Reform Battle cont
An effective university needs open and accountable government, with proper checks and balances. In this regard, Oxford is far from perfect. The University Council operates in a highly secretive manner and in the past fi ve years, Congregation has declined to the point of near irrelevance and meetings are usually cancelled. It is not surprising that the executive has, in this climate, made mistakes, for example in fi nance and admissions.
The rational response is to have better and stronger checks to stop bad decisions from being taken. Unfortunately, John Hood’s governance plans will lead to a more executive- dominated process, with few (if any) effective checks. It is for this reason that so many academics oppose these plans, and why a group of us have produced an alternative plan to make the university’s government more accountable and in turn more effective.
At fi rst sight, the offi cial Governance Discussion Paper contains lots of reassuring language: we are told, for example, that the proposed new University Council is designed to hold the executive to the highest standards of accountability, while bringing muchneeded external expertise into Oxford’s decision-making. But much of this is rhetoric. The planned structure will contain even fewer checks and balances than there are now.
The new university Council will contain seven ‘internal’ and eight ‘external’ members, one of whom - Lord Patten - will chair it for the fi rst fi ve years. In practice it will operate under executive- dominance. The ‘externals’ will not be much help as effective independent voices: they will be busy people who are giving up perhaps a day a month to come to meetings and will then be dependent on paperwork supplied by the university executive.
The ‘internals’ will not be independent either. One of them will be the Vice- Chancellor and another the Chair of the Conference of Colleges • both members of the university executive. The election process for the other fi ve ‘internals’ smacks heavily of cronyism. Anyone who wants to stand will fi rst have to be vetted and approved by a Nominations Committee, which will forward one approved list of candidates for ‘election’ by Congregation.
When, if ever, has the presentation of a carefully vetted list for approval produced candidates who are genuinely independent-minded? How much, if any, robust scrutiny of the executive’s proposals will be carried out by a nominated Council? There are two other big obstacles to the Council serving as an effective check. First, it will have near-absolute power to delegate decision-making to such persons as it sees fi t.
The Governance Discussion Paper tries to reassure us that the main delegate will be a new Academic Board, but in practice there will be nothing to stop the Council delegating to members of the university executive. Secondly, there is provision for the ‘externals’ to be paid for their services. Even with the most honest bunch of ‘externals’ in the world, the appearance of robust independence will not be preserved if they are being paid fi ve fi gure sums.
Strip aside the rhetoric and John Hood’s proposals pave the way for a structure that is even more executivedominated than is presently the case. If our concern is • as it should be • for proper fi nancial, academic and institutional accountability, this just will not do. Those of us who oppose the Governance Discussion Paper are not conservative reactionaries. Nor are we opposed to the use of outside expertise where this will help the university.
Instead, we oppose the Hood proposals because they will increase ineffi cient executivedominance of decision-making, and because we believe that the best form of decision-making contains strong checks and balances. The Governance Discussion Paper is defi cient in both regards.
So what is our alternative plan? We propose that the Council should become more accountable and open: for example, its agendas and minutes should be published on an internal web page and made available to all members of the university, and it should consult Congregation more frequently.
It should also become less of an executive-dominated body: its committees should be reformed with this aim in mind, and university executive members should be obliged to report to Council instead of serving on it. We also propose that Oxford creates a Board of Scrutiny, following the successful Cambridge model.
This Board would review university decisions for their compatibility with the law and with good practice, and would fl ag up warning signals if things seemed to be going wrong • as the Cambridge Board did with that university’s equivalent of OSIRIS. Our plans, we believe, will provide a more effective, more effi cient, and above all more democratic way to take the university forward.
10th Nov 2005