Comments on: How government is wrecking British universities

By: anon

anon — Sun, 25 Apr 2004 14:54:13 +0000

None of you have commented on the deep strain of anti-intellectualism in the Labour movement, which continues to infect government dealings with higher ed. My first meeting with Blunkett when he was Education Secretary concerned a wide range of issues in secondary schooling, and he, to my horror, expressed his contempt for university lecturers in the sciences. He had recently met with a group of representatives of researchers in the hard sciences and had proposed to them that they should each spend a day a week in secondary schools tutoring schoolkids. He was genuinely angered that they dismissed the suggestions, which revealed a staggering level of ignorance about 1) the conditions in unviersities 2) what it takes to do scientific research and 3) the possibility that the skills and characteristics of practicising scientists may not transfer well into the secondary classroom.

By: Selma "Friedrich" Hayek

Selma "Friedrich" Hayek — Sun, 25 Apr 2004 09:10:28 +0000

“Since, S F Hayek, you don’t own a gun you probably think it’s okay for the state to force people to pay taxes to fund a police force…” Yes, I believe this is covered on page one of my copy of Classical Liberalism (Ladybird Books Ltd.) You need a legal system to enforce formal property and so you cannot privatise the police. These things will always be the essential basis of the public sector, and they will always be controversial, seeding arguments about funding, regulation and so on. Depending on how we run it, the police force is either a centre of corruption or the basis of our freedom, or some mixture of the two. The US hardly has this perfected, suffering as they do from widespread police corruption. Could this not serve as a warning to other sectors that public funding is best avoided where not absolutely essential? I don’t disagree with your underlying assertion that this government couldn’t run a bath, let alone a public service. “We pay you for science research in order to control your undergraduate education policies…” This doesn’t explain why they don’t call the government’s bluff. If the prestigious universities can prosper without the funding, then why not leap at the chance to run their own business and get out of a corrupt situation? Perhaps it’s all because they have the standard attitude toward commercialism. Running a business? How terribly vulgar. We don’t want to be providing service to customers! We want to be appointed the rulers of a domain of government – the domain of cleverness. The best domain of the lot!

By: Will

Will — Sat, 24 Apr 2004 20:10:41 +0000

I would rather think that S F Hayek and Robert Stevens would agree that centralising funding and tend to go together. That is Stevens’ complaint about centralised funding. He would, I believe, like some of the universities to charge their own fees, and forgo government tuition payments. Hayek asks, re. threat to remove science funding: “Could you explain that part? How can it make sense to say that “going private” would solve their funding problem at once if they are utterly dependent on government support? Do you mean that in theory, if they provided a valuable service, they could go private? I quite agree. The fact that they cannot do this implies that they do not provide a valuable service. The government is quite reasonably wondering “What do we pay you for?” Is it impertinent to ask such questions?”” The answer to this question, if I understand it right, is that Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, UCL are confident that they could charge a reasonable fee for the valuable service of undergraduate education. The fact that they cannot do this reflects not the fact that they do not provide a valuable teaching service, for which many would be willing to pay, but that the government has said, repeatedly, that if they were to charge for undergraduate education, the government would withhold research funding for science projects, which is both a large sum of money in itself, and makes many natural scientists at these universities wary of change. Note that, on these lines, the government’s question “what do we pay you for” is answered by the government not only “we pay you for science research for medical advances, economic benefits, etc”, but “we pay you for science research in order to control your undergraduate education policies”.

By: Michael Otsuka

Michael Otsuka — Sat, 24 Apr 2004 16:23:34 +0000

Since, S F Hayek, you don’t own a gun you probably think it’s okay for the state to force people to pay taxes to fund a police force. And I don’t think you’d want to insist that an inane scheme of regulation akin to that which is inflicted on UK universities is an inevitable consequence of public funding of the police. In fact, the police in Britain are also enmeshed in red tape. According to a Home Office study, police officers need to devote so much time to filling in forms that they end up spending 43% of their time in the police station (e.g., filling out an arrested person’s name 27 times, as in Warwickshire) and just 17% on patrol. Even the Home Secretary admits that “many of these forms are repetitive, too long and even redundant”. These pointless absurdities are not an inevitable consequence of public funding, as there is nothing on this scale in the case of publicly funded state universities and polices forces in the United States.

By: Selma "Friedrich" Hayek

Selma "Friedrich" Hayek — Sat, 24 Apr 2004 15:04:05 +0000

“Strange that a libertarian should suddenly have such confidence in central planning in this instance.” Only cynically: I have some confidence that they will succeed in compelling a few sensible academics to liberate themselves from government accountability. The government’s actions are a perfect demonstration of how central planning and micro-management is generally ham-fisted, controversial and ineffective. Central planning is an inevitable consequence of central funding; at the very minimum, the government (on behalf of the electorate) ought to take an interest in where public money is going. The apparent alternative is that the plebs should buckle down and stop questioning those who know best how to spend everyone else’s money. If you instead decide to really find out how valuable your work is, and sell your talents to people who genuinely want them, the nation (or that part of it that is supposed to be benefiting from your activities) can reach its own conclusions freely. Wouldn’t this be more honest and respectable than trying to continue quietly hoodwinking the tax-payer? The successful academics would at least know that they had some satisfied customers – students, industry, whoever was freely choosing to pay for the service. (As it happens, I am not a libertarian, as I do not own a gun.)

By: Michael Otsuka

Michael Otsuka — Sat, 24 Apr 2004 10:07:48 +0000

S F Hayek is being inconsistently libertarian. A more consistent line would be outrage that the government not only has the gall to tax people for the sake of providing higher education, but that it should then squander this money on an absurd scheme of centralized regulation. Strange that a libertarian should suddenly have such confidence in central planning in this instance.

By: Selma "Friedrich" Hayek

Selma "Friedrich" Hayek — Sat, 24 Apr 2004 09:29:38 +0000

“The Government does not seem to have enough confidence in the way that universities run themselves to give them extra funding without strings attached.” Without any strings at all? It’s money taken from the public; if it has been handed over for years without anyone asking any questions, then that in itself was a strange state of affairs. People are naturally interested in why the money is so urgently needed that it has to be taken by government act, instead of being freely exchanged for something of visible value. In a country of docile sheep, you can get away with this indefinitely; otherwise, you will have to explain what the money will be spent on. “As Robert Stevens points out… this is only the very latest trend in the massive growth of central government control over universities… encouraging continual expansion of regulation and loss of autonomy by other parts of civil society.” So are academic institutions asserting their natural right to spend a certain proportion of everyone else’s earnings, collected by the government, no questions asked, on the basis of individual liberty? To reiterate, government funding is taken from citizens who stand to be imprisoned if they don’t pay. To assert the right to do this on the grounds that “autonomy” is desirable is… well, you’re ‘avin’ a laugh, ain’tcha? “As I understand it… the reason that leading British universities do not go private, solving their micro-management and funding problems both at once, is the threat that science research funding (a very large part of total university income) would – so the government has threatened – be withheld in retaliation.” Could you explain that part? How can it make sense to say that “going private” would solve their funding problem at once if they are utterly dependent on government support? Do you mean that in theory, if they provided a valuable service, they could go private? I quite agree. The fact that they cannot do this implies that they do not provide a valuable service. The government is quite reasonably wondering “What do we pay you for?” Is it impertinent to ask such questions? Surely “going private” would mean that clients of the service would be free to choose which supplier they spend their money on. The government would not be withholding anything “in retaliation”; if the government wanted some research done, they’d have to pay someone to do it. The government would only withhold funding for research it didn’t need – bravo.

By: Natacha

Natacha — Fri, 23 Apr 2004 19:26:29 +0000

The Alliance for Justice has launched a new website urging Justice Scalia to recuse himself from the Cheney energy case! Check it out: http://www.ChooseToRecuse.org Scalia can recuse himself anytime before the Supreme Court renders its decision. There is a great flash animation that goes with it too. You have to see “Quid Pro Quack” http://www.allianceforjustice.org/action/scalia/flash.htm Duck’em!

By: Natacha

Natacha — Fri, 23 Apr 2004 19:25:25 +0000

By: DJW

DJW — Fri, 23 Apr 2004 18:37:11 +0000

Well, the British don’t rely on scandalously lowly paid adjunct labor to teach a significant portion of undergraduate coures, right? They just pay their full-timers scandalously low wages instead :) I have no doubt that it’s much, much better to be a full time tenure track academic in the US than the UK, but I also suspect that full time jobs in the UK are better than your typical part-time and temporary appointments in the US, which is becoming an increasingly large percentage of us here.

By: Colin Farrelly

Colin Farrelly — Fri, 23 Apr 2004 17:07:53 +0000

I agree with Harry’s comments. I taught in the UK for 4 years before I left last year for a job in Canada. Things are not perfect in Canada either, but the growing bureaucracy in higher education in the UK was a major reason for my leaving one UK institution and was a reason (though not the main reason) why I left the UK for Canada.

By: harry

harry — Fri, 23 Apr 2004 16:08:39 +0000

Just to say, not being rude or anything, but Keith and Barry simply have NO IDEA what they are talking about. Not to say its good here in the US, but it is a different world. The prominent philosophy Chris alludes to knows both systems well, having worked in both (in privileged positions in both) and there is, simply, no comparison. My colleagues at Wisconsin complain endlessly about our University… and I do not suppress my smiles, having experienced academic life at what is probably a more elite institution in Britain. At each tier of academia life is so much more difficult in the UK. You would not believe it. Really.

By: P O'Neill

P O'Neill — Fri, 23 Apr 2004 15:58:20 +0000

More on this question of whether things would better in US —- a US academic colleague sent me a memo he had just received from the dean. The dean, perhaps advised by lawyers, said that having professors recommend particular students for internships, RA positions etc (something profs do all the time) could result in the professor being deemed an “employment agency” and therefore the whole apparatus of equal opportunity regulations should apply, even when it’s just someone on the phone asking for a few names for an internship position.

By: Will

Will — Fri, 23 Apr 2004 14:55:01 +0000

Oops! Apologies for multiple postings. The site kept reporting error messages when I tried to post.

By: Will

Will — Fri, 23 Apr 2004 14:51:54 +0000

As Robert Stevens points out in “University to Uni: The politics of higher education in England since 1945”, this is only the very latest trend in the massive growth of central government control over universities, and one which is much less related to “trust” than a constitutional system which concentrates all meaningful political power in the executive, encouraging continual expansion of regulation and loss of autonomy by other parts of civil society. A report, however well-meaning or insightful, cannot change this trend, and no one shd expect it to. As I understand it, both from Stevens’s book, and conversations with UK academics, the reason that leading British universities do not go private, solving their micro-management and funding problems both at once, is the threat that science research funding (a very large part of total university income) would – so the government has threatened – be withheld in retaliation. Perhaps the LSE, which gets very little government research funding as a non-science university, might be persuaded to jump off the cliff first… On a separate point, one income loss for UK universities is that tuition fees must be the same for all EU students, i.e. fees for French students studying in the UK must be low like for UK students, not high like American students studying in the UK. This is a big income loss, and unnecessary – in the US out-of-state students pay higher fees than in-state students for state universities, who benefit from state taxpayers’ support. This small change would increase UK universities income quite a lot – maybe now that the government needs support in the upcoming EU constitutional referendum, a protocol to the treaty can be put in to change this. After all, the government will need all the friends it can get in the run-up to the vote.