Tuesday, 17 January 2006. A Discussion was held in the Senate-House. Deputy Vice-Chancellor Dr Gordon Johnson was presiding, with the Senior Proctor, the Junior Proctor, a Pro-Proctor, the Administrative Secretary (as the Registrary's Deputy), and ten other persons present. The following Reports were discussed:
Report of the Council, dated 12 December 2005, on accounting arrangements of the University Press (p. 217).
No comments were made on this Report.
Report of the Council, dated 12 December 2005, on Hughes Hall and on the criteria for recognition as a collegiate institution in the University (p. 218).
Professor G. R. EVANS:
Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I do not wish to speak against the recommendations of this Report. Cambridge's 'mature student' profile can do with all the support it can get if we are to take wider access seriously; if Hughes Hall flourishes it can make a useful contribution there.1
I shall restrict my remarks to the important questions raised by this Report's discussion of 'the principles underlying the various forms of recognition (Approved Society, Approved Foundation, and College) available to institutions admitting members to the University'. And because both universities are equally exposed to the whims of Government in the area of access, and for some of the same reasons, I do not apologize for drawing some comparisons with the present debates in Oxford, insofar as they relate to this question of the admission of students. Cambridge is overdue for a Report on the implications for the relationship of University and Colleges of the various changes in arrangements about tuition fees of recent years, and this may be the best chance we shall get to discuss the matter. It is proposed to alter the relationship between Oxford and its Colleges to allow the Colleges to be bound directly by decisions of the University's committees. I do not know that that is going to happen but it puts Cambridge on notice that these are questions our political masters are going to be pressing.
It is a puzzle to applicants, and apparently to some Ministers, why Oxford and Cambridge 'permit' the Colleges to control admissions. The legal autonomy of Colleges is not in dispute. Indeed its importance is underlined here. 'By custom Colleges are corporations created and governed by a Royal Charter and Statutes and in practice the Council would require an intention to obtain such a grant as a precondition of recommending to the University the grant of College status, and would make the statutory change conditional on the achievement of such a grant.'
Nevertheless, the right of Colleges to admit students the Universities will automatically admit to degree courses is not an inalienable feature of their legal autonomy. The University could modify it. The Report before us is not quite a model, but certainly a jolly good shot, at making the ground-rules clear. The Oxford Working Party Report on admissions which hit so many headlines before Christmas (and which may be downloaded as a pdf file from the Oxford website), signally failed to address this key preliminary question of how far the relationship between Colleges and University is determined by the granting of authority to the Colleges to admit students and the concomitant duty to present them for matriculation. Oxford's Statute V is vestigial and the 'regulations' it promises are not much better. This is the more remarkable because Oxford is also involved in an increasingly bitter row about the Quantum, the formula by which a proportion of the tuition fees of those admitted is allocated between the University and the Colleges. (If you are interested in all that, see the Oxford Vice-Chancellor's speech at the beginning of October 2005, published in the Gazette of 6 October, remarks made in the Debate of Congregation on 1 November, and the Registrar's apologia attached to the published record of that debate, followed by the rebuttal in the Oxford Magazine.)
The present Report speaks of 'the preferable way in which the University can impose conditions on a College', namely the reciprocal embedding of the conditions in both sets of Statutes. It also traces the way the balance of power is adjusted as a society makes its way to College status. At first, the balance of the decision-making is on the University's side, but it becomes more evenly reciprocal as the would-be College wins full acceptance, as is proposed here.
The Report approaches the formulation of its recommendations on points of principle from a 'risk management' point of view, and quite right too. It identifies 'reputational damage' (a body which 'managed its affairs improperly or in an incompetent fashion and in a scandalous way would bring disrepute on the University. So would a recognized institution (including a College) that became unable to pay its debts as they fall due'). There is the question of the quality of provision of teaching and other resources too, of course. One of the things we traditionally do not 'measure' in Cambridge is the adequacy of the direction of studies and supervisions provided under the auspices of a College. Our student complaints procedure still applies only to those aspects of a student's experience which fall under the University's jurisdiction. Complaints on College matters are handled in no consistent manner and there is no provision for the student's total experience to form the subject of a complaint about the way he or she was prepared for the final examination on which the degree is awarded.
The proposed set of tests for the satisfactoriness of a College in the present Report takes some of these aspects into consideration ('(ix) What premises does the institution occupy? Are they reasonably fit and do they contain sufficient facilities for the purpose of the institution?'; '(xi) What provision is made for the education of students? To what extent is the institution self-sufficient in that respect of that provision?'; '(xii) What provision is made for the discipline of students?'; '(xiii) What provision is made for the welfare and pastoral care of students?'; '(xiv) What provision is made for the residential accommodation of students?'; '(xv) What student facilities (both educational and social) are available in the institution?'). Notice that provision for the handling of complaints does not appear on this list.
The admission of students is not something a would-be College necessarily has to practise on the way to developing into a full College, although Hughes Hall has done so. An Approved Society is a 'society which is maintained within the Precincts of the University for the advancement of education, learning, and research'. Such a Society is not obliged to admit students so the relationship in which it stands to the University is not defined by that Statute G link requiring it to present students for matriculation. An Approved Foundation is closer to being a College in respects identified in the Report before us. An Approved Foundation must be an 'institution which is maintained within the precincts of the University for the advancement of education, learning, and research'. It must be incorporated or subsist under a trust instrument, so it has a greater legal permanency. But it too need not admit students.
However, either may do so, and there are areas of potential concern here. The concept of 'precincts' is important. Presumably an Approved Society or an Approved Foundation could not be set up in China or somewhere convenient for the long-distance M.B.A. students we have agreed to allow not to fulfil the ancient residence requirement. Is the West Cambridge site all right? Or the North-West Cambridge site? It will not have been forgotten that one of the selling-points of that plan was a vague hint that three new Colleges might come into being on these outlying territories.
So I hope Hughes Hall will be granted collegiate status. But I hope these and related important questions of general policy affecting admissions will form the subject of a Report in their own right in the not too distant future.
Report of the General Board, dated 30 November 2005, on the Directorship of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (p. 224).
No comments were made on this Report.
Report of the General Board, dated 30 November 2005, on the establishment of a Miriam Rothschild Professorship of Conservation Biology (p. 225).
No comments were made on this Report.
Report of the General Board, dated 30 November 2005, on the establishment of two Readerships in the Department of Physics (p. 226).
Professor G. R. EVANS:
Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, '3. In advance of the Research Assessment Exercise in 2007, the Department expects to be making a number of appointments …'.
Is a Notice to be published, or even possibly a Report, setting out the University's proposed policy about buying in academic staff in advance of the RAE? It is an expensive game and I do not know that it has ever been shown to be cost-effective. The word 'retention' is usually to be found alongside 'recruitment' in Reports emanating from the Personnel Division.
The Regent House is entitled to be clear about how the promotion prospects of existing staff will be affected by taking resources away from rewarding them to the 'recruitment' of new blood to improve the University's chances in the RAE.
1 http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/news/dp/2006010902 (on the 'mature students'' open day, 11 February).