Reporter 10/10/01: Congregation of the Regent House on 1 October 2001

ACTA

Congregation of the Regent House on 1 October 2001

A Congregation of the Regent House was held at 9.30 a.m. Professor Sir ALEC BROERS delivered the following address to the Regent House:

1. I shall continue this year with the practice that I introduced in 1997 of foregoing a detailed account of the preceding year's activities and concentrating instead on matters that especially attracted my attention over the past year.

2. The first is the ever increasing public interest that the University attracts and the coverage that this is given by the media. This prompts me to pay tribute to the calm and effective way in which the University Press and Publications Office, led at present by Fran O'Dwyer, puts our case to the papers and the media. It is difficult to believe that it was only eleven years ago that the University appointed Susie Baker as its first press officer and that the appointment was greeted with scepticism in some quarters. Those who were opposed argued that to raise our profile was to invite increased attention to our controversies as well as to our achievements. It is apparent now that it is essential to rebut falsehood and reinforce success, and the record of the last year shows the merit of doing this and the effectiveness of our press officers. The Colleges as well as the University have benefited from their skills both in dealing with difficult topics, and in gaining positive coverage for our many highly successful activities. I cite just four examples of initiatives that have gained very positive coverage; the launch by Sir David Frost of the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities; the Gates Cambridge Scholarship scheme; the recent launch of the University Gas Turbine Partnership with Rolls-Royce that is to be led by Professor Ann Dowling, and our Science Week which was widely acclaimed and gained the Heist Gold Award.

3. The second matter is the main topic that I will address. It is the difference that I have come to observe between the University as defined by its Statutes, Ordinances, and Regulations, and the University as revealed by the behaviour and performance of those that make it one of the most highly regarded intellectual institutions in the world; what I call its 'character'. My observations are not novel, of course. In his celebrated Reith Lecture in 1951, appropriately called 'The problem of power', Lord Radcliffe made these far-sighted remarks:

The British have formed the habit of praising their institutions, which are sometimes inept, and ignoring their character, which is often superb. In the end they will be in danger of losing their character and being left with their institutions: a result disastrous indeed.

These words seem especially apt of the University today, and I would like to speak about the essential character of the University and about it as an institution.

4. A Vice-Chancellor has a unique opportunity of seeing the University in all its aspects, from the outside and from the inside. For instance the fact that I insist on seeing personally every complaint received in the office is one of the best ways of taking the pulse. It is clear that undergraduate admissions matters are what most concern those outside the University, evenly divided between those parents and relatives who believe their children to have been denied equitable treatment because they have attended private schools, and those who believe the same to be a consequence of a state education. You will draw your own conclusions from your experience: it is a situation in which there will always be unhappiness and disappointment and in which our practice must be, and must be seen to be, both open and fair. I applauded the decision of Clare College to give publicity to their procedures and I support the effort to make open entry more available.

5. My view of the inside comes from my day-to-day interactions with members from all levels and from many of the institutions of this complex University. To visit as wide a range of University institutions as I do is an uplifting and at the same time a humbling experience. At every level there is enthusiasm, vigour, imagination, and innovation and our continuing success in the newspapers' tables, while their rigour has been questioned, at least speaks of the competitive excellence of our research and teaching. The contrary issues that arise, again at all levels, principally concern conditions of service and especially pay, all set in the context of house prices which are now beyond the reach of many. These are issues which we must and will address, but within the present national frameworks the scope for individual institutional initiative is limited. We have, to some extent, been able to address the problem of recruiting Professors, especially from overseas, and that of retaining the quality of international leadership on which our reputation - and the prosperity of us all - ultimately depend. It is encouraging that 84% of the Professors elected since 1996 were the first choice of the Electors. I am deeply conscious, however, that a gap, a huge gap, remains for others of the University's academics and staff if their position in the national earning league is to be restored to what it once was.

6. Another measure of the University's success is the willingness of others to contribute to our efforts, and I pay tribute today to Anna Wardman and Anthony Tootal at the Development Office and to their able and committed team who have so smoothly handled many of the benefactions that I mention.

7. We have been fortunate in receiving support for a large number of initiatives over the year and I will only have time to mention a few of these; $10m have been given by Wesley and William Janeway to establish the Cambridge Endowment for Research in Finance in the Judge Institute, $210m have been given by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to endow one of the largest scholarship programmes ever for University education and this is a landmark in our history; £12m from Atlantic Philanthropies and £16.5m from Hutchison Whampoa have been used to establish the University of Cambridge Hutchison ICRF Cancer Research Centre at Addenbrooke's; $4m from Mr Dennis Kozlowski and the Tyco Corporation have been used to establish a Professorship of Corporate Governance in the Judge Institute to be named in honour of Mr Robert Monks; the corporate support of BT and BP began to animate further the ground-breaking agreement with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the first MIT exchange students arrived in the course of the year, with some of our students travelling to the other Cambridge; £13m from Unilever built the Centre for Molecular Informatics which is attached to the Department of Chemistry; £11m have been raised by a committee chaired by Nicholas Baring for the development of the courtyard at the Fitzwilliam Museum; and $3.5m from the estate of Mr Fred van Eck have been used to establish a Professorship in high-speed communications. We have been very fortunate for the last six years to have Sir Adrian Cadbury as Chairman of the Trustees of The Cambridge Foundation. This has been a very successful period for fund-raising and we are immensely grateful to him for his contributions to this success. We have now been fortunate once again in finding an outstanding chairman. Lord Simon of Highbury became Chairman of the Foundation in July of this year.

8. In addition to these magnificent benefactions we received funding of £100m from the Joint Infrastructure Fund, and £41m from the Science Research Infrastructure Fund for a series of projects.

9. I also wish to commend Pro-Vice-Chancellor Anne Lonsdale and all those who worked together to create Cambridge in America. This new organization will take over the activities of both the American Friends of Cambridge University and the Cambridge University Development Office in the US. The Board of Cambridge in America will comprise a majority of US residents so that it is a tax-efficient fund raising entity, and an equal number of University and College representatives. Bringing all of our activities into one organization will not only improve efficiency, but will allow us to make a more coherent approach to our alumni and friends in the US. We are extremely grateful to Gurnee Hart, the first Chairman of Cambridge in America, who is leading the new entity with energy and enthusiasm.

10. And so my impression of the essential character of the University is one of exceptional intellectual leadership and creativity just as it has been for hundreds of years. There is optimism, determination, and innovation, modified only by anxiety that we are apparently unable to reward all our members as they certainly deserve. Those who followed one of the Long Vacation controversies will have noted how rapidly and thoroughly colleagues across the University and elsewhere wrote to refute American allegations that Great Britain in general, and Cambridge in particular, were failing in vigour and invention. That was indeed my own reaction. Our academic performance is in the front rank.

11. I will now turn to the University as an institution and the efforts that we are making to improve the speed, efficiency, and transparency of the way in which we operate to prevent us qualifying as one of Radcliffe's 'inept institutions'. Over the last two years we have made a number of changes to our committee structure which I will come to, but before I do so I should point out that I am always aware, having spent the first twenty years of my career in a much younger organization, that committees may not be the most efficient way to make decisions. Again, this is anything but a novel observation. In the Wass Report itself, the blue-print by which we are still governed, the inevitable tension between speedy and effective responsiveness, and wider participation in the management and governance of the University, is only too clear. As long ago as 1891 A. J. Balfour, Conservative leader, and later Chancellor of the University, had this to say in a letter:

I know how broken up University life is, and I attribute it in part to the abominable system of managing everything through syndicates and committees - ingenious contrivances for making the work of ten wise men (if only it was limited to 10) as if it were inferior to the work of one fool.

Please note the impeccable traditionalist credentials of the speaker, and the date of his remark. Who can say that there is not now as much - or more - truth in what he said as there was not long before Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee?

12. But I do not believe that efficiency is an over-riding need in the workings of a university, as, for example, it is in industry, and there are intellectual advantages to seeking a range of opinion, even if the decisions must be the result of a collective compromise. So we have, and will always have, our Committees and Syndicates and must find the best way to use them. We have made the following changes in our committee organization over the last couple of years.

13. We used to have one committee responsible to the Council for Planning and another for Resources. This was inefficient because we needed to know what resources were available before we could plan. In 2000 we brought these two committees together into the Planning and Resources Committee, the PRC. College representation was added to the Committee to allow it to handle issues that arise between the Colleges and the University especially with the new funding regime. The PRC reports to the Council and to the General Board. It has set up a number of working groups and committees to help it fulfil its function. One of these is the Land-Use Working Group which has responsibility for proposing the long-range strategy for the use of the University's estate. It was this group that put forward to the PRC and the Council the proposals for the North-West Cambridge site. This forward-looking proposal, which was well received by the local community when it was first presented to them in February, would satisfy the University's needs for the next fifteen to thirty years. It will also make space available for the formation of new Colleges should they prove necessary. If growth continues at the pace that is presently envisaged, that is, 0.5% per annum for undergraduates and 2% for graduates, there will be the need for three new Colleges by 2010, or for today's Colleges to expand by 10%.

14. Again, in the allocation of resources we used to have two committees where there should have been one. There was the Needs Committee of the General Board that allocated resources to General Board institutions and the Allocations Committee that allocated resources to so-called 'Council' institutions. This meant that there was no easy way to balance the needs of the two families of institutions. These two committees have now been combined into the Resource Management Committee that reports its deliberations to the Council, the General Board, and the Planning and Resources Committee. It has also been the task of this Committee to define a Resource Allocation Model, or RAM, to be used to distribute government and University financial resources to the five Schools and to the two new sub-committees that will be responsible for institutions that do not fall within the academic Schools, such as the Fitzwilliam Museum, the Board of Continuing Education, and Physical Education amongst others. It will then be the responsibility of the Councils of the Schools and the sub-committees to distribute these resources to the University's approximately 150 institutions. Professor Hugh Mellor in his role as Pro-Vice-Chancellor has made a crucially important contribution in working with the Schools and other bodies to find an acceptable formula for the RAM which will be the subject of wide consultation this Term.

15. We have also been altering our procedures to gain efficiency. For example, we reduced the frequency of meetings for our major committees from fourteen per year to seven per year thereby allowing more time for the preparation and consideration of papers. This has improved the quality of the papers and considerably reduced the need to bring matters back a second time. As chairman, I now find it easier to get through the agenda than it was when we met with twice the frequency.

16. The working of the Schools has been steadily improving and the Chairmen of the Councils of the Schools are playing a crucial role in the smooth operation of the University's academic programme. There were some outstanding examples of successful organization that I wish to mention. The Research Assessment Exercise was conducted with quality and efficiency. Our input was not only of very high quality but was completed well within the allocated time. The Transparency Exercise was similarly successful. A large volume of data was collected, collated, and submitted ahead of schedule. The officers in the Old Schools and in the Faculties and Departments are to be praised for their efforts on these two important tasks which were co-ordinated by Professor Mellor.

17. The appointment of Directors for the various divisions of the Administration is helping to improve our professionalism in a number of areas and we continue to pursue this approach as we modernize our organization. There are many changes and appointments still to be made. The severe problems we encountered in installing the new financial and management information system placed huge stresses on our administrators, both in the centre and in the institutions, and revealed our shortages of staff. It has been pointed out that we have far fewer financial experts in our administration than other much smaller UK universities. Our new Director of Finance, Andrew Reid, will be looking into this situation. Because some members of the University asked who should be accountable for the problems with the new system, the Board of Scrutiny, and the Audit Committee, recommended to the Council that experts from other UK universities should be asked to analyse the situation and report to the Council. The Council will publish their findings in the Reporter. From my personal viewpoint the answer will be found in our traditional means of governance, where responsibility is placed upon a combination of committees and a range of administrators, rather than upon individuals. We need to place responsibility more singly if we are to avoid similar problems in the future.

18. Despite this particular case, the changes we have made to our administration have significantly improved our ability to manage the University and react in a timely way to the ever growing volume of requests from Government and the vastly increased number of projects in which we are involved. I pay tribute to the Principal Officers and Heads of Divisions, and their colleagues in our administration, and to the small teams in my own office and Lodge, all of whom have coped with this vast increase in workload without, in some cases, any increase in resources, and in all cases with less than a proportionate increase. But there is much still to be done, and I ask the members of the University for their patience and help whilst we go about this task.

19. Pointers to the way in which the University's character has changed, and must change further, came with the publication this year of the 'equality audit'. We, and other institutions and universities, have to change to provide for full realization of the potential of our academics and employees and I remain firmly committed to this priority.

20. I am also going to encourage the use of electronic means to engage more members of the Regent House in the discussion of issues affecting the University. We need means that are more suited to today's rapidly changing requirements. The traditional Discussions do not serve this purpose, and in any case there are only a very few participants. It will also be necessary for us to work out protocols that keep the debate within intellectually principled boundaries.

21. During my time as Vice-Chancellor, I have striven to ensure that the University recognized and fulfilled its local, national, and international responsibilities to society through collaboration and intellectual leadership. There are two new courses which show that we can succeed. The first is the Cambridge Graduate Course in Medicine which was launched last week. This course is a partnership between the University and the West Suffolk Hospital and local general practices in the market town of Bury St Edmunds. It is an innovative four-year course designed for outstanding graduates from all backgrounds and has attracted an exceptionally talented group of students. Sir Keith Peters explained at the launch that this will allow the University to react to a national need for more doctors by drawing upon a pool of people who had hitherto thought that medicine was not open to them. The second course, which was launched this month by the Board of Continuing Education, is the part-time version of the successful Master of Philosophy in International Relations. Students have come from all around the world and from all backgrounds in education, business, and government to study for this degree. This is the first time that a full-time course has been replicated on a part-time basis and the M.St. will consist of both intensive teaching periods in Cambridge and the innovative use of IT between the residential periods. It seems bound to be a success, and will in the opinion of Michael Richardson, the Director of Continuing Education, give talented students from all over the world the opportunity to benefit from the excellence of Cambridge teaching.

22. These new programmes, and there are several others, show that we do have the ability to be flexible and to modify our rules in the light of modern requirements. I have come to the conclusion that there is in Cambridge a circle of inter-related confusion as frustrating to the critics as it is to those striving to the best of their ability to make a system devised in earlier and easier days fit the pace and exigencies of the present day. We must be flexible and willing to change and to accept that there is a need to clarify our decision-making procedures. With the two new courses, strong leadership overcame the confusion and significant progress was made.

23. And we do not have to abandon our traditions where they do not affect our ability to function. It would, for example, indeed be a dull institution which had no place for the colour and humour that comes from our ceremonies and our state occasions. These events bring incomparable pleasure to their participants and on-lookers. 'Matchless and unrivalled perfection' was how one not inexperienced honorand described our Congregation last June. Another wrote simply 'it was perfect, of course'. Tribute must go to Geoffrey Skelsey and our Senate-House team who make these occasions so successful. This is one aspect of the University about which I receive consistent praise.

24. Of the many individuals who retire today, or who have left office during the year, and to whom we extend our warmest thanks for their accomplishments, I have time to mention only four: Lord Lewis whose contribution to chemistry did so much to give Cambridge international leadership in the subject and who, as the founding Warden, established the high reputation of Robinson College that we see today; Dame Gillian Beer who steps down as President of Clare Hall and who greatly strengthened that College but remains as King Edward VII Professor of English Literature until next year; Professor David King, Master of Downing, whose talent and ambitions for chemistry led to a vast expansion of the Department and whose high standing in the scientific community led to his being chosen as Chief Science Adviser to the Cabinet; and Baroness Pauline Perry whose energetic Presidency of Lucy Cavendish brought vitality and expansion to that most important of Colleges and who has done so much to improve the University's interactions with parliament.

25. I mark with sorrow the passing of John Mor-rison, Founding President of Wolfson College and Founder Fellow of Churchill College, Sir Derman Christopheson, former Master of Magdalene College, Philip Gaskell, former Librarian of Trinity College, Elizabeth Anscombe, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Mark Kaplanoff, of the History Faculty, Mike Hughes, who for many years was Registrary's Clerk, and Gavin McKenzie, former Senior Tutor of Jesus College.

26. To finish I will mention an historic event of local if not international significance that occurred eight days ago. I joined with the Mayor of Cambridge in planting a pine tree to celebrate the City's eighth centennial. During the ceremony, I expressed the hope that the excellent relations that we now enjoy with the City will continue into this new century. It was not always so. I reminisced about times when the Vice-Chancellor imprisoned members of the City and the City retaliated by burning our books. We agreed that such acts would be unthinkable today. But perhaps the most significant hope emerged when the Director of the Botanic Garden, Professor John Parker, pointed out that the tree that we were planting was from North America. It was tiny now but should grow into a magnificent tree which will bear huge cones that would in turn give birth to new trees when burst open by fire. Let us pray that something similar will grow from the horrific fires in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania three weeks ago.

FRANK HAYDON KING, of Magdalene College and Churchill College, and RICHARD JAMES STIBBS, of Downing College, retired from the office of Proctor, and delivered the insignia of their office to the Vice-Chancellor.

DAVID JOHN CHIVERS, of Selwyn College, and VEDIA EMEL IZZET, of Christ's College, were elected to the office of Proctor for the year 2001-2002, and were admitted to that office by the Vice-Chancellor.

JAMES DAMIAN MCDONALD, of Gonville and Caius College, and TIMOTHY NICHOLAS MILNER, of Peterhouse, were admitted to the office of Pro-Proctor for the year 2001-2002.

FRANK HAYDON KING, of Magdalene College and Churchill College, and RICHARD JAMES STIBBS, of Downing College, were elected to the office of Deputy Proctor for the year 2001-2002, and made their public declaration in accordance with Statute D, VI, 5.

T. J. MEAD, Registrary

END OF THE OFFICIAL PART OF THE 'REPORTER'

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