< Previous page ^ Table of Contents Next page >

Report of the General Board on the procedure for the consideration of applications for the establishment of personal Professorships and Readerships in 1999 and subsequent years: Notice

7 December 1998

The Council have considered the remarks made at the Discussion of this Report on 10 November 1998 (Reporter, p. 167), and have referred them to the General Board, who have agreed to reply as follows.

From the remarks made by several speakers it is evident that there is an intention to call for ballots on a range of matters concerning the procedures proposed in the Board's Report. In the light of these remarks the Board, with great reluctance, concluded that they had no alternative but to suspend the intended promotions exercise until they could proceed with the authority of the Regent House. Heads of Departments and Chairmen of Faculty Boards have been informed of this and a brief Notice has been published (Reporter, p. 179), announcing the Board's decision.

The General Board have now asked the Council to promote Graces authorizing them to proceed with the 1998-99 promotions exercise. They hope that approval will be given by the Regent House, if necessary after a ballot, so as to allow the exercise to be launched as early as possible in 1999; promotions approved as a result of this exercise could be made effective (by back-dating if necessary) from 1 October 1999. The Board will incorporate in a revised version of the procedural booklet any textual amendments which have been suggested for the purpose of clarification. Changes in the procedure, either on the initiative of the Board or at the suggestion of members of the Regent House, could be made in future exercises without disrupting the annual promotions cycle.

The purpose of the present Notice is to address the issues raised by the six members of the Regent House who spoke at the Discussion. Before addressing these specific issues, the Board wish to make the following general points:

Turning now to the issues raised at the Discussion, the Board wish to make the following points:

With regard to the points made by Dr Edwards, it has been the customary and settled practice of the Board and the Council, particularly in the matter of appointments, reappointments, and promotions, to regard the Statutes and Ordinances of the University as providing the framework within which the central bodies draw up detailed policy and guidance. In this regard, the Board remind members of the Regent House of their Guidance to Appointments Committees - the 'blue booklet'. The Board agree with Dr Edwards that much of the recent controversy is the result of employing, for a general scheme of promotions, procedures which were originally introduced to cover exceptional cases. However, they do not believe that controversy would have been avoided by the addition to Statute D of a new chapter dealing with promotions. The matters that have proved controversial over the past year are the detailed arrangements for the promotions procedure; these arrangements will inevitably require revision from time to time in the light of experience, and it would not be sensible to attempt to legislate for them by Statute. The Board are currently seeking to obtain the agreement of the Regent House to their proposals for the machinery to be used in the promotions procedure; when such agreement has been reached, they will consider which elements of the procedure it would be appropriate to include either in the Statutes or in the Ordinances. The Board wish to stress that at no time have they acted ultra vires with regard to the Statutes or the Ordinances in relation to personal promotions. The Board have with all due diligence sought the approval of the Regent House on the substance of the reforms whenever that was necessary. It remains the Board's view that they should be given discretion to make such modifications to the scheme as are essential for the proper and effective management of the scheme within an overall framework approved by the Regent House.

In connection with the issue of confidentiality Dr Lane suggested that the Board's recommendation that the names of referees should no longer be made available is inconsistent with principles of transparency and fairness. Professor Dumville and Dr Evans also raised this matter. The Board recognize that it is difficult to achieve a balance between the transparency of the scheme's arrangements in general and the provision of careful and fair evaluations of the work of candidates. The Board have made it clear on a number of occasions that equity of treatment must be a paramount feature of the scheme and that evidence acquired by hearsay and unsystematic means is not acceptable. References are vital to the process of assessment, and provide a systematic means of obtaining evidential reports on candidates' achievements. As a result of recent legislation, written references will, in the near future, be subject to disclosure, although they may be disclosed in an anonymized form. In proposing this change the Board were concerned that, in view of the importance and the value of references as reports providing evidence of achievement, the confidentiality which enables referees to provide fair and confidential reports might no longer be guaranteed, since it may be possible for applicants to infer the identity of referees from the text of their reports. These reasons apply also to the statement submitted by the Head of the Department or the Chairman of the Faculty Board. Professor Dumville misses the point about confidentiality when he suggests that it is not helpful to unsuccessful candidates not to be able to discuss feedback with colleagues. This was not the Board's intention. The obligation of confidentiality is laid upon all members of Committees and officers who are involved in the consideration of applications; it is not meant to apply to candidates who wish to discuss their feedback with colleagues.

Professor Dumville made a number of detailed points on the form and substance of the Annex to the Report and also on a number of more general matters. The Board deal first with his detailed points (references are to paragraphs of the Annex to the Board's Report).

2.12 The Board's intention is that the number of members constituting a quorum should be as high as possible.
3.3.(vi) 'It would be considered good practice if Faculty Promotions Committees could agree on additional referees ...' might be alternatively worded 'The Board would consider it good practice if ...' to provide the clarification that Professor Dumville believes is required. The same alternative wording could be used in 6.4.
3.11.(ii) Discrimination means discrimination in the terms set out in the statement of the University's Equal Opportunities Policy (3.9) and in 3.11.(v).
7.11.(b) The phrase 'as appropriate' means that if an applicant has applied for a personal Professorship forms PP7 and PP8 will be appropriate; if he or she has applied for a personal Readership forms PR7 and PR8 will be appropriate.
7.16 Provisions (ii) and (iii) are not, in the Board's view, confused; the meaning is clear. Provision (ii) is meant to indicate that the grounds on which an appeal is made, even if they are upheld, might not be judged to be sufficient to affect the outcome of the evaluation of the candidate's case for promotion. Provision (iii) is meant to indicate that the grounds on which an appeal is made may have little or no substance and that the appeal would therefore be disallowed.
9.3.(e) The prescribed number of referees is set out in 1.12.(iii) and 3.3. Additional references may be sought in the case of candidates who have provided reasons in their personal statement for believing their work to be of an interdisciplinary character (3.3.(iv)).
9.4. In 8.5 it is stated that the members of the Sub-Committees are to be drawn from the General Board's full Committee. The Board consider it desirable that individual members of the full Committee, when acting as members of the Sub-Committees, should be familiar with all the documentation pertaining to all the candidates.

The Board now turn to the more general points raised by Professor Dumville:

The first point made by Professor Dumville, which was also raised by Dr Dawe, is that it is not clear 'how one gets from being a Reader to being a Professor'. On this matter, Dr Evans referred to the Oxford arrangements and said that she failed to see why, if Oxford can allow applications for a Readership and a Professorship in the same round, Cambridge cannot do so too. There is no real comparability between the Oxford arrangements and the Cambridge arrangements. The point at issue is one which has been raised in Discussions relating to last year's exercise. The policy has not been altered by the Board in the arrangements now being proposed for the 1998-99 exercise. One reason which, in the Board's view, carries particular weight is that, if it were possible to apply both for a Professorship and for a Readership, and if the scheme allowed default consideration for a Readership, most if not all applicants would apply for a Professorship. This might introduce a risk that Readerships would be devalued, being regarded as consolation prizes for unsuccessful applicants for Professorships. The Board consider that the criteria, when read in the context of the statements in 5.3, provide greater clarification of what is required for success in applying for a Professorship or a Readership.

With regard to points made by Professor Dumville, Dr Laming, and Dr Evans on the appeal procedure, the Board believe that this procedure has worked well. They have therefore proposed no alteration in the appeal procedure; however, they have proposed an extension of the appeal mechanism. The Board's proposals, if approved by the Regent House, will allow an appeal to be made after the General Board's Committee have completed their consideration and applicants have been notified of the outcome of their applications. It is worth adding that, if the function of the Appeals Committee were to consider cases referred to it ab initio, the Committee could find itself duplicating the function and the work of Faculty Promotions Committees and the General Board's Committee in respect of all unsuccessful candidates. It is worth adding that the written judgement of Mr Justice Turner found no fault in the appeals process as approved for the 1997-98 exercise.

Professor Dumville's fourth point was that the problem of evidence for an officer's teaching contribution remains and was not addressed by the Board in their response to the last Discussion. The criterion in question i.e. (g) was added to criteria (a)-(f) (see paragraph 5.4 of the Annex) as the result of an amendment to a Grace which was approved by the Regent House; the Grace, as amended, reflects the views of the Regent House. Criterion (g) was included to ensure that every University officer who is promoted to a personal Professorship or Readership makes a contribution to teaching that is consistent with the requirement that teaching performance must be not less than satisfactory; the purpose of the criterion is not to require those involved in the assessment process to discriminate among applicants in respect of their contributions to teaching, as is the case in the arrangements proposed for the introduction of Senior Lectureships.

With regard to Professor Dumville's fifth point, in the previous exercise one large Faculty involved all its Professors as members of the Faculty Promotions Committee whereas another very large Faculty involved only five Professors. Too large a membership carries the risk of fragmenting discussion and of allowing too much weight to be attached to the views of members who happen to be experts in the fields of particular applicants. The Board have therefore proposed a limit on the size of Faculty Promotions Committees to ensure that Committees are not constituted in such a way as to encourage members to act as delegates for particular areas of academic activity, and that the membership is as balanced as possible so as to facilitate the exercise of collective academic judgement. However, there may be circumstances which indicate that the membership should be larger than nine; hence the inclusion in the last sentence of 2.4 of the word 'normally'.

In response to Professor Dumville's seventh point, the purpose of the statement is to make it clear that the policy which operated under the old arrangements before the 1997-98 exercise, which precluded the consideration of cases after a number of years, does not apply under the new arrangements. In response to the points that he makes on the carrying-over of information from one year's exercise to the next, the Board can only reiterate that they view the annual promotions exercise as an uninterrupted process of assessment. Their decision to start from scratch and acquire fresh documentation when the new arrangements were introduced was approved by the Regent House as part of those arrangements. In the Board's view, there is no doubt that referee fatigue would be likely to set in and prejudice the prospects of candidates if it were necessary to obtain an entirely new set of references every year. In response to Professor Dumville's suspicion that some of those promoted this year have benefited from the shredding of all previous documentation, the Board wish to repeat that the scheme is grounded on the principle of equity of treatment for all candidates.

With regard to Professor Dumville's ninth point, the Board draw attention to paragraph 3.3.(iv), which allows Faculty Promotions Committees, in the case of applicants who have in their personal statement given reasons for believing their work to be of an interdisciplinary character, to decide what action is appropriate. The Board's intention is not to be prescriptive but to assign responsibility to Faculty Promotions Committees to decide and to take what advice and action they consider appropriate in each particular case. But it should be noted that those Committees must decide, and must give reasons for, the action that they consider to be appropriate.

With regard to Professor Dumville's tenth point, the guidance has been incorporated without change from the guidance approved for the previous exercise. The Board stress again that decisions should be taken through the exercise of collective judgement, each member adopting a systematic approach to his or her consideration of each applicant's case for promotion.

With regard to Professor Dumville's eleventh point, the General Board's Committee in evaluating the references would wish to know whether it was recognized by the Faculty Promotions Committee that it was characteristic of a particular referee to be, for example, grudging with praise, and whether a referee had the standing or the knowledge to justify the comments made.

With regard to Professor Dumville's twelfth point, each applicant has an opportunity to argue his or her case for promotion in the personal statement.

With regard to Professor Dumville's thirteenth point, the Appeal Committees are, in the Board's view, best placed to decide in particular circumstances whether the information should be provided on behalf of the Committee by an officer or in the form of a written response agreed by correspondence.

With regard to Professor Dumville's fourteenth point, the Board wish to point out that a provision allowing a submission to be dismissed as frivolous or vexatious is not at all unusual in legal procedure. Statute U, III, 7, for example, empowers the Vice-Chancellor to dismiss a complaint summarily if it appears to be trivial or unjustified, and several of the University's statements on policy and procedure caution against making malicious or vexatious complaints.

With regard to Professor Dumville's fifteenth point, the Board note his opinion that three years should be the maximum period of service on the General Board's Committee; however, they see no reason to change their view that the maximum should be six years, i.e. two periods of three years' service.

With regard to Professor Dumville's sixteenth point, the sole purpose of feedback, as Mr Justice Sedley made clear in his High Court judgement, is to indicate to unsuccessful candidates the aspects of their work on which they may need to focus in order to improve their case for promotion. The Board's policy on feedback, and on the arrangements for providing it to those who request it, conforms to the requirements of the judgement. The ranking of candidates applying in one year may bear little relation to the ranking of candidates applying in another year, and feedback in relation to that information would be of little value. The feedback provided must focus exclusively on improvements judged to be necessary to enhance a candidate's chances of promotion.

With regard to Professor Dumville's seventeenth point, the purpose of form 8 is to provide information which over a period of time will bring about increasing convergence between the recommendations of the Faculty Promotions Committee and those of the General Board's Committee.

With regard to Professor Dumville's eighteenth point, the Board recognize the merit of his suggestion for a single Report; however, they do not believe that it would be practicable to delay publication of the main Report until after the appeal process has been completed because it is impossible to tell how long the appeal process might take. A supplementary Report, it is worth noting, would also provide clear evidence that promotion is attainable on appeal.

The Board believe that Dr Laming's central point is that arrangements should be introduced to ensure that there can be no misevaluation of a candidate's case. The Board believe that the appeals mechanism, and its extension to the stage at the end of the assessment process, contribute significantly to ensuring that the assessment process is carried out fairly and that the outcome is as reliable as possible. In this scheme the Board believe that participation on a collective basis in the Faculty Promotions Committee, in deciding who are appropriate referees and in reaching a judgement on the candidate's case, are important safeguards in ensuring fairness and reliability of outcome. Any system of evaluation must rely on those involved in the exercise of judgement and in the making of decisions, and must assume that they have the knowledge, expertise, and experience to undertake the task; excessively legalistic and prescriptive requirements cannot guarantee the quality of the judgement exercised.

Dr Evans's remarks raise a number of issues, some of which have been raised in previous Discussions or by other speakers in this Discussion. The Board cannot repeat too often that the arrangements proposed for the 1998-99 exercise are in the main the same as those which were discussed and approved by the Regent House for last year's exercise. The Board have naturally reviewed the operation of the scheme in the light of experience, as they had undertaken to do, and have proposed some changes which, as has been said above, are intended to improve the scheme. These changes are described in paragraphs 3.1 to 3.9 of the Board's Report. The Board are committed to keeping the scheme under review and making the adjustments that are necessary to ensure further improvements in its operation. The Board have not thought it necessary to respond separately to those points in Dr Evans's remarks which have been made by other speakers and which have been addressed above.

With regard to Dr Evans's view that applicants should have the right to be interviewed as part of the normal process, it is clear that such a right would render the exercise unmanageable if conducted on the scale and on the timetable of the present exercise. Regard must be paid to the practicability of any scheme if the scheme is to function well.

Dr Evans asserted that there is no argument from 'continuity' and that 'last year the 'clean break' was the watchword'. The new arrangements are similar to the old arrangements in one important respect, namely that assessment for promotion on an annual cycle is to be seen as a continual process. Given that the new arrangements introduced last year differ fundamentally from the earlier arrangements, it is self-evident that a 'clean break' was essential to guarantee the integrity of the new arrangements.

The Board do not accept Dr Evans's point about the need for definitions of criteria according to the special circumstances of the subject area. Careful consideration was given to drawing up criteria of a generic character which can be applied across the board. Generic criteria are essential if the scheme is to be seen as genuinely equitable.

Dr Evans has misunderstood the context in which reference is made to grievance procedure in the Annex to the Report. Reference is made to the grievance procedure in the University's Policy on Equal Opportunities, which was approved by the Regent House, and which is given in full in paragraph 3.9 of the Annex to the Report.

The Board remain committed to maintaining the annual rate of promotions. Continuity is an important feature of the scheme, and the Board very much hope that the due recognition and reward of those deserving promotion may not be held up longer than is absolutely necessary.

The Board urge members of the Regent House to approve the proposals set out in their Report in their present form so that the 1998-99 promotions exercise may be reactivated as soon as possible under a new timetable.

The Council have considered the views expressed by the General Board above, and have agreed to submit Graces to the Regent House (Graces 7 and 8, p. 244) for the approval of the recommendations of the Board's Report.


< Previous page ^ Table of Contents Next page >

Cambridge University Reporter, 9 December 1998
Copyright © 1998 The Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Cambridge.