but how exactly does this differ from any other coffee bar on campus? And, one might ask, would we feel more reassured by the presence of some words conspicuous by their absence? 'Quiet. Studious. Tidy. Clean. Supervised.' No? We suppose that would be Not. Contemporary. Enough. ***************************************************** NEWS IN BRIEF Strategy Group Readers will no doubt be agog to hear news of the deliberations of the Strategy Group that took place last week, and we hope to have garnered some impressions for our next issue. Matters are now apparently so grave and need so much serious thinking that it required forty or so of the University's great and good to assemble for a 3 day awayday at a 4 star hotel with a rather good restaurant and a ravishing view. It's easy to carp. So let's do just that. Next issue we'll have more comment, but for now those University members wishing to have a look at the documents that have been produced can go to http://tinyurl.com/clm9k4. ****** Congratulations subtext has long taken an interest in Pro-Chancellor Bryan Gray (see subtexts 1, 2, 3 and passim). So we were delighted to see that he was recently appointed CBE in the New Year Honours list. Perhaps the only real surprise was that it wasn't a knighthood. Maybe subtext has more influence than we thought? Still, there's always next year. ******* University Court The annual meeting is to take place on 31 January in the George Fox Building. The agenda on the surface appears non-contentious: reports from the Pro-Chancellor, the Vice Chancellor, the Director of Finance and the Student President. Court is also being invited to approve a recommendation that Sir Christian Bonington be reappointed as Chancellor for a further five years. Appearances may prove to be deceptive, however. This particular gathering of the University is notoriously unpredictable, as the top table have found to their cost. A report will be carried in the next issue. ******* A slap in the face ... but for whom? Amongst the various papers for last Friday's meeting of the Finance Committee was a proposal to lay down the current Authorised Signatory Group for Phase 5 of the residences project and to replace it with another which would have delegated authority from Council to take all further action to conclude the terms of a new borrowing facility. So what's the difference we hear you ask? Well, it seems that the new group proposed would not have the LUSU President as one of its members. Unsurprisingly, this was challenged and resulted in the Pro-Chancellor asking the Director of Finance and the Vice-Chancellor directly if this was an oversight or deliberate. The response seems to have been to stare down at the table in embarrassment. So we can draw our own conclusions as to the motivation. It seems to have been forgotten that the LUSU President has been an ex officio member of the group ever since preparations for the Debenture were completed in 1995; as much as anything, as recognition by the Council and its officers that students are fundamental to the institution and hence to its major financial transactions. Supported by other members of the committee the proposal was duly amended to restore the LUSU President to membership. A new borrowing facility? It seems we are looking to borrow up to £80 million - yes, eight-zero, that is not a typo - which will enable us to replace the existing Debenture and support the capital programme. Council has yet to approve this move, and must surely look carefully at the risks involved, particularly in the current climate?. ****** Asbestos found The start of term saw the discovery of asbestos on A floor of the Faraday Building. Apparently a frozen pipe had resulted in a flood and a member of the technical staff noticed that a small amount of residue had been left as the floor dried out. Having considerable knowledge of the building, the staff member requested that the residue be sampled to determine what it was. It turned out to contain brown asbestos, ( the exposure limit is the same for all types of asbestos and so it constitutes a serious hazard) The situation was compounded by the difficulty of establishing where it had come from. Likely candidates are the service ducts and/or the plant room which is at the top of the building. Safety representatives from UNITE soon made their views known and it is understood staff in the affected area were sent home, pending resolution of the matter. It is also reported that at least one member of staff requested and was given an office move. Specialist consultants were brought in and worked over last weekend to test for and establish the source of the hazard. One can't help but wonder why the University's programme of work to systematically locate and remove asbestos from its buildings does not have a higher priority. ****** Demo Campus protests at recent events in Gaza have been welcomed by those, including subtext, who are always pleased to see students involved in activism. There is still, of course, interest in events closer to home. On Thursday 15th a student demonstration travelled the length of campus protesting at the take-over of some campus bars by the Hospitality Division (the Catering Dept, as was). It is perhaps fortunate for the tender ears of passers-by that the Director of Hospitality, David Peeks, has a surname that does not readily rhyme with the sort of chants that are common at this sort of event. This week's subtext competition... ****** Cash in Hand Here's an interesting initiative. The Vice-Chancellor at Bristol, Eric Thomas, is putting in £100,000 of his own family's money to that university's appeal. The funding will be for a post in Classics. subtext wonders a number of things; will this action set a precedent at Lancaster, who might be first to step forward with their cheque-book, and what conditions might be attached? Of course, there is no reason why such a donation could only be used to fund an academic post - for example, we're sure that the University's beleaguered and over-worked cleaners would appreciate a few more pairs of hands. **************************************************** GOOD DAYS FOR BAD NEWS Readers will remember references in previous issues of subtext to Golinka, an Indian company of education providers, with whom Lancaster has come to an arrangement to provide Lancaster degrees. The exact details are still a little hazy, but we understand it as a sort of franchise cum foundation degree idea - Golinka will provide students in India with a chance to start a degree there based on the Lancaster model, which will then be topped-up by a year spent here. When this proposal reached Senate there were, unsurprisingly, questions about maintaining standards and quality control, in particular around assessment. Assurances were given, but the debate continues. Golinka have no experience of delivering degree-level education, and it is understood that they have yet to employ the staff to deliver a curriculum which is as yet neither written nor agreed. If Lancaster is to assess the competence of these staff when they eventually appear, it's going to have to be done in a hurry - the whole exercise has to be sorted by August. It will be interesting how the new freshly-reviewed administrative structure at Lancaster deals with this sort of issue. It is probable that the Management School will have to deal with most of the students involved. The University chose the morning of the last day of last term to call a meeting with those staff in the Management School likely to be affected. There was a certain amount of quiet grumbling as it appeared that the deal had been done without consultation with those who were going to have to actually deliver it. (See mention of 'fait accompli', below.) This grumbling became audible when it was announced that Golinka would be permitted to accept students with substantially fewer points than are normally required of students here. It was pointed out that as a result Golinka students might well be of lower quality than those at Lancaster. This was apparently not going to be a problem. The deal is done. Live with it. You can go online and buy a degree for about sixty pounds without doing any studying at all. Lancaster degrees through Golinka degrees will be a great deal more expensive, but it isn't yet clear that they'll be all that much harder to obtain. ***************************************************** RAE 2008: THE OUTCOME FOR LANCASTER And so the sixth and final research assessment exercise has come and quietly gone. The results for Lancaster were strangely muffled, perhaps because of the mixed messages for the university, but also in the absence of information about the consequences for its future funding. Additionally, in a country obsessed by a credit crunch and a recession, little attention was paid in the media to the success story of its universities, or the extent of world class and internationally excellent research that goes on in them. Lancaster came 18th overall out of 147 institutions if research intensity is not counted in. If its submission rate of around 90% had been given due weight, the university would have featured in the top ten. The scores are so close within the top twenty, however, that their relative positions are important mainly for the purposes of institutional rhetoric, not for differences in quality. The discounting of research intensity also inevitably affected Lancaster's subject rankings, and the differences in calibration between the different units of assessment further distort the overall picture. Lancaster's star is unequivocally Physics which, despite a lack of investment or of razzamatazz, came first in the country in its unit of assessment for the second time running. Two calculated gambles paid off: Allied Health Professions and Studies, in a unit to which Lancaster had not previously submitted, achieved a tie with University College London; and in Art and Design, where all the creative arts were entered together, the unit was highly rated. Computing scored exceptionally well, and with its overall 3.05 and with 80% of its submission graded as either 4 or 3 (world class or internationally excellent, in each case combining output, research environment, and esteem), gave an outstanding result. Some Lancaster units, previously labelled overall as 6*, would probably not have achieved that accolade had the same methodology been applied in 2008. The profiling within each unit for the recent exercise gave a less simplistic picture and made the loss of the earlier headline result less evident. The Management School, now in 5th place, is naturally a disappointment after the glory days of third place and 6*, but nevertheless tied with Bath, King's College, LSE, Oxford, and Warwick, and had 75% of the submission graded 4 or 3. It demonstrated true strength across the board, with a large entry of 108 staff. While Statistics also lost its 6* and slipped from 1st to 11th, attributable in part to a leading researcher's transfer to Health and Medicine, and also to a high proportion of young staff, the unit nevertheless had 60% of the submission rated as 4 or 3. Sociology, now a smaller unit than before, still came 5th, with 60% of the submission at 4 or 3. The most disappointing was Politics, at 43rd, with 20% at 4 or 3. In recent years Lancaster, like many of its peers, has attempted to identify leaders for privileged investment, with the intention that they would lift the university's research standing. The Management School paid off handsomely in 2001, and is still holding its own in an exceptionally competitive field. The Lancaster Environment Centre, the university's most sustained investment, has had sufficient time to mature and acquire critical mass that the inclusion of staff from Geography and Biological Sciences, as well as from Environmental Science, broadly paid off within a newly fashioned unit of assessment, ranking Lancaster equal twelfth with five other strong contenders. InfoLab 21 gives Computing a new platform and may over time help Communications Systems. Moreover, when combined with the top result from Physics, LEC and InfoLab help to demonstrate depth and breadth of scientific research at Lancaster, an important issue for the future. The Institute for Advanced Studies appears to need a longer lead time before its existence materially helps the units it notionally covers, but having the new director will doubtless give it fresh impetus. The Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts, still in the process of formation, has gained from the single submission of the creative arts, in a move that strongly supports the future interdependence of those subject areas. Overall, the decision to select for investment therefore seems to have paid off, but is far from being the whole story. (The business of 'cherry-picking' departments for focus and extra funding can't be a zero-sum activity; inevitably other departments are by definition asked to manage without this additional support, the money has to come from somewhere, and some might argue that for extra funding to produce winners is at least partly a self-fulfilling prophecy.) As the system moves from RAE to REF (Research Excellence Framework), and from one style of games playing to another equally remorseless point scoring, Lancaster staff are right to feel considerable pride in re-securing the university's position overall as a leading research institution. More generally, subtext wonders whether with hindsight the RAE process, expensive and coarse-grained as it has been described, may not come to seem much preferable to a procedure largely detached from peer review or qualitative judgement. ***************************************************** MORE RAE And let's not forget that the stellar performance by LICA includes a useful contribution from the Art Department. We understand that this group of esteemed and much-valued academics should in no way be confused with the group of lame ducks who were due to be closed down with extreme prejudice a few years ago because they were rubbish. No, no missus, no similarity to them at all. ***************************************************** CENTRAL ADMIN REVIEW The Central Administration Review (CAR) is still under way, but the big picture is starting to emerge. (The devil is usually in the detail; in this case it seems to be in the big picture too.) subtext drones will be poring over the information that has come our way and analysing the implications of it all on your behalf for many long nights to come. We will, for example, be searching hard for any mention of Governance. In all the diagrams we've seen there is no mention of it. Assuming it hasn't been simply forgotten, the assumption will probably be that it occurs somewhere in the wide acres of white space surrounding the VC in the rather minimalist diagram showing the structures around him. The separation of functions is interesting too; the ongoing drive to separate 'those who do admin' and 'those who do thinking' gathers pace. And the relationship between Finance and Planning will no doubt bear scrutiny. There is also interest to be found in some of the (apparently anomalous, but probably we just wouldn't understand) bits around the edges. The Safety Office is in Human Resources. The Associated Institutions are in Marketing, removing them from both Quality and Registry functions. (That'll be fun for them.) The whole student-related activities section looks like a potentially hideous muddle. And the various divisions are wildly different in size and complexity. One fact is undisputable. The review has created four new highly-rewarded managerial posts, at a time of great pressure on wages and rumours of redundancies. It will be interesting to see the response of the campus unions. This one will, as they say, run and run. ***************************************************** TOYS FOR THE BOYS Readers will be familiar - indeed, probably over-familiar, such is its ubiquity these days - with the phrase 'the elephant in the room', used to indicate something obvious, unavoidable and terrible that nevertheless no-one talks about. At Lancaster, this is no longer just a clichéd image. Whenever Mark Swindlehurst, Director of Estate Management, attends a meeting about budgeting he takes a small blue toy elephant with him and puts it on a nearby chair. It represents the budgetary black hole represented by 'invisible' building maintenance costs, which, in his opinion, won't go away and is being ignored in the University's calculations. Right or wrong, you've got to admire his style. ***************************************************** LETTERS None this week. Heigh ho. 'Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it's awful' (Samuel Beckett, Waiting For Godot). ***************************************************** The editorial collective of subtext currently consists (in alphabetical order) of: George Green, Gavin Hyman, Bronislaw Szerszynski and Alan Whitaker. |