Report of Discussion

Tuesday, 11 October 2011

A Discussion was held in the Senate-House. Pro-Vice-Chancellor Professor Jeremy Sanders was presiding, with the Registrary’s deputy, the Senior Proctor, the Junior Proctor, and ten other persons present.

The following Reports were discussed:

Report of the Council, dated 27 June 2011, on the construction of Phase 1 of the University Sports Centre on the West Cambridge Site (Reporter, 2010–11, p. 994)

Ms D. Lowther (Chair of the Sports Syndicate):

Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, as Chair of the Sports Syndicate, I am delighted with the recommendation of the Council that approval be given for the construction of Phase 1 of the Sports Centre.

The need for these facilities was first identified several decades ago and has only grown greater in the succeeding years. The funding plan which has now been negotiated, and which involves the Colleges in helping to support the running costs, is a pragmatic one, which has enabled the project to be taken forward without diverting resources from other priorities. That these are difficult times for the University financially does not detract from, but rather enhances, the case for building a Sports Centre.

The project resonates with a number of other important themes, including the quality of the student experience; the role of a large and diverse range of extra-curricular activities in attracting students, and in turning them into the most employable graduates in the country; the reasons why our alumni remember their time in Cambridge with such passion, and are willing to support their Colleges and the University throughout their lives; the ways in which health and wellbeing support the academic mission of the University; and the way in which sport and exercise help to build a sense of community.

This Report is warmly welcomed by the Sports Syndicate on behalf of all those who have ever enjoyed watching or participating in sporting activities in Cambridge, and I commend it to the University.

Mr A. D. Lemons (Director of Physical Education and Secretary to the Sports Syndicate):

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, the Committee appointed by the Council of the Senate to consider questions concerning sites and buildings for University sport reported to the University on 21 April 1982. Under the Chairmanship of Mr Michael McCrum, the then Master of Corpus Christi College and later Vice-Chancellor of the University, the Committee identified three main areas of need for University sport and made twelve recommendations. The first and principal of these was the need for an indoor sports centre and additional facilities for a range of activities that were not catered for within the Colleges but commonly found in other universities and even schools. A second urgent need was for a University swimming pool.

Since the report in 1982 it has been a long and protracted process with many setbacks and delays. It therefore gives me great pleasure to stand here today and welcome the Report before you as a significant step forward to achieve some of the University’s aims.

Notwithstanding that the Report seeks to approve only Phase 1 of what is hoped will be a three-phase development, and that Phase 1 will not be fully fitted out, the building will nevertheless make a landmark change to the provision of University facilities. It will also make a very positive contribution to the development of the West Cambridge site, bringing enhanced opportunities to the academic community there. It will also relate strongly to the proposed developments on the North West Cambridge site, it being a short distance to that area of the city.

At a time when students and their families face significantly increased fees, the Centre will provide opportunities for all undergraduates, graduates, members of staff and their families to access the most up-to-date exercise and sporting facilities in the country. Designed to meet the needs of the individual, the Centre’s integrated facilities and services will offer comprehensive health-related lifestyle support, providing that essential balance necessary for a healthy, progressive world-class university. The Centre will provide training and competition facilities for nineteen of the University’s sports clubs and essential integrated training facilities and services for all University and College teams.

In principle, funding agreed between the Colleges and the Sports Syndicate will ensure access for all undergraduate and postgraduate students. This will, to a degree, offset the inequitable provision of sports and exercise facilities found in the Colleges and bring a sense of fairness and value for money to the student population.

There will be many generations of alumni who will view the demise of the Physical Education and Health Centre at Fenner’s with nostalgia and regret. The building has served the University well and those who have spent many hours training there hold it in great affection. The requirements of a world-class university are now well beyond its capacity and it is no longer fit for purpose. The proposed facilities within the Report will engage those alumni who have done so much to sustain the University’s world-wide reputation for excellence in sport which will contribute significantly to the work of our Development and Alumni Relations offices.

There is widespread enthusiasm and anticipation within the student population and the wider city. The Sports Syndicate supports the recommendations within the Report as a major contribution to the education, health, and wellbeing of the University.

Professor G. R. Evans (Emeritus Professor of Medieval Theology and Intellectual History):

Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, in a climate of financial pressures where the University needs to give careful thought to its priorities and the risks it wants to take with its resources, I would just like to juxtapose two quotations from this Report:

3. Neither benefactors nor any other sources of funding have been forthcoming and the project had not progressed further since 2002.

7. The Finance Committee have agreed to make a loan of £16m to fund the project . . . The £16m loan comprises: £10m from the University Chest; £5m underwritten by the Chest until a fundraising campaign raises a £5m benefaction; and a further £1m underwritten until the sale of the Physical Education Centre building at Fenner’s is completed.

This sale is expected to realize about £1m, but it cannot take place for some time.

Report of the General Board, dated 6 July 2011, on the establishment of a Professorship of Medical Genetics and Genomic Medicine (Reporter, 2010–11, p. 997)

No remarks were made on this Report.

Report of the General Board, dated 6 July 2011, on the re-establishment of the Charles Darwin Professorship of Animal Embryology (Reporter, 2010–11, p. 998)

No remarks were made on this Report.

Report of the Board of Graduate Studies, dated 7 June 2011, on future arrangements for central consideration of Graduate Student matters (Reporter, 2010–11, p. 998)

Mr N. M. Maclaren (University Computing Service):

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, this is a truly startling Report. Despite its anodyne title, it appears to be a proposal to change the Board of Graduate Studies from being a Board under the supervision of the Council to being a wholly-controlled sub-committee of the General Board. That is, in itself, a very plausible rationalization, but this Report has chosen a very strange way to go about it.

At present, the Board of Graduate Studies has the Vice-Chancellor or deputy as Chairman, and ten other members, four of which are appointed by the Council and four by the General Board, and reports to the Council. This Report proposes passing over its policy-making responsibilities to the General Board, but it also proposes that its chairman and six of its eight members would be appointed by the General Board, none would be appointed by the Council, and it would report primarily to the General Board. Interestingly, the Council’s own web pages state that the last is already the case; see: http://raven.intranet.admin.cam.ac.uk/committee/council/chart.aspx.

That would make it a major anomaly among the Boards and Syndicates mentioned in Ordinances, none of which are of comparable nature, and positively bizarre where it is mentioned in Statutes. Would it not be functionally equivalent and very much simpler to transfer the responsibilities of the Board of Graduate Studies to the General Board, to manage as it thinks fit?

Even more mysteriously, I can find nothing in the Council’s web pages to indicate that this Report was shown to the Council in advance. The Council is the principal executive body of the University – surely a proposal of this nature deserves execution by the Council?

Professor G. R. Evans (Emeritus Professor of Medieval Theology and Intellectual History):

Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, those of us with long memories will remember that the extent of the powers of the General Board has always been a matter of concern. It used to be said that the elected Council was putty in its hands. To give the General Board the work of the Board of Graduate Studies is not a mere tidying-up exercise.

When I read a Report, I frequently find myself asking where the power will be moving to if its recommendations are accepted. The proposal is that ‘matters of policy relating to Graduate Students and the qualifications for which they may be registered should be transferred from the Board to the General Board’. That is the big stuff, as listed in the Report. The Board of Graduate Studies will be left with the details, ‘individual student cases’ and ‘operational matters’. Perhaps that is what BOGS truly wants, but it will reduce its influence considerably in the institutional hierarchy.

On the face of it, this is a common sense proposal but one is bound to ask what the reality will be. Is this going to work better for graduate students than the present system? In a hierarchy of committees, on one committee, commonly one officer, does the ‘real work’ and the ones above tend to approve the proposals which emerge without much challenge. The Board of Graduate Studies has long depended for its effective working on a series of excellent Secretaries. It is proposed that the General Board should now receive proposals affecting graduate students through the Education Committee. But the Education Committee already has a lot on its plate. Who, and through what mechanisms, is really going to determine the way forward for graduate studies at Cambridge, at a time when this is academically and politically a very sensitive question?

It is good to see that review of procedures affecting students is planned but given the uncertainties about patterns of student complaint, which may be opened up by the proposed changes to higher education funding, and which are adumbrated both in the White Paper and in the BIS Technical Consultation, these may need some radical rethinking.

An annual report will be made to the Board and the General Board’s Education Committee providing data on the number and types of complaint and on cases considered by the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education, and drawing out issues of general applicability that require attention by the bodies concerned with graduate education.

This is a laudable aspiration, but short of the OIA, what are the mechanisms for determining for statistical purposes when a complaint is a complaint? Complaints do not always enter the formal process, where they can be counted.

I had reached this point in drafting this speech when I happened to glance at the text of the review of the UAS, to which a link is provided in the Reporter. I see there that:

The Staff and Student Services section of the UAS strategy is currently being implemented methodically as a scheduled programme . . . starting with student services. This programme has an emphasis on postgraduate student administration, as undergraduate administration is largely a matter for the colleges and there is a need to rectify disparities in service for postgraduates. The MISD Business Process Improvement Team has been deployed to good effect by the Head of Student Operations, thus far mapping 50% of some 2000 processes, to identify inefficient areas most in need of reform. The intention is to create a Student Registry with adjacent comprehensive Graduate Administration, including links to other services e.g. Counselling, Disability where discrete locations are more appropriate. The programme will aim to prioritise student and staff needs over organisational neatness, mindful that core operations must continue whilst integration progresses.1

Will the Council be so kind as to explain where this fits into the jigsaw puzzle of the changes proposed in this Report? Clarity is important, not least to the students who will need to know where to go about what if they have a problem.

Sixteenth Report of the Board of Scrutiny, dated 24 June 2011 (Reporter, 2010–11, p. 1061)

The Revd J. L. Caddick (Emmanuel College):

Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I speak as an elected member of the Board to commend this Sixteenth Report to the Regent House. Regents will have had a chance to read it. It deals, as is customary, with issues of finance, strategic planning, administration and governance, and also human resources issues. The issue to which the Board will certainly return in the coming year is that of research funding, which is so vital to the flourishing of the University. The Board, in common with the rest of the University, will watch with concern the impact of increased undergraduate fees on the working of the University and on the recruitment of undergraduates.

Before I sit down, I would like to put on record the Board’s thanks to Professor Richard Bowring, the Master of Selwyn College, who has chaired it for the past year, and also our thanks for the tenacity and hard work of its retiring secretary, Ms Jamie Horsley, of the Department of Geography.

Mr N. M. Maclaren (University Computing Service):

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, the response of the Council to Recommendation 4 in its last Report stated that the Report on the North West Cambridge project (which was published on 12 January) would include financial and commercial assessments. In the event, it included only a proposal for the procedure, but this Report fails to note that. In response to my remarks of 25 January, the Council’s Notice of 7 February stated that such assessments would be done before any proposal is brought forward. I assume they will be published when that has been done.

Dr S. J. Cowley (Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics):

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, to save the Board of Scrutiny looking into whether or not the Council had considered the Board of Graduate Studies Report, it was considered by the Business Committee on 11 July. So procedures have been followed.

Professor G. R. Evans (Emeritus Professor of Medieval Theology and Intellectual History):

Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, among the controversial episodes considered in the last Scrutiny Report and referred to again in this one, was a review of the attempt to make changes to Statute U.1 Where confrontation becomes uncomfortable, the subtle strategist tiptoes round behind and makes adjustments whose consequences may go unnoticed by those protesting loudly at the front. I hope members of the Regent House have spotted certain proposals in the ‘technical review’ of the Statutes and Ordinances to which they have been invited to respond.2 These include removing from Statute to Ordinance the very protections against redundancy most noisily under discussion during the Statute U reform saga, and also all the other detailed protections embodied in the Model Statute under Education Reform Act 1988 s.202, on which Statute U is based.

It is also proposed that in future only some Ordinances will in future to be deemed ‘special’ enough to be brought to the attention of the Regent House in a Report for Discussion. That needs careful watching. Is it alarmist to suggest that redundancy for academic staff could easily drop below the radar and never get reported on at all?

And there is recognition in the Report under Human resources issues that all is not well with the Senior Academic Promotions process. It may have been forgotten that this was moved ‘under the authority and responsibility of the General Board’ and out of the direct control of the Regent House a few years ago. I do not find it comforting to know that the General Board ‘consults with HR, which provides effective and reasonable practical advice in particular for managing the difficult circumstances surrounding the USL promotion route’. I would be happier to see a Report to the Regent House about these problems.

I was confirmed in my view that this might be wise when I read the criticisms of the efficiency of Human Resources in the review of the UAS:

Several of the respondents to the Committee’s call for evidence drew attention to problems with the processes overseen by HR, in particular the contracts section . . . the Committee noted the difficulties in maintaining sufficient and full communications between the administration and users, highlighted by this example.

And:

HR advice was often slow or disjointed.3

I am pleased to see that the Board has its eye on the ‘plans for developing international relationships with key partners throughout the world’ and that it recommends ‘that a comprehensive review of the University’s international activities be undertaken, that an international strategy be clearly articulated’. But missing from their list of desiderata is the most important question of all. Who has authority to bind the University of Cambridge in a partnership or collaborative agreement and to what? The dangers are obvious. LSE and the Gadaffi money come to mind.

In connection with the mention of Cambridge Assessment, I expect it has been realized that if the Government goes ahead with its proposals to allow non-teaching bodies to apply for degree-awarding powers, Cambridge Assessment would be well placed to do so? This could open up all sorts of income-generating opportunities (or a right can of worms) about the relationship of these new powers, held by Cambridge Assessment in its own right, to those held since the early thirteenth century when a body of Masters here established their own rules about the gradus.

Regretted in the Fifteenth Report was the flawed process by which the ugly Lift came to be installed in the fifteenth-century room now used as the Combination Room. As the present Report notes: ‘The University Combination Room has been closed and declared out of bounds for all on the grounds of security. This seems to have been done by administrative fiat.’ It is of course open again now, though ingress and egress is to be by Lift alone. I am surprised Elf and Safety will allow that. I noticed this morning that the red Globex Evacuation Chair requires two operators. What if the Lift breaks down and a body of people have to spend days occupying the Combination Room because they are not able to leave?

The present Report makes a constitutionally important point in this connection:

Why it is still closed is as much a mystery as why those members of the Regent House who created such an unholy and largely unproductive fuss about the infamous lift last year have remained silent.

That has prompted little comment lately, perhaps because the eye has not been regularly offended by it. But silence, when there is something to speak about, does matter. Those who signed the plethora of amendments and Graces created during the spring and summer, which comprehensively failed in the ballots which took place in August, have not in the main been heard speaking in Discussions. You can send a flotilla of paper boats across a pond easily enough, but surely if an armada is really needed you have a duty to send out a properly-constructed fleet manned by sailors who actively climb the rigging and trim the sails and swab the decks. Keeping an Athenian democracy healthy does demand sustained effort, especially in this forum.

The outcome of these votes suggests that the Board was too sanguine when it signed this Report and sent it to the Council to be approved for publication, having included this note:

The Board . . . recognizes the tensions that self-governance entails, and is pleased to understand that the obvious breakdown of trust between the Regent House and the Council, which was discussed at length in the Fifteenth Report, has been a subject of debate by the Council. This is, in itself, a good sign.

The publication of the Cambridge response to the White Paper Consultation and the tenor of the Vice-Chancellor’s speech at the beginning of this academic year do, however, seem to bode well for this year.4

Finally, on these constitutional points, I am pleased to note that the Board of Scrutiny expresses concerns in this Report about the potential for confusing the historical record in the move to an electronic Reporter. It asks that the policy of ‘moving control of the material away from the centre to the Faculties is very carefully monitored’. I trust it will be, and that the Board will scrutinize what happens and report next year.