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extra 8
July 2011 ***************************************************** 'Truth:
lies open to all' ***************************************************** All
editorial correspondence to: subtext-editors [at] lancaster.ac.uk. Back
issues and subscription details can be found at http://www.lancs.ac.uk/subtext. If
you are viewing this using Outlook, the formatting might look better if you
click on the message at the top saying 'Extra line breaks in this message
were removed', and select 'Restore line breaks'. ***************************************************** LANCASTER
AND LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITIES TO MERGE? Regular
subtext readers will know that extra editions outside the usual publication
cycle are published only rarely, and only when thought to be merited. Readers might also have noted that, in last
Friday's issue of LU Text, the news was announced that a Joint Strategic
Planning Group had been established with the University of Liverpool, with
the remit of exploring the benefits of closer collaboration between the two
universities. However, no sooner had this been published than rumours of
something far more significant began to circulate. By Friday evening, word was starting to reach
subtext - including from colleagues at Liverpool - that what was being
explored was not simply collaboration but 'confederation.' Furthermore, 'confederation' was being
interpreted by many as a euphemism for 'merger'. So subtext decided to do
some serious digging. What exactly is
going on and what is at stake? What
seems to lie at the root of all this is anticipation of the contents of
(another) Higher Education White Paper to be published in the autumn,
combined with hypotheses on the likely state and character of Higher
Education in a much more market-intensive context from 2012 onwards. The
expected White Paper on Research and Innovation will examine the question of
research funding, among other things, and it is widely thought that it will
recommend its concentration in a small top tier of HE institutions. It may also be thought that in a new
market-intensive university sector, larger institutions will be best placed
to thrive and smaller ones will be vulnerable; a major imperative will be
economies of scale, which larger institutions will be better placed to
achieve. Such
considerations seem to lie behind the discussions reported in LU Text, but
what exactly is being proposed? Is it
merely further 'collaboration', as LU Text suggests; or is it a
'confederation', as seems to have been suggested since the Council meeting on
Friday afternoon? One answer is that
we shall have to wait until the end of July to find out, when the Group will
report to the two Vice-Chancellors.
But this, in turn, raises further questions. A report is announced in early July that
will be completed by the end of July?
Clearly, this was something that was well underway before anybody in
Senate or even Council had even heard about it. While many are now used to Senate being
by-passed, the fact that such discussions have been initiated without Council
knowing about it has provoked angry reactions, not least from Councillors
themselves. It
is not difficult to reconstruct the probable chain of events of last
week. If a report is to be published
in late July, Council must clearly be told about this beforehand (even if
their sanction has at no stage been sought).
The last chance to do this was at the Council meeting last Friday. But, if this is to happen, Senate must also
be told, so a PDF letter is hurriedly sent to Senate members on the same
day. But presumably too, members of
the University should be gently alerted - hence the rather guarded message
that appeared in LU Text that lunchtime.
It is almost as though those at Lancaster who have been principally
involved in setting this course of action in train, notably Pro-Chancellor
Brian Gray, realised that they were about to be found out, and so engaged in
these damage-limitation exercises last Thursday and Friday afternoons. As
for what the report will recommend, many have commented that, on the surface,
Liverpool has much more to gain than does Lancaster. In almost every area of academic endeavour
that the universities have in common, Lancaster outperforms Liverpool. Furthermore, prospects of rationalisation,
relocation and redundancy are alarming many, although such rumours remain
little more than that at present. The
crucial question is whether the prospect of merger, with all the
disadvantages to Lancaster that this would seem to entail, is nonetheless
outweighed by the benefits that might accrue. We
must further ask what will happen to the report when it appears at the end of
the month. Who then will get to see,
discuss and approve - or veto - its recommendations? The way that this story has developed so
far does not inspire confidence that due process will be observed; it is
extraordinary that such explorations could have been well underway without
Council, the University's governing body, knowing about them. If the rumours
about the implications of these discussions are anywhere near
the truth, this could be the most important issue faced by the University
since its foundation. ***************************************************** The
editorial collective of subtext currently consists (in alphabetical order)
of: Rachel Cooper (PPR), George Green, Gavin Hyman, David Smith, Bronislaw
Szerszynski and Martin Widden. |