Week of the Unaccountable Oligarchs

A week where the full de-democratisation of Higher Education governance came sharply into focus for me after I watched the brilliant movie Death of Stalin, in which a cabal of unaccountable fellow oligarchs battle it out over control of the Politburo.

Management at our universities often takes no account of what even its most senior academic staff advise, even when they do it in unison. When challenged, as one was challenged by me this week, these unelected ‘leaders’ even admit it, implying that  it is fine for them to take (usually ill-informed) unilateral decisions with far-reaching implications.

What I do not understand is why Senior Leadership Teams and SManagementTs (unaffectionately known as Sluts and Smuts) bother going through the motions of consultation.  It is a sign of the times that I fear to say more because I want to keep my job for a few more years.

"Choice of Hercules", Adam Room, Grove House, Roehampton

I often feel guilty that in the 1990s, along with many other academics who might now be in positions of institutional power, I decided against climbing the management pole. I preferred to concentrate on the real business of university life: teaching, research, and communicating with the public. But that was before any of us realised that we were about to be annexed by a new professional Management Class who regard our views as worthless and our consultative procedures a Jurassic inheritance completely at odds with their commercialised concept of education and intellectual labour.

"Hercules and the Hydra", Joseph Kirsch, 1937

I also heard this week from an excellent middle-aged classicist at an English university, a man for whom I write references, that he and one other lecturer have been made redundant as of 30th June 2018. This would be bad enough at the best of times, but in this case he had only recently signed a contract for a full-time continuing post. He had given up some other non-recoverable lucrative teaching contracts in order to accept it. Some administrative cock-up at Management level meant that the financial implications of the appointment were realised in the local Kremlin far too late, and so two individuals’ futures have been abruptly and arbitrarily sacrificed.

I may not be hearing the sound of physical corpses being kicked down the back stairs by the KGB. But the movie seems painfully relevant, and not only to the Tory Cabinet.