Skip to main contentCambridge University Reporter

No 6400

Wednesday 21 October 2015

Vol cxlvi No 5

pp. 52–62

Report of Discussion

Tuesday, 13 October 2015

A Discussion was held in the Senate-House. Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor John Spencer was presiding, with the Registrary’s Deputy, the Senior Proctor, the Senior Pro-Proctor, and nine other persons present.

The following Reports were discussed:

Report of the General Board, dated 8 July 2015, on the establishment of certain Professorships (Reporter, 6394, 2014–15, p. 762).

No remarks were made on this report.

Report of the General Board, dated 10 July 2015, on examination arrangements for the degree of Master of Philosophy (Reporter, 6394, 2014–15, p. 762).

Professor G. R. Evans (Emeritus Professor of Medieval Theology and Intellectual History), read by the Senior Pro-Proctor:

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, the Department for Business, Innovation, and Skills has recently published new guidelines for the grant of degree-awarding powers1 though Cambridge hardly needs to bother its collective head about seeking those after so many centuries. It is, however, wise to respond to the Competition and Market Authority guidelines2 as I see it is doing in this Report at:

Work is underway to improve the quality and consistency of information available to prospective students, so as to ensure that their expectations are accurate.

The Board is to be congratulated in the way it has undertaken this review and on the proposals which have been framed.

Perhaps this is an apt moment to thank Graham Allen as he demits office for his outstanding discharge of what was a new role when he undertook it. He will be a hard act to follow.

Twentieth Report of the Board of Scrutiny, dated 23 June 2015 (Reporter, 6394, 2014–15, p. 770).

Dr M. J. Franklin (formerly Chair of the Board of Scrutiny, and Hughes Hall):

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I am here today as the outgoing Chair of the Board of Scrutiny to introduce the Twentieth Report to the Regent House. This year is an important anniversary for the Board, one of the checks and balances introduced to increase transparent and accountable government in the University following the Wass Report of 1989. During 2014–15, the Board held regular meetings to survey various elements of University business. As last year’s Chair, I was present at all the meetings listed in para. 3 of our Report. Throughout these meetings, our focus was on aspects of finance and governance, and I was more than satisfied with the support and assistance the Board received from everyone involved.

The Board has received no formal communication from the administration drawing its attention to errors or omissions in the published Report. This does not mean there are none, but we have endeavoured to continue the now long-established tradition of offering comments and recommendations in a spirit of constructive dialogue. My predecessor expressed her hope last year that the Council would resume the practice established eight years ago of publishing some form of preliminary response to the Board’s Reports so as to better facilitate discussion. I would reiterate this plea. From its inception the Board – the University’s ‘watchdog body’ – has been an important avenue for the expression of Regent House opinion.

The Board’s purpose continues to be that of scrutinizing aspects of governance and administration of the University on behalf of the Regent House1 and the Regent House remains the ultimate arbiter of our success. I will only focus here on elements of the Report.

Turning to one of the Board’s primary areas of responsibility, financial performance, there is perhaps some cause for concern. Group results show an overall deficit of £6.3m compared with a surplus of £23.1m in the previous year. Given the continuing pressures that the higher education sector is under, these financial results are probably to be expected. Nevertheless, the fact that direct research grant expenditure rose by 12.4 per cent, while research grant income only rose by 11.9 per cent, could be indicative of a disturbing trend.

Para. 17 of the Report draws attention to the two main areas of risk for the University in the coming years: the North West Cambridge development, and potential liabilities in pension provision. I will only speak here of the latter.

The University’s pensions schemes and their sustainability have been one of the Board’s principal concerns for many years. This year in para. 22, we have tried to look beyond the specific dangers of the ‘last man standing’ nature of the Universities Superannuation Scheme, towards those linked with the changes anticipated from April 2016 – in particular the demise of the defined benefit element. We particularly welcome the University’s commitment to exploring the idea of providing more flexible remuneration packages for staff that will extricate it from the hazards of the ‘exclusivity’ rule.

Turning briefly to research strategy, which is discussed in detail in paras. 29–36 of the Report, we are clear that although intensity brings financial benefits, the University must effectively assess performance and plan accordingly for the next Research Excellence Framework; in particular assessing research outputs and impact against other high-ranking UK universities.

All Regents will be aware of the likely impact of the Election result on finance, research, and research strategy at the University. Higher education funding from UK government sources is likely to be reviewed. Moreover, withdrawal from the EU would significantly reduce research funding (currently worth £52.6m in 2013–14, around 14 per cent of the total University research income of £371.8m). Hence in para. 35, the Board makes important recommendations concerning a proactive approach to lobbying for higher education funding in order to protect the ability of this University and others in the UK to continue to conduct world-class research.

I commend the Board’s Twentieth Report to the Regent House.

Footnotes

Mr N. M. Maclaren (Member of the Senate):

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I am afraid that the Board is indulging in understatement in its comments on information technology. I have just retired, so am remarking as a member of the Senate, not as a member of the University Information Services.

One could ask why we need so much expensive external consultancy, given that we have just imported so much expensive external managerial expertise. The Board may also be unaware that there is an admitted policy of not filling UIS positions as they become vacant, despite what the Council has said on the record. But I need to digress slightly before my main remarks.

Let us consider the results of the 2014 Research Excellence Framework, and consider the impact, which is perhaps the best indication of whether Cambridge is a leading research University or merely a large one. Cambridge dropped to No 5 overall in the REF, but was No 12 on impact;1 I hate to think of where we would come in an international ranking. Looking through the subjects,2 out of 33 entries, we had 10 in the top five, six others in the top 10, and a distressing number in the 20s, including at least two in the 60s.

The relevance to this is that an increasing amount of research is computational, and world-leading research needs access to world-leading support and advice. One aspect is that a great many researchers spend a great deal of their time doing computer administration, because they do not have access to adequate IT support, or because their time is regarded as free. In many cases, they are quite capable of turning themselves into IT experts and doing the job, but the time they spend doing so is time that they cannot spend doing research. Learning the skills often takes many months, and often consumes several days a week thereafter.

But a more important issue is that leading-edge researchers need the ability to do things that are not done elsewhere; only more pedestrian ones can rely on buying in all expertise and tools. So leading researchers need advice, assistance, services, and courses which are beyond anything that can be found elsewhere. This includes the development of new algorithms, and the modification of existing ones, which is something that I and a few other computer officers used to do for researchers.

Obviously, that always was a small part of an IT service, but let us consider outsourcing, the money-saving principle of the month. The key to success is to have someone who is central to the planning and decision-making, but who is also technical enough to ensure that snake oil salesmen are detected as such, whether they be consultants or vendors. Her Majesty’s Government is singularly inept at this, but we have our own horror story in CAPSA, and a plethora of unnecessary failures.

The point here is that IT staff in the University are being actively de-professionalized, and established posts are gradually disappearing, as is made clear in paras. 46–49, and this is not compatible with attracting and retaining staff of the appropriate calibre. A post as even a Computer Officer, let alone an unestablished position, is no longer a career path for people who are capable of holding down lectureships or even Chairs but choose not to, and that is the calibre of person needed. At least one of my colleagues left to take up a Chair.

I and many other people were promoted ad hominem but this is no longer allowed, and the higher grades are being increasingly reserved for administrators, personnel managers, and external appointments. I know excellent job candidates who have turned down Computer Officer posts in favour of lower-paid, more temporary, research ones because the promotion prospects were better. There are often no suitable candidates for unestablished positions, so unsuitable ones are appointed.

I do not believe that this is a conscious policy of the Council, but it is not fulfilling its responsibilities by letting such changes happen without doing any proper planning, and ensuring such changes in policy are properly reported to and discussed by the Regent House.

Professor G. R. Evans (Emeritus Professor of Medieval Theology and Intellectual History), read by the Senior Proctor:

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, there is always much on which one might comment in the Board of Scrutiny’s Annual Report but two matters stand out for me this year.

In the section on the University Information Service (UIS), at para. 48, the Board remarks on the number of

...new appointments which are to unestablished posts, removing them from the extra protections afforded to University officers by the Statutes and Ordinances. The Board is aware of other formerly established posts which have, upon being vacated, been filled on an unestablished basis.

The Board makes a broader recommendation

that the University review its use of unestablished posts, and only appoint on an unestablished basis where there exists an objective justification for doing so.

I hope that the reasons for the present trend away from appointment to University offices will be made plain to the Regent House, for this smells faintly of the kind of policy change by stealth which really ought to be the subject of a Report to the University.

I hope too that there will be some revisiting of the level of protections enjoyed by both officers and unestablished academic and academic-related staff. I spoke at some length in Discussion in January on problems faced by unestablished academic staff on contracts in Cambridge which depend on external-funding for their continuance, even where the contract is technically a ‘permanent’ one. There was a brief response to some of these remarks in the Notice in the Reporter of 15 April.1 However, the problem is more significant still, as the Board’s concern underlines.

There are many reasons why it matters if one is not a University officer. Protections available to University officers have steadily been reduced with the planned lowering of the former Statute U to the level of a Special Ordinance as a Schedule to Statute C, and the removal of the grievance procedure to the level of a mere Ordinance. But these diminished protections are still there in the Statutes and Ordinances. For unestablished academic staff there is only a set of procedures which may be found on the Human Resources pages.2 These give them access neither to the University Tribunal nor to appeal to the Septemviri if they are threatened with dismissal.

When it formulated its version of the Model Statute, which became Statute U, Cambridge decided simply to apply it to its University officers (Lecturers, Readers, Professors, and certain academic-related staff holding such offices). These categories are easily identified, being listed in the Statutes and Ordinances. Officers also have the vote as members of the Regent House. Holders of unestablished posts held by academics on short-term contracts or nominally ‘open-ended’ or ‘permanent’ contracts subject to the availability of external funding do not hold University offices and unless they happen to be Fellows of Colleges or members of a Faculty, they may not be members of the Regent House.

Oxford faced a much more difficult task because of its joint appointments, which make their holders employees of both the University and a College, and its Common University Fund (CUF) appointments, but it went the other way in terms of inclusivity. The Gazette records that these problems were still being discussed even when detailed proposals about the Statute to be made by the Commissioners were before Congregation.3 The settled intention in Oxford was ‘to bring the main categories of all academic and academic-related staff within the scope of the new statute’. It was even suggested that:

In so far as the categories which it wishes to incorporate are not accepted by the Commissioners for the model statute, it would be possible for the University to legislate so that those omitted were covered by provisions identical to those in the Model Statute.4

In that spirit, membership of Congregation, carrying the protections of Statute XII and the right to vote is widely extended, with a list of new members published regularly in the Gazette throughout the year as they are approved.

Is it not time now for Cambridge to rethink its policy of excluding so high a proportion of its academic staff from the protections University officers enjoy? I hope the Council will tell us in its reply (perhaps in fewer than three months?) how this trend away from appointment to University offices has come about and why, and what it proposes to do about the equal treatment of officers and unestablished staff in the matter of procedures affecting their employment. (It is perhaps timely to add a footnote to recent HESA findings that Cambridge has higher ‘support staff’ costs than any other university5 so it is presumably not just a matter of salary costs. The money can be found where the will is there. So what is the will of the University towards its unestablished academics?)

My second point is prompted by para. 32:

Concerns about contracts and grants management have been raised in Schools, Faculties, and Departments around the University.

In particular, ‘at the moment there is a lack of clarity regarding financial, ethical, and regulatory responsibilities’. It goes wider, as the Board admits. The lack of clarity includes ‘effectively accounting for research grant funds that have been secured’ and ‘effective audit, review, and monitoring of the management of all research projects’. I am glad to read that the ‘Board considers this issue paramount and will continue to monitor the situation’ but is it enough for it merely to mention that it is ‘aware of discussions within the University to deal with these issues and await[s] the outcome with interest’.

I suspect this needs active pressure from the Board rather than a mere watching brief. The Regent House is told nothing directly to enable it to see further into the ‘discussion within the University’ of which the Board is ‘aware’. But browse the agendas and minutes of the Audit Committee and you may glimpse shadowy forms moving under the surface as special internal audits are commissioned and completed and the Audit Committee discuss them. The Audit Committee meeting of 2 July 2015 had on its Agenda ‘External research activities and risk assurance’ and there is mention of a Research Grants Audit paper, AUD(15)33, received at the last meeting. The Minutes were presumably to be confirmed at the meeting of 8 October before publication. But the Audit Committee meeting of 5 March 2015 still had no minutes published when I was drafting this speech in late August. This is tantalizing because the audit I was interested in was sent to the members of the committee for discussion as Principal Business Paper AUD(15)17. It had been on their agenda for 15 January 2015, but the minutes state that it was ‘not yet finalized and would therefore be carried over to the 5 March 2015 meeting’.

What can be seen in the record, however, is a sample of the way the Committee may be expected to discuss such an audit and its outcome. At the meeting of 13 November 2014, it had before it a Deloitte audit on British Heart Foundation Grant Awards AUD(14)87. The minutes comment on ‘the larger than usual number of audits with limited assurance submitted to this meeting’. From previous audits, one Priority 1 recommendation remained open and other findings were still to be implemented, the majority of which related to 2012–13 audits. The internal auditors reassured the Committee that they would escalate any recommended actions they considered to be of particular concern. The Committee agreed that it was not acceptable to have any recommendations unimplemented for over two years and that these should be escalated to management and, as deemed appropriate, to the Committee. It was proposed that in such cases the Head of the institution concerned should be invited to attend the Committee.

The University appears to lack a process designed to ensure that when an audit leads to recommendations they are followed up, in the face of the problem of loss of face for senior administrators. Recommendations may be ‘judgemental if advisory’ as may be read on the Audit Committee section of the University’s website, but that should not mean that ‘sensitivities’ should lead to cover-up or to recommendations being kicked into the long grass. The auditors speak of ‘too high degree of tolerance’.

In the case of one audit – of British Heart Foundation Grant Awards, AUD(14)87 – the website notes that ‘the report came with limited assurance and seven Priority 2, and four Priority 3 recommendations. The Priority 2 recommendations related principally to evidencing ethical approval, correcting expenditure and timely invoicing.’ This looks bad. But there is more than a hint of worse. It was ‘questioned whether the findings were peculiar to this particular research sponsor or indicative of systemic problems’. What is looked for is ‘greater assurance that the audit findings were being addressed at the most senior levels’. The Committee concluded that ‘henceforth the Head of the institution or office should be fully engaged in the discussion of the reports and, if limited assurance was ascribed to a particular report, be requested to attend the Audit Committee meeting at which the report would be discussed.’ Is that happening and what happens next?

Dr A. L. Feldman (MRC Epidemiology Unit, and Churchill College), read by the Senior Proctor:

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I am a postdoctoral researcher in the MRC Epidemiology Unit at the Clinical School, and I have read the Twentieth Report of the Board of Scrutiny with great interest and would like to comment on how two of the recommendations concern postdocs at this University. I am also the current Vice-President of the Postdocs of Cambridge Society, but please note that these remarks are my own.

The Board of Scrutiny reviewed the current situation of the University Superannuation Scheme, which is about to be fundamentally changed, and notes in para. 22 that

Neither a young post-doc nor a newly recruited Professor will find working in the University financially attractive.

I welcome and am very grateful that the Board recognizes that the revision of the pension scheme affects early career as well as more senior research staff, and agree with their conclusion that the University needs to explore how to increase its financial attractiveness to be able to recruit – and keep – talented staff, both at the start and at more senior levels of their research careers.

In paras. 34 and 35 the Board expresses its concern over the negative impact on research funding income of the potential withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union. I share the Board’s concern, but would also like to add that the impact would go beyond loss of research funding and would also affect the mobility of research staff and thus the attractiveness of the University as an employer for research staff from across Europe. As I experienced myself, it is very easy, at least administratively, to move to the UK as an EU citizen. I have nothing but the highest respect for my colleagues from countries outside of the EU for choosing to move here despite the sometimes time-consuming and expensive administrative processes to do so. Thus, if similar barriers were erected towards the European research community as well, it could potentially make recruiting talented research staff harder. This would in particular affect future postdocs who are on fixed-term contracts and are thus not entitled to any relocation allowance, which could mitigate the expense of visa applications and related fees.

Finally, I would like to thank you for allowing me to submit my remarks here today. There are many issues raised in reports that concern postdocs directly or indirectly, but the majority of postdocs, including myself, are not made members of their faculties and thus not included on the Roll of the Regent House, and as a consequence are not given the automatic right to attend or speak at these Discussions.

Professor A. W. F. Edwards (Gonville and Caius College):

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I trust it is in order to bring up a matter which I referred to the Board and which its Secretary said the Board would be looking into with a view to commenting in its Annual Report, but which is not in fact included. It concerns the use by the Vice-Chancellor of Regulation 15 for Graces and Congregations of the Regent House to amend a Grace after it has been approved. Were this to go unchallenged it would create a wholly-unacceptable precedent and I am sorry that the Board did not take up the matter.

The Reporter of 5 November 2014 carried a Notice stating that the Vice-Chancellor had used Regulation 15 to amend Grace 6 of 22 October in respect of the date at which its proposals were to come into force. Grace 6 was approved on 31 October, so the Regulation, which enables the Vice-Chancellor to correct ‘an obvious or immaterial error’ in a published Grace before its approval, was applied after its approval. That it cannot be so used is evident both from the wording of the Regulation and from the obvious fact that to use it is tantamount to the Chairman of the Regent House (which is who the Vice-Chancellor is) altering an approved minute of a decision of the Regent House (which is what an approved Grace is). If the Vice-Chancellor’s interpretation were to be accepted, it would enable him to rewrite Special Ordinances and Ordinances at his pleasure, for it is relevant that in the case in point the error was neither ‘obvious’ nor ‘immaterial’.

The correct procedure is the same for any decision-making body. A fresh motion must be passed at the earliest opportunity correcting the error, it being understood that Chairman’s action may be taken in the interim and whitewashed, or not, as the case may be, at the next meeting. In our case a correcting Grace is all that is required. It could have a footnote in the old style used for tutors who needed to get a pupil exempted from a regulation: ‘The Registrary pleads incuria’.

Dr R. Charles (University Council, University Information Services, and Newnham College), read by Dr M. C. Vernon:

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I would like to congratulate my former colleagues on the Board of Scrutiny for their hard work and constructive comments in the Board’s latest Report. As a current member of the Council, I will take a keen interest in the drafting of our response.