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subtext ***************************************************** 'Truth: lies open to all' ***************************************************** Issue 150 23 June 2016 ***************************************************** Fortnightly during term time. All letters, contributions and comments to: subtext-editors@lancaster.ac.uk subtext does not publish material that is submitted anonymously, but will consider requests for publication with the name withheld. subtext reserves the right to edit submissions. Back issues and subscription details can be found at www.lancs.ac.uk/subtext For tips to prevent subtext from getting swept up into your 'junk email folder', see: www.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/dejunk/ CONTENTS: editorial, battle of ideas, democracy, housing, swoosh, senate report, public arts, letters ***************************************************** EDITORIAL The last subtext of the year, the one where traditionally we review the past year, look forward to the new one, and wonder what the shape of the nation will be in the near and distant future. At the time of writing it looks as though, starting tomorrow, we’ll be living in Nigel Farage’s world for the foreseeable future. It reminds us that when the ancient Chinese said “may you live in interesting times”, it was a curse, not a blessing. So, what happened this year? Not much - oooh, there was a strike, which was well-supported, not least, we suggest, due to the ill-considered letter to all staff from the head of Personnel. We would commend to him the advice given to Tony Blair by Alistair Campbell; it doesn’t matter what something actually is, it only matters what people think it is. It is quite possible that the letter was intended as a necessary, helpful and informative contribution to people’s decision-making. However, to everyone we spoke to it came across as a heavy-handed threat. Doubtless some people react well to threats, but most don’t; it leaves a bad taste in the mouth either way. Staff don’t go on strike to hold the University to ransom, they do it because they believe that what is happening is unfair. All such threats accomplish is to make it plain to staff that, for example, we are deemed to work Monday to Friday when it suits the University, and a seven-day week when it doesn’t. We are also always amused to hear the (entirely un-ironic) suggestion that “working to contract” somehow represents a breach of contract. What else? The REF, or whatever it’s called this week, is peeping over the horizon. The effect of that is difficult to predict, but experience suggests that it will be substantial, and that for the next three years or so the tail will be vigorously wagging the dog, as everyone tries to anticipate what will be required. Meanwhile, as usual, the poor bloody infantry will be slogging away in the trenches, while the spectre of imposed teaching contracts for anyone not submitted rattles away in the next room. What of next year? More of the same? It depends to some extent on the EU vote this week, but one suspects that everything will change and yet, paradoxically, will remain much the same. Except more so. Maybe. Interesting times. Have a good summer. ***************************************************** BATTLE OF IDEAS Research has experienced something of Teaching’s Cinderella status of late, with coverage of the new HE White Paper giving heavy emphasis to the TEF and the new Office for Students. subtext will hold our hands up and say we’ve been equally guilty. So what of Research under the new regime then? Are colleagues not involved in teaching getting a clear pass? Not quite. The headline change – which we’re sure most subscribers will be aware of now – is the establishment of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), which will take over from the existing research councils, run the REF, and allocate HEFCE’s quality-related funding. James Wilsdon, Director of impact and engagement in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Sheffield, has written a sweeping review of the sector’s concerns about UKRI for WonkHE (http://tinyurl.com/z4gwaxj), which we would heartily recommend to readers. But for the time-pressed, the key points are: Questionable autonomy: the Bill is muddled as to where responsibility for the research committees (née councils) lies. The proposals see it spread across the Secretary of State, the UKRI chief executive, the UKRI board and the executive chairs of the committees, but with explicit rights given to the Secretary of State and UKRI chief executive for strategic planning, rights that are not matched by a commitment to consult with the research committees. An amendment may be on the cards, that all research committee chairs join the main UKRI board, maintaining their voice at the top decision-making table, but currently nothing is set in stone. Constancy: According to its current wording the Bill states that ‘the Secretary of State may by regulations — (a) amend the first column of the table in subsection (1) in consequence of provision made by regulations under section 84; (b) amend the second column of that table.” For those that don’t speak legislation, this enables ministers to change or alter the committee line-up at any time through regulation (excepting Innovate UK and Research England). Wilsdon suggests that changes to the names or remits of the research committees would no longer be subject to parliamentary debate, and instead could be made through “a statutory instrument … laid before, and approved by a resolution of, each House of Parliament.” This signals a ‘significant weakening’ of the research councils’ current protections, by virtue of their Royal Charter status. Definitions: UKRI’s core functions are described in the Bill as to “carry out research into science, technology, humanities and new ideas” (paragraph 85). Although there is clarification that “science” includes the social sciences, and “humanities” includes the arts later in the Bill, it is fair to say these are not given top billing, apparently not worth equal consideration to ‘new ideas’, whatever those may be. This may soon all be academic (boom boom!): apart from the small matter of today’s vote - WonkHE reports that the proposed changes favour Jojo’s way of doing things, but any ministerial reshuffles may see a new approach – there is still the matter of the House of Lords to contend with. There have already been grumblings from the Upper Chamber – Lord Two-Brains Willetts is said not to be a fan, and Lord Rees, former president of the Royal Society, is looking for parts of the Bill to be shelved. The stage may be set for a skirmish, but the dust will need to settle from the bigger battle before we can really know what is at stake. ***************************************************** DEMOCRACY NEWSFLASH The final electoral register for the referendum has just been published. The grand total of Lancaster University campus residents who have registered is 1564, of which 469 have applied to join the register since the middle of May. This is a great improvement on the numbers registered at the start of 2016, which were comically low, so we should count our blessings. But even so - it's not a great sign of civic engagement when less than 40% of a population shows any interest in the biggest constitutional decision of our time. Think of it like this - if David Cameron were to decide, LUSU-style, to delegate the "Remain or Leave?" question to a randomly-chosen jury of 12 Lancaster first-year students, then 8 of those students would be likely to respond with "What's the European Union?" All of which throws into rather sharp relief the position of LUSU in this area. A lot of work was done last year to get students to register for the General Election, and there was a real push to get students to vote on the LUSU constitutional changes, so LUSU clearly do care about elections. But, regarding Brexit...not so much. Which, one might think, shows a skewed sense of priorities - The General Election is our future for the next five years, the LUSU changes are this year’s idea which can be changed next year if LUSU so decides. But Brexit is, as everyone seems to agree (though for different reasons) the most important constitutional change in this country for fifty years, and it’s irreversible. You’d have thought that would have been worth more than a few A4 posters. ***************************************************** HOUSES Most subscribers will be aware that there is a lot more student accommodation on campus than there was even a decade ago. This is a good thing. Forty years ago, there were no en-suite rooms, almost no students had access to campus accommodation in their second year, and many didn’t get to come back in their third year either. Worse, a large percentage of second year students had to find somewhere to live in Morecambe as there weren’t nearly enough places available in Lancaster. This meant a commute of nearly an hour each way, much of the accommodation was sub-standard, and the fact that an Arctic wind brings horizontal rain to Morecambe from October to April meant that everyone had colds all the time. No student has to live in Morecambe now unless they want to, hurrah. So, lots of nice new campus accommodation is something we can all get behind. What is less plainly a good thing is the increasing tendency of off-campus students to live in purpose-built student blocks rather than in houses, shared or otherwise. Of course, it isn’t altogether surprising. These blocks are smart, new, and have all mod cons. They are rather like living on campus but closer to the clubs and supermarkets. However, the Law of Unintended Consequences kicks in as always. Many people would support the idea that students living in the town is a good thing - it breaks down the idea (that can be held by both sides of the town/gown divide) of the University being an ivory tower. The purpose-built blocks work against this idea - even though they are in Lancaster, they are virtually gated communities, allowing students to live with almost no contact with the local community. Further, at present, students are generally recognised in Lancaster as bringing substantial financial benefit to the town. If students are paying rent to a small number of landlords who own large accommodation blocks and who don’t live locally, rather than to a variety of local landlords who either live in the same house or nearby, then that benefit largely disappears. If students aren’t invested in the town and the town sees no advantage in having students around, then we can talk about ‘outreach’ all we like, the relationship between the town and the University has nothing to sustain it. ***************************************************** SWOOSH Subscribers who miss the swoosh and want a little piece of history should head for the LUSU shop, where lots of swooshed stock is being flogged off. Or even if you are indifferent, but just want a Parker pen for £3, which un-swooshed goes for £8 in WH Smith. We like the swooshed travel alarm clock best, as used by many jet-lagged hard-working senior academics and administrators on trips to foreign parts. ***************************************************** SENATE REPORT The last Senate of the academic year and it was time to say goodbye to a number of familiar faces. For some HoDs, LUSU officers and various other retirees and escapees, this was their last session. Among them was John Dickinson, stepping down from his position as Senate minutes secretary, a role (in subtext’s opinion) he has discharged with scrupulous professionalism over the years. All were thanked by the VC for their service. And there was a new face at the top table to be welcomed – Hilary Hunter, as the new Director of Governance Services. There being no questions to the VC, the first major item was his own report to Senate. He confirmed the hints he had given at last Senate that HEFCE’s funding letter was indeed good news and that we will receive significant increases for both teaching and research in the coming year. HEIF would also be maintained, despite earlier signs that it would be axed. He went on to consider the implications for the sector of the government White Paper and the forthcoming HE Bill. They represented, he said, an increased emphasis on marketisation in HE. There followed a brief summary of recent UMAG business, among which was a discussion of what might follow in the event of a Brexit vote in this week’s referendum. No decisions, but subtext is confident that UMAG will have a Cunning Plan up its collective sleeve. Next was a paper from Deputy VC Professor Andrew Atherton asking Senate to approve the University Priorities for 2016/17. This is a regular item that in the past has been considered by the September Senate but this time was brought forward so that outgoing Senators could give their views, or throw their spanners into the works, as the mood took them. Essentially, they were the same as last year’s priorities but in a different order. We have made good progress in achieving them this year so the message was very much ‘steady as she goes’. So our priorities, duly agreed by Senate, are still to achieve a top 10 place in the NSS scores, increase our research income, increase applications from home/EU students, and increase our entry tariff. There followed what was described in the Senate Agenda as a ‘Strategic Partnership Development Opportunity’, but, as it was marked as a confidential item, subtext cannot make any comment. But it was interesting. Very interesting indeed… Then came a paper from PVC (Education) Professor Sharon Huttly on the PGT Development Strategy. There was some unease about the proposal that individuals applying for Master’s degrees might be charged an application fee, and be required to make a deposit, in order to discourage frivolous applicants but the Strategy was approved. Professor Huttly then presented for discussion another paper, this time on the development of an Education Policy. Readers may be surprised that we don’t already have one of these but older hands will recall that in the good old days when Professor McKinlay ruled the roost such a thing was considered an unnecessary and time-wasting luxury. Professor Huttly’s discussion document, based on Exeter’s policy, posed some intriguing questions. Do we want our graduates to be enterprising, or entrepreneurial, or both? How resilient do we want them to be? How far can they be ‘future-proofed’? Senate knitted its brow, and wisely declined to answer. Following this was a couple of papers from the ever-cheerful Professor Mike Wright, Director of Quality Assurance. By this time the weather outside had deteriorated into what the BBC would no doubt report as ‘Biblical’ conditions, and Professor Wright outlined his proposals on Academic Contact hours and Undergraduate Assessment Regs against a background of Leviticus lightning, Deuteronomy thunder and Genesis hailstones. Someone Up There clearly didn’t like what he had in mind. But Senate was happy to accept them once Professor Wright had agreed to throw in the word ‘normally’ here and there among his proposals where they might have seemed too prescriptive. Senate then agreed to recommend to Council the new Equality, Diversity and Inclusion document, provided the format met the requirement for accessibility, which the current version didn’t. This was followed by a statement from LUSU President Will Hedley on the outcome of the recent LUSU referendum, noting that it was an achievement to get so many students to take part, given the time of year. Finally, there came a request for a departmental change of name from DELC. They wanted to drop the word ‘European’ and simply be called the Department for Languages and Cultures. Do they know something the rest of us don’t? ***************************************************** PUBLIC ARTS AT LANCASTER Lancaster’s 2016 Fine Art Degree Show went under the title OMNIA XLIV (or possibly OMNIA 44, for those not classically-educated - for them there was a short explanation at the beginning of the exhibition that XLIV in Roman numerals means 44). The significance of this number is that there were 44 finalists in the 2016 degree cohort, which is a very significant increase from the penny numbers that used to take this degree until quite recently. The exhibition closed on 21 June, so if you didn’t see it, you’re too late, unfortunately. The quality of the exhibits was a good deal higher than the shows of a few years ago: this degree appears to be attracting not only more students, but better ones too. The show is backed up by a very classy booklet the size and weight of many a university’s prospectus. (To fund this, the students organised a group of sponsors, whose logos are set out at the back of the book.) How come the numbers of Fine Art students have risen so much? Are they attracted by the spanking, and very spacious, LICA Building? Or by Lancaster’s improved visibility overall, along with its higher position in the league tables? Much as we may despise these things, they are evidently very influential. Many of us failed to notice at the time that our public-arts interface, until recently Live at LICA, is now called Lancaster Arts at Lancaster University. This must be a much better name, because LICA doesn’t mean much to anyone not in the know, but still, if the change of name was accompanied by fanfares, they passed subtext by. The inclusion of the last three words distinguishes the University’s efforts from what goes on in Lancaster city, called Lancaster Arts City (it has registered the url www.artscity.co.uk, which has to be a very sharp piece of work). Taken together, the two web sites show very clearly that there’s a lot of arts-y stuff going on in this locality. Besides Fine Arts we have the undergraduate degrees in Theatre, making good use of the excellent Nuffield Theatre. And then there’s music, for which Lancaster now has no degree: and yet, despite the absence of a cohort of students studying music, seven different student bands performed at the annual Promenade Concert in the Great Hall on Saturday 18 June. Clearly there is a great deal of enthusiasm to perform music together with others - so it’s a shame that music, the third leg of the arts tripod, now lacks a degree scheme at Lancaster. The government’s recent Culture White Paper recognises the importance of arts and culture, in children’s education and in enriching people’s lives; it also notes the economic benefits it can bring. However, it does little to redress the damage done to the arts in Britain by local authority cutbacks, themselves driven by reductions in spending by central government, and it offers few real proposals for improved funding for the arts. A leading article in March in The Guardian compared this white paper unfavourably with the much shorter paper produced in 1965 under Jennie Lee as Minister for the Arts in the Wilson government, which led to spectacular improvements in both visibility and funding for the arts. It certainly looks as if other organisations, including universities, will have to do something to help to fill these gaps. Perhaps it’s time for a review of arts provision at this university? ***************************************************** LETTERS Ain’t no letters this week. Everyone too busy Brexiting. Ah well. ***************************************************** The editorial collective of subtext currently consists (in alphabetical order) of: George Green, James Groves, Lizzie Houghton, Ronnie Rowlands, Joe Thornberry, Johnny Unger, and Martin Widden. |