First published in Electric Review
By David Conway
Forty years ago, the
cartoonist Timothy Birdsall created a striking image, Wilson’s
Patent Leveller. Against a backdrop of dreaming spires, it
presented a gigantic baroque machine, surmounted by Harold Wilson
pulling the levers. At one end entered hopeful adolescents fresh
from school; they exited, an endless stream of identical bald
executives in three-piece suits, from channels marked ‘Shell’,
‘ICI’, ‘JWT’, ‘Ford’ and so on.
Margaret Hodge, the Minister for Lifelong Learning and Higher
Education (her title originally comprised these clauses in reverse
order until it was realised that this was acronymically
challenging), has evidently just cottoned on to this as a Good
Idea. With the Rector of Imperial College, the Tony-crony Sir
Richard Sykes, as her catspaw, her Department is poised to allow
the virtual demolition and erasure from public life of one of this
country’s finest, most successful and most reputable academic
institutions, University College London. In this she will have the
collusion of its Provost Sir Derek Roberts. A merger of the
two colleges will be a trail-blazer for the government’s existing,
but presently unreleased, plans to introduce top-up fees generally
for university students, in mitigation of its financial
obligations to higher education. A White Paper is expected in
November.
In the bloated
language of the UCL press release of 14th October, what is
under way is a ‘collaborative process that could lead to the
decision to merge [UCL and Imperial] into a new University, of
great national and international significance, appropriate for the
Third Millennium’. But so far from being a triumphant opportunity
to build a Thousand Year University, these proposals are only the
inevitable consequence of many decades of shambolic policy neglect
by both major political parties in determining strategy for the
higher education sector, and the resulting widespread problems of
finance and direction. In fact what is being prepared is a
high-speed stitch-up, driven by financial opportunism and a
leadership-vacuum at UCL, which will have repercussions throughout
the UK tertiary structure.
The facts that Imperial College (founded 1907) has recently
decided to give an honorary degree to that maestro of the
corporate state, Lee Kuan Yew, and followed its announcement
of merger proposals with a decision (18th October) to charge fees
to its ‘undergraduates which reflect the true economic costs of
education’ indicate fairly clearly where Sir Richard is coming
from. The necessary annual fee was estimated in the papers
outlining the proposal as around £10,500/year (as against the
present Government allowance of about £8,000/year) — but Sir
Richard has already admitted the
figure could be closer to £15,000.
Sir Richard’s background as Chairman and Chief Executive of
Glaxo plc (1993-97), then of Glaxo Wellcome plc and finally
Chairman of GlaxoSmithKline plc, from which he stood down in May
this year to take up his academic role, means that he will
understand how the super university of his vision will be
able to attract funding, sponsorship and bursaries for students
from major international industrial corporations which, together
with top-up fees, will enable him to evade present financial
straitjackets. Imperial, which is almost entirely
science-oriented, already receives notable support of this type.
But it only has about 10,000 students, as opposed to UCL’s 18,000
or so. And although UCL has a high reputation (consistently listed
amongst the top-rated British universities) it is financially
weak, with a deficit of around £10m. A merger will produce rich
financial pickings by redundancies, sale of properties, and other
rationalisation, whilst producing an institution of
sufficient critical mass to be of real interest to new sources of
finance. Academics, who have their own careers to protect, will
accept it, and the students will be in too much hock to their
banks or their sponsors to present any trouble. When I was a
stockbroker in the distant days of Slater Walker, this sort of
thing used to be called ‘asset-stripping’.
University College was driven (originally at least) by
different considerations. It was founded in 1826, by a group of inspired
benefactors driven by the ideas of the philosopher Jeremy
Bentham, whose utilitarian concepts, according to UCL’s website,
‘contributed greatly to the university’s radical founding
principles, that education should be liberated from religious
doctrine, should be open to all who could benefit from it, and
should introduce new subjects of study as required by society’.
For the first time in Britain, Catholics, Jews and others
previously excluded could obtain a university education.
Admittedly women still couldn’t make it, but UCL became the first
institution to accept them on equal terms in 1878. UCL has a high
proportion of medical and scientific students, but it is also very
strong in the humanities; its departments include the Institute of
Archaeology, the Slade School of Fine Art, the School of East
European and Slavonic Studies, the country’s only Department of
Hebrew and Jewish Studies, and many others.
For many years, this side of UCL has been under pressure —
partly as a consequence of the policies of the present Provost
(ex-GEC and a former director of GUS), during his previous tenure
of 1989-1999. These included an expensive medical school merger,
and an equally expensive expansion of research which left the
college with the serious financial problems it is still facing.
One weary member of staff, asked an opinion of the merger, told me
‘the arts already exist on crumbs off the table, so I am not sure
how much worse things could get’. But it is in fact not too
difficult to imagine how, in a merged college, those departments
which don’t attract funds or wealthy students can be allowed to
wither on the vine, or even sold off to other academic
institutions, or just closed down. At a public meeting with
students, Sir Derek was eloquent on how a merged institution would
be able to provide funds to invest in and develop departments —
but no-one imagines that this flow would be to the humanities. A
merger will therefore lead to a rapid decline in UCL’s
heterogeneous ethos and a complete betrayal of the principles of
those who founded it.
Sir Derek and Sir Richard are both promoters of the Russell
Group of Universities, which describes itself as ‘an informal
self-selected representative body from research-led institutions,
so-called because meetings take place in the Russell Hotel’. One
of the factors uniting its members is support of top-up fees to be
paid by students. It is inevitably this aspect of the merger which
has attracted the initial hostility of the students of both
Imperial and UCL. Some even profess themselves to be in favour of
a merger, although against the fees, ignoring the reality that it
is only the latter that makes the former sexy.
But finding out exactly what is on offer, apart from the
inexplicit bombast of ‘a world beater’ and ‘a unique opportunity’
(which phrases Sir Derek frequently disgorges), is rather
difficult. We know however from his speech to students that the
idea arose from a conversation between him and Sir Richard; that
‘we can’t take a wait-and-see attitude’; and that he claims,
disingenuously, that ‘no decision has yet been taken’, even though
a number of working groups have been set up to study all aspects
and report back to the UCL College Council in December for a
decision on proceeding, and the search for a successor to Sir
Derek has been in the meantime disbanded.
Here we come perhaps close to a clue as to the motivations of
the whole affair and the speed with which it is being attempted. A
tantalising rumour suggests that Sir Richard was in fact Sir
Derek’s preferred successor in 1999, but that his appointment was
overridden at the request of Tony Blair to allow his continuing
chairmanship during the Glaxo/Smith Kline merger. The attempts of
Sir Derek’s actual successor, Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith, to deal
with his inherited overspend by rationalisation provoked academic
intrigue and revolt. Many of those whose empires had been built up
by Sir Derek saw the threat of their decline and fall under these
reforms. Threatened with a vote of no confidence by UCL Chairman
Lord Young, Sir
Chris resigned in August of this year.
To fill the vacuum Sir Derek agreed to return for a one-year
tenure. At the time it was said that he would bring forward a full
financial plan in October. Now it is clear that his remit was
simply to ‘churn and burn’ the institution he originally
destabilised. No alternative to merger is being pursued or will be
presented to the UCL Council as things stand. Academic staff are
divided, with some (in a triumph of hope over experience)
favouring the mirage of the merger in contrast to the cutbacks
they faced under Sir Chris. Some are also, perhaps understandably,
attracted by the dubious glamour of a British ‘Ivy League’ system
which could put some distance between them and ‘some of the
jumped-up polytechnics which can now pass themselves off as
universities’ (as it was expressed to me by one enthusiast). It is
said that Sir Derek is looking forward to being able to stand down
in January.
Sir Derek’s charm and concern to persuade others were amply
demonstrated during student meeting by his remark that, even if
the entire student bodies of both colleges were against the
proposals, they would still proceed, and by his pointed, noisy and
graceless walking out of the meeting as soon as opposing opinions
were offered (even though he had been listened to attentively and
without interruption). After his boorish performance there can be
no doubt that his project has support at the very highest levels,
and that it will be driven through remorselessly unless its
implications can be thoroughly exposed.
It hardly needs underlining that the world of higher education
as a whole is these days in a fragile state. Should the merger of
Imperial and UCL proceed, with the accompanying financial
implications for students, a domino-process will be initiated. The
new combine will apply for its own charter, blowing apart the last
vestiges of a coherent University of London. This will precipitate
a spate of mergers and reorganisation which will involve,
initially, all the other London colleges and then, almost
certainly, those further afield. Such a process will substantially
reduce choice of topic and quality of research in many subjects,
especially the humanities. All this needs to be seen in the
context of the preposterous government policy that 50% of
under-30s should be undergoing tertiary education by 2010,
implying something like a 30% expansion of the present number of
places.
These developments, in conjunction, will inevitably lead to a
situation wherein a high powered technobusiness oriented education
will be available to the wealthy, indentured, or debt-enslaved; a
quality degree in the humanities will be available only to the
super-rich; and certificates of qualification, ranging from the
worthy to the useless, available to the rest. The concepts of
enlarging human knowledge and a corpus of non-commercial research
will be abandoned. England’s academe will be a worthy extension of
Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore.
Viable alternatives, however, are not so easy to identify. The
obvious answers are either to increase substantially
government finance to the universities or to go over wholesale to
the American system of full charging plus extensive bursaries
(i.e. passing the buck to a means testing system). The latter is a
political impossibility, even under the present government, whilst
the new sensitive Tory Party is not likely to wish to adopt
it. The former is a non-starter given Mr. Brown’s present
problems; although the revised team at Education contains two
past-presidents of the NUS (Charles Clarke and Stephen Twigg) who
spent all their time in that incarnation vociferously demanding
additional funding, they have now been appropriately doctored on
such issues. Giganticism is however not a solution in itself — or
even at all. MIT is, after all, smaller even than the present
Imperial College. This government and its camp-followers just
can’t seem to understand that building schools, hospitals, domes,
mega-universities, and so on, is useless if you don’t place the
appropriate resources and functions inside them. Stalin and Hitler
had the same mental block.
But the UCL/Imperial merger may not yet be a done deal.
Although Mr. Brown doesn't like the idea of spending, the
principle of top-up fees sticks in his craw. He has interfered in
education before, and may do so again — a nod and a wink from Tony
may not in the end prove quite enough for Sir Derek and Sir
Richard to get their green light. In addition this problem is
certainly one which Charles Clarke could do without in his first
weeks as Secretary of State, although he already uttering weasel
words: 'On top-up fees I am generally 'anti'. Am I ruling it out?
— No'.
In the meantime, those opposed to a merger are now recovering
from their shock to organise a broadly-based campaign to preserve
the independence of both institutions over the coming weeks. Lay
members of both College Councils can expect extensive ear-bashings
and lobbying. The future of British university education may
depend on them. If only Jeremy Bentham could step forth from his
case in the UCL corridors and add his voice to the arguments!
