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The first amendment seeks to set an absolute standard for promotions by reference to the past. The practicability of this proposal is a matter of serious doubt. If the evaluation of applicants for promotion were to be made on an historically comparative basis, the extent of the documentation and discussion time that would be required would render the exercise unworkable. The new arrangements which have been approved by the Regent House for the conduct of the annual promotions exercise make explicit the criteria to be used, and also provide a uniform framework for the evaluation of applications. Bearing in mind that all decisions depend ultimately on the exercise of academic judgement, we believe that the new arrangements approximate as closely as is practicable to the operation of an absolute standard for assessing applications.
The second amendment appears to assume that considerably more money than previously will come to Cambridge as a result of the 1996 Research Assessment Exercise. This assumption is seriously flawed. The actual increase in the 1997-98 funding for research amounts to only 1.7 per cent. in real terms. Future funding is highly uncertain, and is not predicted to rise. Even if there were a real increase in income, the proposers are tacitly pressing for more promotions each year, which will not be matched by retirements of comparable staff, and which will therefore require significant and steadily increasing amounts of recurrent expenditure to be met from a possibly diminishing income coming into the University.
The overall HEFCE funding to the University shows a nominal increase of 2.3 per cent. for this year; in real terms this amounts to a decrease in funding, and the decrease is expected to continue over the next few years. The essential salary reviews that are necessary to maintain the salary levels of all staff, including academic-related and assistant staff, and to provide for essential new initiatives, will therefore cause considerable difficulties, and the University must have the flexibility to weigh competing claims on finite resources. Approval of the second amendment would impair the General Board's ability to promote the long-term academic interests of the University in a balanced manner.
It should also be recognized that, although each year the General Board set aside a specific sum to fund promotions, the Board's Committee on personal Professorships and Readerships can ask the Board to consider increasing the amount of money made available if there is an unexpectedly large number of outstanding candidates who, in the Committee's judgement, meet the required criteria. This has been done in the past.
The General Board are confident that the concerns which have prompted these amendments can be effectively met under the new arrangements for promotion which have already been approved by the Regent House, and without prejudice to the current consultative exercise. On this basis, we urge members of the Regent House not to vote in favour of the two amendments, but to vote in favour of the Grace in its unamended form and to await the outcome of both the current consultative exercise and the new procedures for promotion.
GILLIAN BROWND. E. L. JOHNSTOND. H. MELLORADRIAN POOLE
J. F. CARROLLJOHN A. LEAKEA. MINSONN. O. WEISS
D. A. GOODN. J. MACKINTOSHMICHAEL PEPPER
To refuse many of Cambridge's academic staff their fair rewards of recognition has been a matter of policy on the part of the General Board and the Council. It has now been admitted unequivocally that many more academic staff deserve promotion than have been receiving it (Reporter, 1996-97, p. 881). In the light of this admission it becomes important to discover by ballot what the mind of the Regent House is on this issue.
Personal promotions to Readerships and Professorships should be made on the basis of merit, as indicated by peer-review assessment; the number of promotions should not be limited arbitrarily, because that is to deny promotion certainly to some, perhaps to many, who have been recommended for promotion by their peers in a rigorous assessment of their national and international standing.
The research distinction of Cambridge's academic staff recognized in the 1992 and 1996 Research Assessment Exercises has not been appropriately rewarded: in research terms Cambridge fared very well indeed by comparison with many other universities, in terms of the number of its departments and institutions rated 5* or 5; but it has fared much less well in terms of promotions, because many departments and institutions in other universities with lower Research Assessment Exercise ratings have much higher proportions of their staffs holding Readerships and Professorships than is the case at Cambridge. Quite simply, Cambridge is not being fair to its staff.
As a result of the Research Assessment Exercises, the University is relatively-favourably funded by HEFCE and the University should allocate a higher proportion of its funding to promotions. It has also certainly done well out of its investments this year. The University can afford to put such a change of policy into practice; what is needed is a review of its spending priorities. Voting for these amendments will simply require an alteration in the balance of the University's priorities, so that as a matter of policy it will give a far higher priority to rewarding all its staff - academic, academic-related, and assistant staff - fairly.
The proposed amendments are also about listening to the community. The General Board and the Council have already announced that they are opposed to the amendments (Reporter, 1996-97, p. 1029). The individual members of those bodies are, of course, entitled to hold their personal views. But it is worrying for the University that those bodies should publish an official statement of their opposition at this stage. It is their duty to listen to the community's opinion after this has been declared in a vote before stating their own position so categorically.
The opposition of the General Board and of the Council is on the repeatedly stated grounds that money spent on promotions would not therefore be available for other needs. That self-evident truth reveals a key policy issue concerning the relative priority accorded to the human resources of the University.
The thrust of the alternative argument about what the University can afford is that it is selfish of (deserving but non-promoted) staff to want promotion when other needs might be more important to the University. That bites hardest for those facing retirement on a Lecturer's salary. Our argument is that the University cannot afford not to reward its staff fairly.
Members of the Regent House will be aware that a very great deal is at stake in this ballot. The implications go far beyond the redressing of injustices suffered by those who have been denied promotion by this University long after they have earned it through their scholarship. This vote is also about the way in which this University operates and the way in which its priorities and policies are determined.
We therefore urge members of the Regent House to support the proposed amendments both because of their constitutional implications and on the grounds of the crying need in this community for fairness in relation to promotions.
BILL ADAMSR.D. DAWEG. KEARNST. SPENCER
ALAN R. H. BAKERDAVID N. DUMVILLEDAVID KEEBLEPETER SPREADBURY
T. P. BAYLISS-SMITHJAMES DUNCANR. MENGHAMA. J. STONE
MARK BILLINGEG. R. EVANSATO QUAYSONC. B. THOMAS
S. L. BLUNDENROBIN E. GLASSCOCKSTEFAN C. REIFS. TRUDGILL
RICHARD BORCHERDSJ. R. HARVEYR. B. RICKARDSL. R. WICKHAM
ANTHONY CLOSER. HYAMJ. W. SANDERSMICHAEL YOUNG
S. E. CORBRIDGE
All of the University's staff are its greatest asset, but they cannot contribute as effectively as they would wish without the appropriate infrastructure of equipment and buildings. In our view the Allocations Report has struck the right balance between the competing claims for reduced levels of income. We therefore urge you not to vote for the two amendments but to vote in favour of the Grace in its unamended form.
N. BOYLEA. R. FERSHTI. N. MCCAVET. J. SMILEY
PETER CAROLINN. C. HANDYF. PENZN. O. WEISS
DAVID G. CRIGHTONJOHN A. HEAPEKHARD SALJEALAN WINDLE
In the 1997 Allocations Report the Council have proposed that money should be set aside for a number of initiatives which lie outside the University's routine business. Among the most important of these are (1) salary restructuring, for which £1m has been earmarked in the 1997-98 estimates and (2) the establishment of a fund to provide bursaries for Home and EC postgaduate students. We regard both these initiatives as of prime importance. Some restructuring at the top of the University Lecturer scale of stipends is long overdue; significant amounts of money have been made available in recent years to finance the discretionary elements of salary settlements, including additional promotions to Professorships and Readerships, at the expense of salary increases across the board, and we believe that it is time to redress the balance. As for postgraduate bursaries, the funds available to support UK students engaged in postgraduate study have been seriously eroded in recent years, leading to a reduction in the number of those who are willing to take the first step towards an academic career; unless the University invests in the future, there will be a shortage of those qualified to enter the academic profession.
If the amendments currently under consideration are approved, the Regent House will be deciding to spend more money on promotions to Professorships and Readerships. Given that the total amount of money available is finite, the Council will then be forced to move money from elsewhere in the budget for this purpose, and this will mean a serious threat to initiatives such as those described above. We believe that this would be detrimental to the University, and we therefore urge you not to support the two amendments, but to vote in favour of the Grace in its unamended form.
PETER CAROLINGORDON JOHNSONIRES C. MOLINAROM. SCHOFIELD
LIONEL CARTEREIVIND KAHRSDEREK NICHOLLSSATYENDRA SRIVASTAVA
GERARD DUVEENMARK KAPLANOFFFRANCESCA ORSINIDAVID M. THOMPSON
DAVID HARRISONJOHN A. LEAKESANDRA RABANJOAN M. WHITEHEAD
BRIAN F. G. JOHNSONDONALD I. MCINTYRENICHOLAS RAY
The amendments to the Allocations Report proposed by some colleagues would, if carried by the Regent House, have the effect of pre-empting the results of the consultation which the Regent House itself has agreed should take place. The Regent House would do itself no credit as a responsible body by changing horses in mid-stream, so soon after agreeing that it wanted consultation rather than an immediate vote.
In the current promotions round applications for personal Readerships and Professorships are to be assessed with regard to a set of seven criteria (including effective teaching), which constitute a central element in the assessment arrangements that were approved by the Regent House in the Lent Term. Amendment 1 makes no reference to the criteria. On the face of it, it implies a quite different method of assessment: merit and achievement are 'to be defined as matching the merit and achievement of those previously promoted'. If the word 'defined' were to be taken seriously, the Personal Promotions Committee would presumably be required to read extensively in the files of successful and unsuccessful candidates whom its predecessors had considered in previous years, and to reconstruct on this basis the grounds for the judgments made by those predecessors - judgments necessarily made without reference to the explicit set of criteria and the procedures for assessment by Faculty Committees both newly approved by the Regent House, since these are to operate for the first time for the current round. How else would the Committee form anything approaching an informed view of the merits and achievements of those previously promoted?
This would be a strange way of proceeding. An analogy with Tripos examining may help to bring out its unsatisfactoriness. Suppose Tripos examiners in a given year were operating with a newly agreed set of criteria to be used in classing. The analogue of Amendment 1 would be an injunction (if 'defined' were - once again - taken seriously) to give Firsts to all and only those who would have got Firsts under the old criteria. What the Regent House approved in the Lent Term was meant to be an improvement on the old procedures. Amendment 1 implies a backward-looking approach. The Regent House cannot have it both ways.
Amendment 1 also implies that the 'matching' method would inevitably produce increased numbers of promotions. It is unclear why its proponents make this assumption. On the face of it, matching would produce instead roughly the same number of promotions in the current round as in recent years. Presumably the Personal Promotions Committee has every year judged that the merits and achievements of those below the lines it draws are not (or not yet - candidates may have more to show next year) as considerable as those whom it places above those lines. Amendment 1 implies both that they should reward only those who compare with those above the lines drawn in previous years and that they should reward some or perhaps many who would have fallen below those lines. Taken literally, Amendment 1 is a muddle. Taken more rhetorically, its use of 'matching' is unhelpfully elastic.
For these reasons we urge members of the Regent House - whether or not they favour increased numbers of promotions - to reject Amendment 1 (and therefore Amendment 2 also) in the ballot.
W. MARY BEARDGEOFFREY HORROCKSPETER LINEHANA. M. SNODGRASS
I. M. LE M. DUQUESNAYH. P. HUGHESA. A. MACINTOSHJOAN M. WHITEHEAD
P. E. EASTERLINGGORDON JOHNSONM. SCHOFIELD
In their fly-sheet supporting the proposed amendments Dr Adams and his co-signatories criticize the Council and the General Board for expressing their opinion in advance of the ballot, and suggest that it is the duty of the central bodies 'to listen to the community's opinion after this has been declared in a vote before stating their own position so categorically'. This is to misunderstand the nature of the present debate, and of the democratic process in the University. At the time when they signed the Allocations Report, recommending allocations for approval by the Regent House, the Council of necessity had to make choices between competing claims; in doing this they took account of the various considerations which have since been set out in the fly-sheets, all of which were known at the time, and concluded that a balance must be struck, in the way presented in the Report. The Council and the General Board will, of course, comply with the wishes of the Regent House as made known in the ballot, but members of the Regent House will appreciate that it is the duty of the central bodies to give a lead by considering and assessing the broad range of issues involved in settling the University's budget and then to put recommendations before the University.
The fly-sheet also suggests that this ballot is 'about the way in which this University operates and the way in which its priorities and policies are determined'. That is not the case. The present ballot is about a specific issue, approval of the Allocations Report; it is not about the procedure to be followed in settling priorities and policies. In fact, as has been pointed out in other fly-sheets, by approving the current consultative exercise on promotions to senior academic offices, on which the General Board plan to report later this term, the University has already taken a decision on the procedure by which promotions policy is to be determined; the proposers of the amendments are muddying the waters by asking the University to pre-empt the results of that consultation, to which many members of the Regent House have contributed their considered responses.
I urge members of the Regent House to reject both the amendments and to vote in favour of the Allocations Report as it stands.
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