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Report of Discussion

Tuesday, 15 February 2000. A Discussion was held in the Senate-House of the following Reports:

The Joint Report of the Council and the General Board, dated 31 January and 12 January 2000, on the introduction of a part-time route to a doctoral degree (p. 398).

Professor D. N. DUMVILLE:

Madam Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I should like to welcome very warmly the recommendation made in this Report. I am glad that the Council and the General Board have stated plainly that 'the widening of access to postgraduate education is desirable in itself' (but I could wish that they had not followed it up with a bogus 'strengthening' of that statement in section 2(i)). May I also say how much I welcome this Report being laid before the University for consultation and discussion in advance of legislation? I note that that was also the case with the Report on the office of Commissary, and I very much hope that these are manifestations of what would be a welcome new trend in the conduct of the University's business.

While I hope that the University will proceed with all deliberate speed to implement the intentions expressed in the Joint Report, not all aspects of the Report of the Working Group which lies behind it seem either praiseworthy or, indeed, acceptable. My comments fall into three groups.

First, there is the question of how business of this sort is conducted. The Joint Report indicates that the Working Group was set up in February 1997 - three years ago - to deal with responses to a consultation paper (Reporter, pp. 410-13) whose genesis and authorship are not there explained. The Working Group's Report was submitted one year ago and has spent the intervening time being masticated by various organs of the Administration. As far as I can see, this is the first moment when any of this material has come into public view. Members of the University as individuals have had no input and Colleges have not been consulted - this last with possibly dire consequences. This does not represent what the Prime Minister would call 'joined-up government'. I earnestly hope that this is simply a manifestation of our administrative régime being in a phase of transition. The Reporter is an immensely useful medium of communication with the University community. It would have been simplicity itself in February 1997 to publish a Notice that the Working Group was being set up, who its Secretary was, and inviting colleagues to send in any comments on the consultation paper, which could also have been published then and there. I hope that such a model can be used in future. This is a question which will affect all those who have to supervise and administer research students, as well as many prospective students. It should have been more widely aired.

The Report of the Working Group is thorough as well as important. But its tone is hesitant, not to say suspicious and grudging at times. It is, I fear, no surprise to read that Cambridge is the last UK university to make provision for part-time research degrees. By attending to the tone of this document, as well as its content, one can see why. The Working Group does not appear to have asked what 'the distinguishing characteristics of a Cambridge doctoral education' (section 10.1) are, and therefore its protestations that part-time provision must not be allowed to dilute those make no sense. In this respect, then, the Group's Report rests on an all too familiar complacency. It is all very well for us to be proud of our University's research education, but what precisely are the distinguishing features of which we are proud? Part of the problem is the manifestation of inappropriate administrative belief systems, of which I have had occasion to complain in Discussions on other matters. If the Working Group ever thought, applied logic, came to views based on evidence and deduction, that process is obscured by the transformation of its conclusions into beliefs, paragraph after paragraph. And perhaps this explains why the Report also contains contradictions and illogic. The low point (and I fear that it may be an important one) is section 9.3 which is by turns pettifogging, confused, opaque, and not obviously compatible with surrounding paragraphs.

I turn, thirdly, to five substantive issues which the Council and the General Board need to consider.

(1) We are told that the plan is to test the new degrees in pilot institutions. Has it been decided which these will be? How does an institution sign up for it, if there is any such scope? It is a pity that the Joint Report does not make it clear how much opportunity there is for enterprise here on the part of those of us in the 'peripheral bodies'.

(2) Admissions requirements look as if they are going to be a source of trouble. Employers, it is proposed, are to be given a veto (section 5.5.4). This is bad news. In many cases, it will be no business of an employer whether someone wishes to take a part-time degree. I hope that it is not the University's role as an employer (cf. section 5.5.7) which is driving this suggestion. The 'individual' identified in section 5.5.6 as one of the categories of applicant is precisely the sort of person who is likely to be unhappy with such a requirement. We should not arrange matters so that excessively severe non-academic entrance requirements squeeze out such candidates. And it is very dismaying to read in section 5.5.4(a) that difficulty in securing funding for full-time study would not be deemed an adequate reason for application. I should have thought that it was a wholly natural reason, and such an applicant would be manifesting an excellent commitment to research by applying in such circumstances.

(3) This leads me to the question of the relationship with full-time provision. The Working Group has, in the same paragraph, adopted what seems to me to be the illogical deduction that allowing such persons to be admitted would undermine the demand for full-time study. This has been elaborated in terms of a distortion of demand (section 6.1). What has produced distortion, if that is the right word, is the shrinking of available public funding to support postgraduate research. Until the University can supply significantly more graduate bursaries, the distortion can be ameliorated by welcoming as candidates for the part-time degree well-qualified persons without access to funds equivalent to fees for full-time students. I can see no logical grounds on which the full-time market can be expected to be diminished to the University's detriment by the introduction of part-time provision, and the Report offers no reasons.

(4) Administration of the degree needs greater clarity of thought than has been offered. The current Ph.D. is described (section 9.2) as 'full-time, residential'. The part-time degree might therefore be deduced to be non-residential. Candidates are envisaged as living (section 8.2) 'a considerable distance from Cambridge'. But in section 8.1, an ominous ring is sounded: there will be a 'minimum annual attendance requirement' with compliance monitored and certified. The question of the permitted length of part-time study seems to have been inadequately thought through (section 9.3-4). The unhappy section 9.3 seems to envisage a situation in which the normal full-time Ph.D. candidate proceeds as he or she did a generation or more ago, researching for two years or so and then frantically 'writing up'. In the humanities at least, those days are - thank heavens! - largely gone, and the guidance which supervisors and students receive stresses the necessity of steady progress with the writing as well as with the research. Ten terms plus a vacation are allowed for full-timers, while it is proposed that nineteen plus a vacation should be allowed to part-timers, even though in the next paragraph, seven years (twenty-one terms, therefore) are to be allowed to the expected date of submission. None of this seems to make sense. The Board of Graduate Studies (sic leg.; cf. section 2.1, last bullet point) is to have ultimate oversight of all this. Might it not be wise to take advantage of the accumulated expertise of the Board of Continuing Education in this regard?

(5) This brings me to my last point. The Colleges hover somewhat menacingly in the background. Should they play a role? It would have made sense to ask them, rather than leaving little time, before the first students sign on in October 2001, for a rushed consultation. But if many students are to be non-residential, either because they live far from Cambridge or because as persons in employment they are able to run their own households, what role might a College have, save in presenting the candidates eventually for their degrees? The Working Group seems to have missed an opportunity for some radical thinking. A College, as typically constituted, might be an unwelcome complication in the life of a part-time student. Why could we not, for example, designate Madingley Hall as a College for this purpose and think about adapting its facilities accordingly over time? There is much pious language in the Report about integration of students. If that occurs, it is most likely to happen in the academic rather than the domestic or social context. Let us think about some options additional to the conventional route, for that is unlikely to be uniformly satisfactory.

Madam Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I welcome this Joint Report and its recommendation. I appreciate all the hard work of the Working Group. But I am not sure that its Report is quite ready to be acted on. One could wish that those who do not have the opportunity to serve on Faculty Boards and Degree Committees could have commented earlier in the process of gestation of the Report. More hard thought is necessary before this Report can be carried into effect. And yet the need for greater access is both important and urgent.

Mr M. E. RICHARDSON (read by Miss S. E. RAWLINGS):

Madam Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I speak as Director of Continuing Education and Secretary to the Board of Continuing Education and wish to offer a warm welcome to the proposals in this Report. The Report offers a timely and logical development of the University's commitment to lifelong learning and continuing education, as laid out in its Mission Statement and restated in the Vice-Chancellor's most recent address to the Regent House. The expansion of lifelong learning stands high on the national policy agenda, and it is in this context that the present Report offers lifelong learning opportunity to three important groups of people. First, there are those very able students of the University who have performed very well in Tripos but who, in a fiercely competitive situation, have not been able to secure full grant support for full-time doctoral study. Secondly, there are not a few very senior and skilled technical officers, well able both to benefit from doctoral study and to contribute to it, who are at present unable to follow that pathway within their own university. Thirdly, there are those within the general public, in mid-career, some of whom will be our own alumni, who would welcome the opportunity to re-engage with doctoral study on a part-time basis, bringing to it the value of the added experience of their working lives. In the light of this extension of opportunity, within the appropriately robust controls identified in the Report, I very much hope that the Report will commend itself to members of the University. Should the proposals be accepted, the Board of Continuing Education would stand ready, as is indicated within the text of the Report, to assist in whatever way was felt to be appropriate in the implementation of the proposals.

Dr G. R. EVANS:

Madam Deputy Vice-Chancellor, another consultation paper - good. It will be such a pity if this so-long-desired change of approach to consulting the Regent House in advance of making recommendations to it, is to be threatened with the axe. Note in tomorrow's Reporter [16 February 2000] the celerity with which it is possible to produce a Notice in response to a Discussion if one touches a neuralgic spot. I rest my case on Discussions until the Council (which had considered trying to do it by fiat in a Notice) comes back to you on that. For some people do very badly want to shut me up, at whatever cost to the freedoms of the whole community.

I am in favour of opening up a part-time route to the Ph.D. It is potentially an important 'access' point, for it is extremely difficult to get together the funding for a full-time doctorate unless one has well-heeled relatives or independent means, or knows the head of a project with a studentship in his gift. Public funding is in short supply.

I am not clear why a flat fifty per cent of the fee needs to be charged in every case. The figure is still huge for an overseas student. Part-time does not have to mean half-time. So long as the equivalent fee to the full-time fee is paid in total in the end, there is surely no need to set a fixed rate so high?

Why would it matter if full-time students sought to become part-time if their circumstances changed? (6.2, p. 403)

How is all this going to tie in with the plans for the Cambridge-MIT Institute; the prospective admission of students from MIT to Cambridge's teaching and provision to please the Chancellor of the Exchequer? Read today's Guardian [15 February 2000] for David Blunkett on 'the link we have sponsored between MIT and Cambridge University and the Institutes of Enterprise'. Part-time global internet Ph.D.s?

It is not the first time the University has had to take a position on being 'told what to do' from 'outside'. During the late seventeenth century, a year after the attempt in 1686 to forbid the preaching of sermons on controversial topics in the University, there was a successful attempt at royal interference in the affairs of the University.

The King wanted a Benedictine monk to be admitted Master of Arts on special terms. The University objected. 'The King ... was offended at the proceedings of the University'. The Vice-Chancellor and others were required to explain themselves to the Lord Chancellor. (The Lord Chancellor was Judge Jeffreys and the Vice-Chancellor was deprived of his office.)

Judge Jeffreys made mince-meat of Peachell, the Vice-Chancellor, who lacked a firm grasp of the constitution of the University. 'I am really concerned for the University of Cambridge', he said, 'that the Vice-Chancellour should come here before the King's Commissioners, and not be able to give an account of the oath he acted by all this time, but desires Council and time to tell him what the oath is …'.

Vice-Chancellor: 'I cannot call to mind the very words of the Oath, but the substance of it is this: that I should well and faithfully praestare or administrare munus, or officium procancellarium.'

Lord Chancellor: 'And how long has this been the Vice-Chancellour's Oath? …'

Vice-Chancellor: 'Indeed, my Lord, I am not able to tell you exactly ... '

Lord Chancellor: 'As to this business of the Senate ... how was it that you knew their minds in this business?'

Vice-Chancellor: 'My Lord, the House sent up their Opinions.'

Lord Chancellor: 'How, pray? By whom?'

Vice-Chancellor: The Non-Regents, by Mr Smoult, the first day; and Mr Billars, the Orator, and Mr Newton, the Mathematical Professour, my Lord, the second day.'

Lord Chancellor:'What said these ... to you?'

Dr Smoult: 'That the House desired me to acquaint him they were Petitioning, that the Mandate might be recall'd'.

Lord Chancellor: 'I must tell you, Mr Vice-Chancellour, you ought to take an account of what is done in the House yourselfe, and not from others.'

Vice-Chancellor: 'My place is at a great distance ... and I could not see what was done there.'

Lord Chancellor: 'How loud did he speak when he told you this?'

Vice-Chancellor: 'Pretty loud, my Lord.'

Lord Chancellor: 'Was it so loud the House might hear it?'

Vice-Chancellor: 'No, my Lord.'

Lord Chancellor: 'Did you send afterwards to enquire whether he had told you their Opinions true or not?'

Vice-Chancellor: 'No, my Lord, I confess I did not.'

Lord Chancellor: 'But how came this new way of giving Opinions [to] bring the sense of the House to the Vice-Chancellor?'1

The University lost this round with state control partly because it could not give a clear account of the way it made its mind up about the award of its own degrees. I hope we shall do better this time, and leave no one in any doubt that the Senate has a right to speak and be heard in the future as always in the past.

I am pleased to see (p. 401) that it is envisaged that this present scheme may lead to longer Library opening hours. Would this not be the moment to take the opportunity to end the cutting-off of our intellectual life-blood for over a week in September every year at peak research-time, when our potential part-time Ph.D. students (not to mention the rest of us) are likely to need the Library most? Perhaps the Library Syndicate may wish to come back to us on that, by way of a Report to the owners of the books, the Regent House?

That is the kind of remark a person presiding will undoubtedly seek to rule out of order under the proposed new rules. Yet it follows perfectly well from what is said on p. 401 of the Report. Would I be allowed to argue the point with the person presiding (one of whom has expressed a wish that speeches should no longer be monologues)? I doubt it. I shall be ordered ignominously from the lectern.

So may some of you. As you go, mutter: non valet quod agitur nisi consensus habeatur.2 The 'new way of giving Opinions' will have to get round that.

1 The Cambridge Case, being an exact narrative of all the proceedings against the Vice-Chancellour and Delegates of that University for refusing to admit Alban Francis, A Benedictine Monk, to the Degree of Master of Arts, without taking the Oaths (London, 1689).

2 Innocent IV, Commentaria, ad X.III.X.4.

Professor G. BROWN:

Madam Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I welcome the proposals for a part-time route to the Ph.D. The Research Centre for English and Applied Linguistics requires all intending Ph.D. candidates to complete the M.Phil. in English and Applied Linguistics, showing a high level of competence before proceeding to register for the Ph.D. They are then permitted to submit a Ph.D. dissertation after a minimum of six further terms of study.

Many of our M.Phil. candidates are lecturers in English Language in universities in this country or overseas. A proportion of them find it impossible to persuade their institutions to allow them to take a further two years of unpaid leave after they have completed the M.Phil. course. The proposed part-time Ph.D. would make it possible for some of these students to continue to Ph.D. research.

There is however a problem under the proposals as I understand them. They envisage that the M.Phil. should remain a full-time degree, a view which I endorse. However, a further proposal is that no student should be permitted to move from full-time registration to part-time registration. This proposal would effectively preclude any of our students from taking advantage of the part-time route. I urge consideration of the possibility of a full-time M.Phil. year being followed by a further four part-time years of research.

Ms L. A. MARINACCIO:

Madam Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I am speaking today to strongly encourage all members of the University to support the Joint Report of the Council and the General Board, which proposes the introduction of a part-time doctorate. This is important if the University is to increase access for professionals who would like to pursue a doctoral degree for either professional or personal reasons, but are unable to return to school full-time.

I agree unconditionally with the tone of the Report, which emphasizes the need to maintain high admissions standards for those admitted to the part-time degree. However, I strongly disagree with section 6.2, which states that, 'whilst it should be possible, in the event of a change in a student's circumstances, to transfer from part- to full-time registration, there should be no provision for transfers in the other direction, once full-time study for a research degree has commenced'. I suppose that it is not surprising that University officials have failed to recognize the real need to provide a part-time doctoral route for current students without government funding who must work to continue with their graduate career here in Cambridge. The ability to transfer from full-time to part-time status would allow students such as myself to continue with their graduate work while working to provide the necessary funds. It would seem to me that, given the University's concern regarding the maintenance of admissions standards, former full-time students would be ideal for this part-time programme.

Further, I strongly disagree with section 4.2.2, which states, 'whilst a part-time doctoral degree should be generic, there should be no expectation or requirement that every Faculty, Department, and College should be involved in it'. While I can fully understand and appreciate the need for specific degree programmes which involve a significant amount of laboratory work to curtail their participation in this type of programme, there is no need for all other Departments to exempt themselves simply because it may be too much trouble to administer. Further, I can see no reason why the University Colleges should be exempt from this scheme. If the University is truly committed to increasing access by providing a part-time route for the doctoral degree, then the current Report, which suggests offering the degree as an extension of currently offered part-time graduate degrees in a limited number of Colleges, does not have any real impact on access.

But perhaps the University is not really interested in increasing access. Perhaps this is just one more box that the University wants to check off on a government form. Maybe the University commitment to a part-time doctoral route can be compared to their commitment to a transparent student complaints and appeals procedure.

As you are undoubtedly aware, I have been in Cambridge since October attempting to receive a fair hearing of my complaint against the University. I submitted my appeal to the Board of Graduate Studies last fall, and fully expected to take part in a transparent hearing in which both sides made their representations to an independent board or University official, who then ruled. Imagine my surprise when I recently learned that my appeal was denied, based on Faculty responses which I was not allowed to see or comment on. Not only do these Faculty responses contain numerous inaccuracies but I was not allowed to comment on or participate in the process at all.

Madam Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I leave you with this final comment. If the University is truly committed to increasing access, then a part-time doctoral route would be one way in which this could be achieved. However, the University must then wholeheartedly embrace the programme by offering it in a wide range of Departments and Colleges. Otherwise, it will become just another useless box to be checked on a government form.

The Joint Report of the Council and the General Board, dated 31 January and 12 January 2000, on amendments to certain regulations consequential to the creation of a Personnel Division within the University Offices (p. 413).

Mr R. J. STIBBS:

Madam Deputy Vice-Chancellor, may I welcome this Joint Report as an important step towards the rationalization of employment practices in the University. My own Department, the Computing Service, has depended for its success over the last thirty years on the services of a large number of professional assistant staff and it is to be hoped that the creation of the integrated Personnel Division will go some way to lessen the perception of inequality between the conditions of employment of assistant staff and officers. This is particularly important when many of our assistant staff are being recruited with graduate qualifications.

Early in its discussions the new Personnel Committee will doubtless turn its mind to the vexing problems of staff recruitment and retention. The Council and the General Board have correctly drawn attention to the fact that an adequate solution to these problems needs a national response in line with the Bett recommendations (Reporter, 15 December 1999, p. 227), but the financial and other problems faced by many junior staff will not wait upon such a national response. These problems were well described by Drs Dodgson, Hunt, and Mycroft at the Discussion held on 6 July 1999 (Reporter, 21 July 1999, p. 890-3). Could I therefore urge the Personnel Committee to consider the feasibility and cost of shared-equity schemes for house purchase, funded health insurance, increased nursery provision, and wider access to NHS dentistry via the University Dental Service and to the Counselling Service? The introduction of any or all of these would go some way to alleviate the problems of recruitment and retention of junior staff in a cost-effective way.

In conclusion, however, I must regret the failure of the Council and the General Board to use the opportunity of the publication of this Report to establish the office of Director of Personnel. The Council's justification for the unestablished nature of the post given in November was: 'These posts are at present unestablished because the responsibilities attached to them, although they are clearly defined for the tenure of the present holders, may nevertheless be subject to revision in the future; the areas of responsibility and the duties are to some extent provisional, and the Council wish to be in a position to redefine them if this proves to be necessary in the light of experience.' (Reporter, 3 November 1999, p. 102). This is feeble. The Director of Personnel should be fully part of the established governance of the University as soon as possible, and if or when the post changes, the Council can bring to the University the necessary changes in regulations.

Dr G. R. EVANS:

Madam Deputy Vice-Chancellor, there has indeed been a need for 'a more coherent and inclusive approach to personnel policy and practice' in the University of Cambridge. We have to begin to make it a priority to treat the members of this community of employees with dignity and fairness. The present change in the wind bodes well, and if he will not mind my saying so, I have developed a considerable respect already for our new Director of Personnel. Perhaps he will mind my saying so, because approval from me is not good for the professional health of anyone in the University. That is a personnel issue in itself.

This new Personnel Committee will, I fear, be made up of the usual crowd. By that, I mean that they will be chosen (presumably by the usual crowd) from the non-rockers of boats, the safe pairs of hands. I wish I was free to describe to you a breathtaking coup by way of the setting up of a complaisant working party by an acting Chairman, nominee of the person in whose financial interest the working party was being set up, on a 'you, you, and you' basis. I have laboured upon the Nominations Committee to get us to think what we are doing and bring some fresh blood into the system. We must get some input from people who have really given time and thought to these matters and who are not afraid to make themselves unpopular by asking tough questions.

We have got to change our policy and practice about the appointment to committees, particularly committees of such importance to all our futures as the one under discussion today. Why should not the places on this committee be 'advertised' in the Reporter and those interested allowed to 'apply', with some proper independent mechanism for sifting the names? The 'co-opted' members at least might be found in that way, with the committee giving its reasons for choosing them. I wish we could include among 'factors such as gender and ethnicity' (and 'disability' - another example of careless drafting, for clearly we must include all branches of the discrimination legislation) any other characteristic which places the candidate in the position of 'minority' or 'outsider'. Here, that tends to mean any kind of critic of messiness, self-regard in decision-making, territory-defence, and incompetence in the conduct of our affairs. We must have input from us all, real consultation. Whoever ends up on that committee (and we can be quite sure it will not be me), they must be kept to that.

Those supplementary payments to Professors (Reporter, p. 391) raise an issue which requires the early attention of the new Personnel Committee. What exactly is the evidence that 'maintaining the academic vitality' of the University depends on making secret payments of up to the equivalent of nearly the top of the Lecturer's salary scale to these few individuals: 72 scientists and 38 in the humanities? I think those bringing up families in this expensive city on the basic salary scale would all like to be quite clear exactly why those seven at level 4 are worth nearly £68,000 a year. I think too that we should be told exactly who among the senior administrators are getting those giant pay rises, and exactly how much they are now getting, and on what principles it was determined, and on whose 'advice'. The Council merely ratified them, and although I went and looked in the Vice-Chancellor's office to see who was getting what, there was only a single sheet of paper containing the list, no explanation of the way it was arrived at. I imagine the cleaners and secretaries and laboratory assistants would especially like to be able to see why their own work is worth so dramatically much less to the University.

What exactly was that committee on the Professors looking at (not all of them Professors themselves I see, but then this is partly about politics, so that would not matter)? What considerations did it weigh against one another? If we are not allowed to know who and how much each, at least we might be allowed to know why. In a recent speech, I quoted the (apparently) standard brush-off letter received by the unsuccessful applicants. I am sure they would like to know why these others succeeded, so that they may give themselves a better chance next time.

Real greatness need not be a secret, surely? We should all be given the opportunity wholeheartedly to applaud the choice of the Vice-Chancellor and his advisers.

So we come back to the selection of the membership of the new Personnel Committee. Perhaps some of these academically-vital Professors will end up on it, contemplating their own navels when they discuss pay rise policy. Who will know whether they are declaring their conflict of interest if we never know who they are?

No remarks were made on the following Reports:

The Report of the Council, dated 31 January 2000, on a fourth phase of the Stage III extension to the University Library (p. 414).

The Report of the Council, dated 31 January 2000, on the construction of an extension and alterations to the Hoyle Building at the Institute of Astronomy (p. 416).


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Cambridge University Reporter, 23 February 2000
Copyright © 2000 The Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Cambridge.