@HigherEd_UK The few staff that aren’t gutless or who aren’t too exhausted to still challenge are silenced and restructured out in my university, as it seems they are elsewhere. So yes, 💯 of VCs.
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Save the Humanities
39 posts
Save the Humanities
@HumanitiesSave
Believer in the transformative power of critical thought and the pursuit of knowledge, even when the world seems determined to shutter its doors
Katılım Şubat 2024
28 Takip Edilen14 Takipçiler
Right now, your Vice Chancellor is driving your uni off a financial and reputational cliff. There is no longer any reason to cooperate with them in this process. This academic year will be the last chance to expose managerial corruption while there is still something to salvage.
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@HigherEd_UK I wish I could disagree with your assessment of our shared reality but sadly…
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No uni Vice Chancellor gives a damn if anyone or anything 'flourishes' other than their own bank accounts. As long as that is the case, HE discussions about visions of less cynical universities are fantasy.
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The worry about grade inflation is that it is caused by the relentlessly cynical income-maximising of universities, yet also leads to a product that no one wants to buy. Student's 'flourishing' is a quaint pre-fees-era dream that, at a minimum, requires uni governance reform.
Tony Moss@tonymossuk
A really excellent piece from @TimJBlackman in @HEPI_news this morning on the regulatory red herring that is worrying about grade inflation, rather than being concerned with helping students to grow and flourish in HE
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@HigherEd_UK I despise the obsession with disinvesting in fundamental research in favour of innovation / commercialisation. VCs and their “top teams” are (or were) themselves scholars and so *should* understand the interdependencies. No doubt the result of brainwashing at a UUK conference.
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There is no 'modern model' of universities based on commercialisation and applied skills training.
Either universities argue that fundamental research is worth subsidising for intrinsic and indirect benefits, or they are effectively arguing that universities are not needed.
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@bingle_colin @HigherEd_UK It defies belief. And Council is either clueless or complicit… usually the latter.
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@HumanitiesSave @HigherEd_UK They are like football managers? It almost does not matter how poor the results under their tenure they seem to waltz into better jobs.
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"leadership turnover" is not a problem in the UK. The problem is that they don't leave soon enough, that their replacements are progressively worse, and that they are unaccountable for failure.
Ellie Bothwell@elliebothwell
Many of the world’s top universities have new leaders and tenures are shrinking. I spoke to experts about what this means for the future of the global higher education sector timeshighereducation.com/world-universi…
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@HigherEd_UK And when the results aren’t so favourable, management are quick to criticise league tables and point out the fluctuations. The double standards are just staggering.
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These are fluctuations that happen constantly within this range due to the insane metrics that constitute the UK's embarrassing 'league tables.'
It was amusing for management to crow about them before the sector crashed, but now it is just sad.
University of Leicester@uniofleicester
News | “An amazing few days” – Leicester’s rise up the @Guardian rankings completes a hat-trick of good news 👉 le.ac.uk/news/2024/sept… Leicester has moved up 14 places in the Guardian table to 34th out of 122 UK universities. #CitizensOfChange | @mailonline @timeshighered
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@NagingtonUoM @21percentgroup You are clearly blessed to still be working in a university where good administrators haven’t been offloaded, without any regard for the consequences, to improve the bottom line. Savour it. I remember it and it was a great environment to be in.
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Voice of Victim
"My #university requires us to use Key Travel
It has near monopoly on travel in UK #academia
It's usually dearer than buying it ourselves
It's either impossible or costly to change anything
We incur additional costs through this forced monopoly
Cui bono?"
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@HigherEd_UK Sounds depressingly familiar. Senior management at my university couldn’t give a damn about research and specifically our performance in the next REF. Why should they - that will be someone else’s problem as they will be long gone ruining their next “provider”. Crooked.
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E.g., the same HE providers that have abandoned university functions still threaten staff with reference to the "Reearch Excellence Framework", even though managers obviously do not care about research and are happy to make those who perform strongly on such metrics redundant.
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A test of whether your university is still a university: Has a department been targeted for closure solely due to lack of student recruitment? If so, this is no longer a university. It is an "HE provider" that sells degrees and creates and cuts instructional units accordingly.
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@UCU_Ulster @HigherEd_UK - see staff as the problem, rather than the solution
- pay management consultants millions to tell us what we already know
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A list of things senior leaders of universities have chosen
- multiple layers of management
- shiny buildings
- extractionism from students
- zero goodwill amongst frontline staff
- rock bottom industrial relations
- debt mountains
Pls continue below….
Durham UCU (@ducu.bsky.social)@ucuatdurham
What's most enraging about universities blaming the cost of industrial action as part of why their in financial trouble is *they chose industrial action*. 1/3
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@UWankings It was a catastrophic policy decision that was always going to create a car wreckage. But vice chancellors said nothing at the time and are still silent on the matter. Is that corruption or incompetence, or both?
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Efficiency for VCs means slashing jobs for a quick fix cash gain from payroll and not hiring employees lost which increases workloads of workers left! 👀 for more critical depth here from Jacqui Smith. Look 👀 at VC pay, look 👀 at vanity building projects @ucu @LondonUCU
Ridge & Frost@RidgeandFrost
The higher education minister has not ruled out that some universities may be forced to close over the funding crisis facing the sector. Baroness Jacqui Smith tells @SophyRidgeSky that universities should be 'looking at how they can run efficiently as possible' #PoliticsHub
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@HigherEd_UK Mea Culpa, I was judging stupidity from my viewpoint. They’d never jeopardize their own circumstances.
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@HumanitiesSave That's only stupid in terms of the destroying the university. Stupid for them means jeopardising their personal wealth.
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UK HE corruption and incompetence will not expose itself.
21group@21percentgroup
Many important decisions made by #university senior management are not minuted Curious, is it not? #academia
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@HigherEd_UK But they ARE also quite stupid. Losing their heads and constantly hitting the panic button, rather than actually working with, and listening to, their talented workforce who, let’s face it, they’ve decided - somewhat inexplicably - are they problem rather than the solution
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“Engagement…” there it is again @qm_ucu
Bridget Phillipson@bphillipsonMP
Thank you to the 14,000+ people who dialled into my chat with the education sector today. I want to reset the relationship between government & the workforce so we can be partners in the push for better. I promise this will be just the start of our engagement, not a one off.
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@kerriandrewsuk @HigherEd_UK This is a disgrace. Management want their cake and eat it. @bphillipsonMP the state of the HE sector and the corruption of senior management is killing one of the UK’s greatest success stories…
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@HigherEd_UK I got into trouble with my now former employer for causing ‘reputational damage’ by telling my students that I had been placed at risk of redundancy. They didn’t want the students to know: I didn’t know how to do my job right without them knowing.
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We certainly cannot lure students to our horribly mismanaged unis if we tell the truth about the corrupt and incompetent managers. It's business 101.
Queen Mary UCU@qm_ucu
The thing is: this isn’t framed in terms of academic freedom anymore, but in terms of ‘reputation all damage’. You’ll first have to redirect the narrative to academic freedom if you want to preserve the ability to criticise (or, for that matter: differ.
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@qm_ucu Critical debate leads to better decisions. Simple as that. But management don’t want it. They just relish the silent majority and somehow take that as validation… much like all narcissistic bullies.
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The thing is: this isn’t framed in terms of academic freedom anymore, but in terms of ‘reputation all damage’. You’ll first have to redirect the narrative to academic freedom if you want to preserve the ability to criticise (or, for that matter: differ.
Times Higher Education@timeshighered
Should academics be free to publicly criticise their own institutions and managers/administrators without career consequences? Tell us in our Academic Freedom Survey bit.ly/3xR4NxG
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@huducu This is appalling treatment. And of course, where Huddersfield management dares to tread, vice-chancellors up and down the land will be pleased to follow. @bphillipsonMP the HE sector needs you to take action urgently.
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Huddersfield Uni Backtracks On Redundancy Deal huducu.wordpress.com/2024/07/11/hud…
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@HumanitiesSave @QMUL totally!
(annoyingly, ours have pipiked the word 'engagement', by reducing even that to an 'engagement exercises' and 'the networks are being engaged' whereby 'engagement' itself is the goal, not learning from and adjusting accordingly...)
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CAN YOU PLEASE COME AND EXPLAIN THIS TO @QMUL?!?!
Flora Renz@FloraRenz
Another day, another round of explaining that no, doing an equality impact assessment after you’ve done something is not in fact how this is meant to work
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