Well, this is it.  I set out in January to produce a blog on six consecutive days each month throughout the year. And, a little to my surprise, I've pretty well managed to achieve that.  There have been a few days when I have been on leave - but my major holidays during the year (and I do take holidays - they are very necessary) happen not to have coincided with blogging weeks. I have generally managed to get to the keyboard late each evening, although there have been occasions when the entry has been written up the following morning.

The original reason for starting this was because I was involved in the mentoring scheme whereby members of UEB (and the academics on UEB are all male - although, as they say, watch this space for an announcement very shortly) have been attempting to help senior academic women to experience aspects of the wider governance structures of the university and of the life of PVCs.  At the time I started I had three such mentees: that number has now grown to four and although the obligations of the scheme itself have now been completed for this session I intend to keep being available for 'my four' into the future.

I have tried each day to pick on something that is of more general interest.  I hope that in doing that I have been able to demonstrate the incredible variety of a PVC's life - particularly one in a cross-cutting role such as I have.  Yes: the hours can often be long.  Yes: the demands can be considerable.  But the rewards are often immense - a feeling that one is actually making a difference to the life of the university and, more importantly, to the lives of those who are engaged with it, students, staff and others from outside our community.  The highlights outweigh the tedious elements many times over.

In this final blog of the year I want to pay tribute to two sets of people who make this university so special.  These are not the obvious 'stars', Instead they are the middle ranking colleagues - in academic departments and in professional services - who believe in the mission of the university, who see their own career developing in parallel with the stability and quality of the university, and who are the 'boiler-room' of the enterprise.  These are the academic staff who will turn their hand to anything that is in the interests of their students, who will chase the research grants that might extend the research support contracts of colleagues, who will turn out for outreach and for alumni events, and who take pride in what they, their students and their departments are achieveing.  They are the staff in acacdemic departments and in professional services who are determined that everything should run smoothly, who stay after hours to get the exam marks in or the timetables finalised, who are available on the phone to deal with emergencies and incidents of all kinds, and whose attitude to any request is to try to find a way of fulfilling it.

But my second tribute is to the officers of the Union of Students.  Every year a series of wacky candidates stand for election, and on almost every occasion the winners are actually an incredibly mature and responsible bunch.  They are extremely well trained by the permanent union officials, and they become some of the best advocates of the university.  The Union has been run by two outstanding teams of officers during the period I have been writing this blog. And those teams have worked with me and other UEB colleageus in an incredibly co-operative manner.

But is this actually to be the end?  I started the year with the intention that I would finish in December. But some people have asked me to continue. I am going to put that to the vote.  Your chance to put your opinions can be found in a Survey Monkey questionnaire.  Please answer it to give me your verdict one way or another.

  http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/2D8WLSV

Happy Christmas to everyone.

The Information Commons has a new manager, and he and I met up this morning.  The IC has been one of the most successful capital projects the university has undertaken for a number of years, and it has established a key role in many aspects of student life - both as workspace and as social hub.  I chaired the Project Executive Group that oversaw the project - although the credit for the vision has to go to the Directors of Library Services and CiCS (Martin Lewis and Chris Sexton) and their staff, and to my predecessor as PVC L/T, Phil Jones.  We built the IC in the hope that stduents would use it in the way we expected - and in reality almost everything we planned for has come to fruition.

The IC has created a new way of working, and the question now is - what next?  How will students work in five or ten years time?  The fact is that we don't know.  But I am sure there will be differences from now. The IC was built to bring together IT and a bookstock.  How long will the IT need to be PCs?  Over 80% of new students arrive in Sheffield with a laptop, but few carry them around with them.  What if we encouraged students to move onto iPads or other tablet computers?  Perhaps we should issue students with an iPad at registration, preloaded with a mass of materials that we currently provide in paper copy.  Could we dispense with PCs in the IC (and elsewhere) and expect students to use their own equipment (which have issued to them)?  What about the future of blended learning?  Might we be delivering more course materials electronically in a few years time - and I am not simply thinking of the stuff that is put in the MOLE repository.  What use will students be making of books in a few years time? We are already at the position where many students have never physically opened a journal, accessing all the articles electronically.

There is a need for more spaces in which students can undertake the sort of activities they currently do in the IC.  But we need to be imaginative in order to future-proof any investment we make in such spaces.  Getting it right is not guarantee.

But on the top of all the technology, one of the simplest things students like about the IC is the 24/7 opening.   And that in itself is an indication of the way in which student work patterns have changed from previous decades when the demarcation betwen the work and leisure parts of the student day was much clearer.

I went to an inaugural lecture this evening.  It was held in the ICOSS conference room, which was nearly full.  It was a good lecture - well paced, not too technical (it was by an economist), and well introduced by the head of department.  Most people stayed on for refreshment and conversation afterwards.

But the ICOSS conference room only holds around 60 people, and apart from me and three others I couldn't recognise anyone from a department other than Economics.

I believe the inaugural lecture is an excellent potential occasion for people from all parts of the university to come together to celebrate the breadth of interests in the institution, and for all of us to learn something about disciplines that we may not normally delve into. The well-judged inaugural acts as a showcase for the lecturer but also for the subject that he or she comes from.  It enables others to grasp something of key research areas and to understand where a subject is going.  It prevents us all becoming too narrowly focused on our own concerns, and reminds us of the excellent work going on all round the university.  It gives us all something to boast about.

But clearly my views are not shared by many.  Perhaps we are all in danger of becoming too specialised, of not recognising the breadth of academia, of assuming that lectures in fields other than our own will be too technical and incomprehensible, that we have better things to do with our time.  I acknowledge, of course, that there has been a massive rise in recent years in the number of new appointments to professorships - such that running an institution-wide inaugural lecture programme has become impossible.  But I would certainly like to see each Faculty choosing, say, three new professors each year who, in their judgement, could act as ambassadors for that Faculty's endeavours, with real publicity and a certain level of expectation raised that inaugurals are interesting, useful, instructive - and can potentially lead to new ideas for collaboration with people in fields distant from ones own. Fifteen such lectures across the university in a year would only mean one every fortnight during the 30 week teaching period. I certainly wouldn't be able to get to all of them, but I'm sure some would fit my diary.

But I have a further thought.  Inaugurals are given by new professors.  What about a parallel series given by the star turns who achieved their chairs some time ago and have continued to grow in reputation since.  I never heard Ian Kershaw lecture on Nazi Germany, despite working in the same university as him for 20 years: I never heard Fred Combley lecture on nuclear physics, or Paul Wiles on criminology.  Among present-day colleagues I am sure Tim Birkhead could fill a lecture hall with a university-wide lecture on bird behaviour, or Danny Dorling on social inequalities, or Sheila McNeill on tissue engineering .. and so on.  So if we were to have 15 selected inaugurals during the year at fortnightly intervals, what about interspersing them with lectures from our most distinguished established professorial stars?

We had the University carol service in the Octagon today - attended by, I was told later, around 350 people.  Of all events in the year this has probably the most diverse set of people present - students, academic staff, support staff from acacdemic departments, staff from professional services, and a number of retired or ex colleagues who return for the occasion.  It's an unusually all-encompassing celebration.  Prayers and lessons were read by a variety of representatives of different groups - students, the Students Union (a lesson read by the President, Josh Forstenzer), academic departments (a senior colleague from Archaeology): Phil Harvey, the Registrar, and I also read lessons. The Professor of English Language played the organ; the Students' Union chamber choir sang.  And the multi-faith chaplaincy team did their bit - the service was organised by the Methodist chaplain, the Anglican chaplain read a lesson, and the Roman Catholic chaplain gave an address.  And in that address Peter Cullen, the RC chaplain, celebrated the multi-faith chaplaincy and its work across all major world religions.

The links between organised religion and the university are complex.  We were founded as a secular institution in the sense that there would be no religious test for either staff or students.  We were built without a chapel or other place of worship.  Yet we now have one of the broadest and most successful multi-faith chaplaincies of a British university. We seek to enable those of any faith or none to feel part of the university community and to respect those around them who choose other personal paths through life. Students and staff within the university recognise and celebrate Eid, Hannukah, Diwali and other significant calendar dates for particular groups.  We have Islamic prayer rooms on campus, and we have a chaplaincy centre and  links to a variety of religious establishments within the city.

I am glad that is the case.  Strident voices are sometimes raised today against religion and against belief.  Religions are accused of breeding intolerance towards each other.  A university should be a place of searching, and the demographic structures and spirit of enquiry of a university population are such that many people are developing their own views on the world around them.  Something I think I can take a little credit for is the inter-faith tandem learning exercise that can make up part of a Sheffield Graduate Award portfolio.  Students undertaking this exercise are paired such that they represent different religious traditions or beliefs. They are then given tasks to explain to each other their understandings of major life-changing events, the ways in which their religious culture celebrates particular activities, or the ways in which secularisation has nevertheless left traces of former religious positions within common standards of morality.  I sponsored these exercises when they were first thought up, and I remain a believer in their potential for developing further cross-cultural understanding within our diverse university.  Perhaps it is over-ambitious, but I would like our overseas Islamic students, by the time of graduation, to have some awareness of what Christianity in the UK is about; but I would equally like our often secular UK students to have developed some real understanding of Islam or Buddhism. And I would like all parts of the community to be able to celebrate their own beliefs freely but without proselytizing.  'Awareness and tolerance' would be a good motto.

Warning: this is going to be a bit of a grumble - and about students.

There is a great deal of angst about feedback to students on their performance. Student leaders and politicians call for more feedback, given more quickly, and aimed at improving student understanding and future performance.  I have argued that too often the way we mark scripts and essays is aimed at justifying the mark we award rather than helping students to improve.  We need to take the time to help students make effective use of feedback.  Against a fair bit of opposition, last summer I got a proposal through Senate that sets a series of standards for the provision of feedback to students.  I have been keen to improve my own offering of feedback in my teaching.

Last month 24 out of the 25 students in my final year class handed in projects of around 8-10 sides each. I dutifully marked them, paying great attention to making marginal comments that would explain issues where individuals had gone wrong or where alternative viewpoints might have been covered.  I wrote copiously on the cover sheets, adding an extra section to the standard headings labelled 'To improve' and on every essay (even that which I awarded a provisional mark of 84 to) I suggested how the student could have obtained a higher mark. I spent a long time on this marking task.

Ten days ago I spread the essays out on a table during my class and invited everyone to find their own (the anonymous numbers had not yet been decoded).  I suggested they might like to read through my marginal comments on the essays and gave them 10 minutes to do so, as well as to read the overall summary and the suggestions for improvement.  I also offered to see any student who wanted to discuss their essay and my comments, and indicated that I would particularly welcome the chance to talk to students whose marks had disappointed them. (Since there was at least one Third and some Lower Seconds I assumed some stduents would fall into that category).

The students descended on the table and found their own essays.  But within 2 minutes most had finished with them.  Several didn't even bother to take their essay out of its slip case - instead simply looking at the numerical mark and not even reading the comments I had laboured over to help them improve for the future, or my marginal comments which remained unseen by them.  I don't think that a single student used the opportunity to read through everything that I had written on their essay, either in the margin or on the cover sheet.

Since then one student has been to see me to talk about his essay - and we had a very good conversation that I hope was of help to him: he had a 58 and wants to lift his performance into the Upper Seconds. Two further students made appointments to see me today to go through their essays, but then failed to show up.

Yet I guess that when these students fill in the National Student Survey later this session many of them will say that they didn't get prompt feedback, that it wasn't detailed, and that it didn't assist their understanding.

Here's a hypothesis: When students answer questions about their satisfaction with feedback they read them as if they are about their satisfaction with their marks. If they get a mark they like they think it's good feedback: if they get a mark they are disappointed with they think it's poor feedback.  They are not principally interested in feedback at all, but in the mark they receive.  The trouble is, I'm not sure how to test my hypothesis.  But I'd be interested in other people's comments on the idea.

I'm starting this last week of blogging after a shorter gap than usual, because otherwise there will be a very truncated set of posts during the week up to Christmas. Anyway, there's a lot going on across the university - as has also been the case over the last three weeks since I last made a post.  During that period I seem to have acted as PVC for snow, PVC for occupations, PVC for liasison with the Students' Union and a variety of other tasks. 

The PVC for snow task involved the Registrar and me being given the responsibility for making twice daily decisions (at 0630 and 1830) about the opening of the university for teaching activities during the half day but one to come.  I am not used to surfing the Met Office website and looking at local travel information at 6 in the morning, but there we are.

The PVC for occupations was a longer-term task - and one which had already started when I wrote my blog last month.  It took up a lot of time, and at one point I found myself driving down to the university on a Sunday afternoon to make a statement in front of a rally of around 150 people taking place in the occupied Richard Roberts lecture theatre - a new experience.

The House of Commons vote on tutiton fees has now taken place.  A lot of the emphasis in the debate has been around the likely impact on students from widening participation backgrounds, and the likelihood that they will be put off by their own debt-aversion and their unwillingness to see the fees bill clocking up against their names as they go through university.  Actually, I think that there is another measure being pushed through that is likely to be far more damaging to widening participation in higher education than the new fees regime - the elimination of the Educational Maintenance Allowance which pays up to £30 per week for every 16-19 year old in education who comes from a low-income household.  That sum is crucial in keeping many young people in education and thus providing the route for them to apply for entry to university.  If they don't stay on beyond the age of 16 they are largely lost to the HE sector - at least for some time to come.  The college where I am a governor - which has the third poorest catchment in England on some indicators - has around 75% of its students in receipt of EMA.  The 'more targeted' support that is being posited as a replacement to EMA will almost certainly reduce that to a very low level - or will result in much smaller payments being made.  Families will encourage their young people without EMA to get any sort of job to supplement household income.  Therein lies a very worrying possibility for this country, and for the future development of widening participation and the inclusive nature of higher education.

Like many academics (I guess) I'm never that keen on the thought of marking, but when I get down to doing it I generally find it quite pleasurable - and often very rewarding.  I have a general rule of not working on Friday evenings or Saturdays, but I have a pile of third year projects from my option seminar class that were handed in a little while ago. And as the person who pushed through Senate the promise that comments on projects would get turned around within three weeks, I need to keep that new pledge intact myself.  Hence I've settled down after dinner this evening and made a start.

Marking what turns out to be a good piece of work can actually open up new understanding for me, make me think differently, and can tell me things I didn't know.  That's already happened this evening in a project where the student, through some very sensible searching of government data sources, has updated my knowledge of social trends in a key European state.  I've also been treated to some thought-provoking observations on the relevance of a set of social theories for a series of situations that were far outside the realms where those theories have been previously applied.

On the other hand, I've also realised where certain things I've tried to get across in my teaching have not been received in quite the way I had intended, and I've been led to reconsider some of the advice that I need to give the students next time round.  So marking can be both a learning task for the marker, and also a very reflective one.

But my problem at the moment is that although I've made a good start there are still over 20 projects to go.  It looks like I may have to break the other half of my weekend rule, and work on Saturday.

That's all for this blogging month. One more month to go to fulfil the promise I made at the start of the year.

I have spent a lot of time today on events surrounding the occupation of two lecture theatres in the Hicks Building by students protesting at impending cuts to university funding.  One of my roles has been as the media spokesman for the university, and during the day this has involved two live-to-air interviews for Radio Sheffield, and a recorded package for BBC Look North.  ITV's Calendar had booked a slot for an interview but ultimately failed to show up.  One of the Radio Sheffield interviews took place in their studios in Shoreham Street and the other was via my mobile phone in my own room in the university.

I felt reasonably happy with what I managed to say in each of these pieces. I believe I have certainly benefited from two intense episodes of media training that I have undertaken, and I am by no means a stranger to being interviewed to camera.  But it is always an experience that gets the adrenalin flowing.  Particularly with live interviews, there is the danger of choosing the wrong word or coming up with a formula that one later regrets. But on the other hand in a live interview there is the chance of talking direct to the audience. If the interviewer allows the interviewee some space it is the latter who effectively takes the bulk of editorial control - and needs to make use of that to get their message across. In an interview with Rony Robinson this morning in the studio he allowed me that time and I was grateful for it.

The later package for Look North was rather different.  Of the 7 or 8 sentences I gave them to camera they edited the piece down so that only 1 was used: they take editorial control and used what I said in ways that fitted their story-line (although it must be added that I had fed them some ideas on what that line might be when they were discussing how to approach the item).  The package they eventually came up with, which was used on both their lunchtime and early evening bulletins, was actually very sound - but if they had wanted they could have used my material in a way that would have given a very different slant to the story.

In the third item today the interviewer 'broke the rules' in certain respects by not telling me in advance that I would be interviewed directly after a live interview with one of the occupiers (by then 'former occupiers').  Actually I was happy to agree with much of what she said, although deprecating the way in which the protesters were making their points, but this could have become more confrontational.

There's a lot involved in even the shortest news item, particularly on sensitive issues such as those being dealt with today.  But it's also chastening to the academic in me to realise that those short items reached many more people than my books or research papers ever will.  During the evening a number of people from all over the country, from walks of life far removed from academia, have been in touch to say that they saw or heard me or have been told about my appearances by others who did.  

In 2007 the University was subject to Institutional Audit, in which the Quality Assurance Agency came to inspect us to provide assurance to the funding council that we had in place good procedures to manage the quality of the student experience. This year we have to produce an interim report on the development of our systems and strategies since then, because we are about half way between two audits - that of 2007 and the next one which we can expect to take place in around 2013.

QAA Institutional Audit is one of the regulatory mechanisms that applies to universities. There are many others.  Last week, at a conference in London, I was involved in a debate on a motion along the lines that "If they give us less public money, they should regulate us less."  The motion was proposed by Eeva Leinonen, Vice-Principal for Learning and Teaching at Kings College London, and me.  It was opposed by Stephen Jackson from the Quality Assurance Agency, and by Liam Burns, the President of NUS Scotland.  I am pleased to say (given the side I was taking) that the motion was won with a vote of (as I recall) 25 in favour, 8 against, and 5 abstentions.

But I am under no illusion that actually we are moving towards a more regulated environment.  Eeva and I argued that with students paying more it should be them that regulated us more, through the freeing up of numbers caps so that students flow to quality programmes and away from those that are less satisfactory.  But interestingly that was not how Liam saw things.  He wanted the student interest to be backed by a strong regulatory body to ensure that the promises universities make are actually fulfilled - and that students have a come-back against universities that don't deliver.

Lord Browne has commented that his review needed to usher in a new set of regulatory mechanisms for new times, and that the burden of regulation should be reduced.  But at the same time his report suggested more regulation of the teaching qualifications of university staff; of the delivery of widening participation strategies; and of methods of delivery in priority subjects. There will doubtless be a watchdog over the new Key Information Set which all universities will be required to produce.  I had calculated for the debate last week that the annual total cost of regulation and compliance at the University of Sheffield is probably around £800k, or around the cost of a small department in Arts and Humanities or Social Sciences.

Given the choice I would prefer the department, rather than compliance, and I would give students the power to vote with their feet against poor provision and in favour of good.  But I fear that this view will not prevail.  And thus, at a time of budgetary constraint, we will actually have to end up spending yet more on meeting regulatory and compliance burdens.  It is not a happy prospect.

Accepting an invitation to review a new book is a very risky business.  Unless one knows the author's work well, one has little to indicate whether the experience is going to be enjoyable or painful.  Over the years I have written book reviews where the book has been so interesting and provocative that I have pored over every word and spent three times as long on the task as I should - but I have equally taken on some volumes that really ought not have been published at all.

Writing a negative review often takes longer than a positive one.  No author offered a positive review is going to complain if they have been slightly mis-represented.  But an author whose work is savaged by a reviewer is likely to try to impugn the level of understanding of the reviewer, or to try to demonstrate that they have not read the book properly.  I have (via publishers) received complaints about my comments: but I've never received the ultimate put down from an author that is recorded against the composer Reger who is reputed to have written to a critic "I am sitting in the smallest room of my house.  I have your review before me.  In a moment it will be behind me."

I spent the journey back from Newcastle this evening considering a book review I have agreed to produce for the Times Higher on a book that has very little purpose.  It has been translated (somewhat literally) from another language, and has no argument whatsoever to it - consisting almost entirely of disjointed paragraphs that are all stuffed full of dates, names of people, and street addresses where they lived or worked.  The only saving grace in the book is that it is exceptionally well illustrated with stunning plates that are very well produced.

If only the book had been interesting, challenging and worthwhile. In that case I'd have polished off a favourbale review by now - conpleted my allotted 600 words and moved on.  But now I face doing some background research on the authors; seeking to see if the book has actually been published in its original language and perhaps abridged from that; and fact checking to make sure that where I am about to be negative I am on sure ground. Book reviewing is rather like dealing with students - the best books and students take very little time; but the worst require a great deal of care and attention.  But a poor student may be redeemable; with a poor book it is already too late.

I am writing this while sitting in a hotel room in Newcastle.  I arrived a few minutes ago, just after 10 p.m., and am here to spend most of tomorrow acting as the external advisor on an interview panel at the University of Newcastle where they are seeking to appoint a new PVC for Learning, Teaching and Student Experience (their local title for the role).  Earlier on today I spent over an hour in a three-way meeting with Michael Arthur and Wendy Piatt.  Michael is VC at Leeds but also chair of the Russell Group, whilst Wendy is the chief executive of the group.  I took over a couple of months ago as the convenor of the Russell Group's network of PVCs for learning and teaching, so I was trying to speak for all 20 universities in the Group.

At a time when many people are expecting a new spirit of competition between universities, it may seem strange that we actually co-operate very considerably.  Last week I spent nearly 24 hours chairing the Higher Education Academy's PVC / DVC network at a meeting in London.  That was attended by around 45 PVCs from all round Britain, and our guest speaker at dinner was Sir Alan Langlands, Chief Executive of the Higher Education Funding Council for England.  Much of the talk at the meeting, particularly the 'bar' and 'coffee' talk, was about common issues we are all facing.

The fact is that around the sector there is actually more co-operation than competition.  Particular at the present time, we can only approach an understanding of the complex new post-Browne and post-CSR worlds if we can recognise the possible effects on the higher education sector as a whole, and on different institutions in different parts of the sector.  Political processes will in some cases be driven by local considerations, and a variety of lobby groups could also have specific effects.  As the VC has said in an article in the Times Higher and in various other communications, the sector actually needs to stand together - the proposed changes in funding are a threat to the whole of English high education and not just to individual institutions.

We can learn a lot from talking to each other about how we are tackling common issues such as widening participation, the provision of high quality teaching accommodation, responses to the removal of teaching funding from Arts and Humanities and Social Sciences subjects, and views on new regulatory burdens that are likely to be introduced in the next few months.  I am sure I will return from Newcastle after tomorrow with new ideas on various issues. The only problem then in my very crowded diary will be finding the time to jot them down and start actioning any of them!

It has been a very busy month since I last blogged – not just for me but for everyone else in the university, I am sure.  The combination of the Browne Report, the Comprehensive Spending Review announced on 20 October, and the government’s response to (a small number of issues arising from) the Browne Report on 3 November has created a situation where we face greater uncertainties in UK higher education than at any time since the early 1980s. During the last month I have been involved in a number of discussions about these matters – at a private conference for the HEFCE board and its five strategic advisory committees, at a dinner I hosted last week at which Sir Alan Langlands (Chief Executive of the funding council) was the guest speaker, and with colleagues from the Russell Group and a variety of other universities.

But I want to start this penultimate blogging week by mentioning what I have been doing over the last few days.  I am writing this on the train on the way back from Gatwick Airport, having flown in earlier this evening from Thessaloniki where I have been visiting our International Faculty – CITY College.  I spent Thursday and Friday there with four senior colleagues from across the University, in discussions with a variety of staff, meeting students, and being involved in a series of workshops over issues such as the next Learning, Teaching and Assessment Strategy; handling assessment feedback; handling complaints and appeals; developing students’ employability and so on. 

We in Sheffield have a lot to learn from aspects of what CITY does.  As one of my colleagues said after the workshop day on Friday: “They don’t realise how good they are.”  CITY has cracked (or partially done so) a number of issues that we in Sheffield find challenging – for example, creating an international environment on campus, and fully involving employers in all programmes.  And as a private college they have done so with no direct public support (except sometimes through government scholarships for students).  They have been entrepreneurial in seeking out new areas of business.  A CITY colleague who also has experience at Sheffield, and to whom I was talking at dinner on Friday, has offered to produce a brief paper on what Sheffield might learn from her colleagues in Greece.

My final event at CITY took place last night when the Principal of the college and I had dinner with the Minister of Education of the Republic of Macedonia who had undertaken the 5 hour round trip from Skopje (or had got his driver to do so!) simply to discuss ideas for a CITY / Sheffield academy for managers to be developed, with some funding from the Macedonian government, in his own country.  CITY doesn’t just deliver the Sheffield experience in Greece: it currently does so in Serbia, in Romania, in Bulgaria, in the Ukraine – and soon in Albania and Turkey.  We were joined at dinner by another Macedonian government official – who took the International Faculty’s MBA and who is thus a Sheffield alumnus, and who is now starting on a PhD supervised jointly from a department at Sheffield and by a colleague at CITY.  The esteem in which the University of Sheffield, and the International Faculty at CITY College, is held in south-eastern Europe is considerable: here was a minister suggesting developing a programme with a foreign institution rather than with one of the 5 universities that he funds within his own country.  So I reflect that in addition to my colleague’s view that CITY staff don’t realise the quality of what they are doing, I would say “We don’t seem to recognise the potential that CITY has created for the University in the region.”  And we are going to have to develop something of the entrepreneurialism of CITY in the coming months and years.

(And before anyone thinks they can trip me up over the fact that I referred above to the Republic of Macedonia, I know all about the disputes about its name – the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Northern Macedonia and so on.  We thrashed that one around in a good-natured way last night, but the combination around the restaurant table of English, Greeks and Macedonians did not manage to come up with a solution acceptable to all parties.)

I was attending a guest lecture today and found myself sitting next to someone who had travelled down from Leeds University to attend.   He beamed at me and explained that I wouldn't remember him, but he certainly remembered me because I had taught him when he was a student at Sheffield.  He is now the head of a significant administrative department in Leeds.  He went on to reminisce fondly about the field class I had taken him on to Paris in 1984 - he having apparently blagged his way out of a class in Iceland that he should have been on because he thought that my class would be more interesting.  I too remember that class - we turned up at a newly refurbished small hotel in the 11th arrondissement where the key numbers didn't match the door numbers such that the hotel receptionist ended by using the master key to let our students into their rooms, and then did so again later for other guests who arrived while we were out having a meal so that when we returned several students found other people asleep in their beds. The owner also had a pet dog who marked its presence in various places, generally in dark corners on the stairs.

Last week I was giving a lecture at the Royal College of Defence Studies in London and a senior serving air force officer came and introduced himself as someone I lectured to in the early 1980s. Again he went on to talk about a number of the Sheffield staff who had impressed him as an undergraduate.  A month or so ago there was a knock at my door and someone I taught on a field class in Normandy in the late 1970s entered: he was bringing his daughter to study at Sheffield, having persuaded her that since he had such a life-changing time here she would enjoy it too. He is now a professor in Japan.

The late 1970s and early 1980s were a very productive time for me in research.  I won a research grant from the SSRC (forerunner of the ESRC) to undertake a study of rural depopulation in France.  I was invited to join a research group at the University of Caen.  I published my first two books (one joint with a colleague and the other a single-authored volume on European cities that established a reputation for me across mainland Europe).  I was publishing a good flow of articles in high quality journals. On the basis of this record I was promoted to Senior Lecturer.

Today I guess that none of my research output from that period is ever read.  (Actually that's not quite true - an article I co-wrote with two others on red-light districts in European cities was recently hailed as pathbreaking.)  But many of the students I taught at that time still remember me.  Few academics will ever write the seminal article that changes the thinking in their field and becomes a long-term citation classic.   But many academics will be remembered 30, 40 or even 50 years afterwards by the students they taught. Therein lies the longest-lasting reputations for most of us.

That's the end of this month's blogging.  By this time next month perhaps the implications of the Browne Review and the Comprehensive Spending Review will be clearer.

A couple of days ago a UEB colleague who doesn't blog asked me what sort of numbers read my occasional thoughts.  He was wondering what the reach of a blog might be.  That set me to looking through the hit rates for my blog entries since I started in January of this year.  It's interesting to look at a 'league table' of the nost read entries. Inevitably the most recent postings tend not have been read quite so often, and it will be some months before I see whether they reached a wide audience.  There are also three postings that I know from references on cross-tagging achieved a global audience outsdie the university.  Most postings are read by around 30-40 people, with the least popular picking up around 15-25.  Interestingly, there does seem to be an element of discrimination at work because the list of the top 10 (below) quite closely picks out the postings that I would see as baing among the most significant from my own perspective.

Here it is:

1.  26 March.  In this posting I lamented the all-too common cases of students who don't notify us of health issues or other difficulties and then appeal their degree classification. (247 hits)  This has been cited internationally. If it is being used as a cautionary tale I am delighted.

2.  24 March.  This was about the lack of women on the University's Executive Board, with reflections on why women in our university may not be progressing to the top positions.  The context was the senior acacdemic women's mentoring programme in which I am involved. (226 hits)  This has also been cited outside Sheffield.

3.  22 January.  This was an end-of-the-first-week-of-blogging reflection on the process and my feelings about undertaking it. (221 hits)

4.  20 July.  A piece celebrating the work the university has done to welcome care leavers to study here.  (86 hits)  I am particularly pleased that this entry has been well read.

5.  25 August.  A lament about the lack of interest among UK students in preparing themselves to enter the international labour market.  (82 hits)

6.  23 February.  A consideration of the potential use of contextual data (on school and family background) in the admissions process to justify different offer-making for certain candidates. (75 hits)  This is something on which we are now starting to do some research.

7.  18 September.  A piece about the idea of a university, contrasting the views of John Henry Newman and Wilhelm von Humboldt.  (71 hits)  This is quite a recent piece so it could yet rise higher in the charts.

8.  19 July.  A reflection on the marketing of the university, in the light of the temporary opening for graduation week of the new Students' Union entrance. (68 hits)

9.  22 July.  Ruminations on the lack of ethnic minority students inc ertain departments and degree programmes, occasioned by observations during graduation ceremonies. (67 hits)

10 = 23 July.  An expression of my pleasure at working in a university in contact with bright ambitious students who wish to give to their community. (59 hits)

10=  23 July.  Some views on widening participation and at the under-representation (according to some benchmarks) of students from independent schools within the unviersity. (59 hits)  This is an issue that has risen to the fore again in recent weeks, being driven up by the current Union of Students officer team.

I will return to this 'league table' at the end of the year when I sign off.

Readers may be expecting me to comment on the Comprehensive Spending Review today, but it's really too early to do so as we don't have sufficient detail.

This evening I attended the lecture by Lord John Krebs on climate change. It was an excellent lecture - well delivered, covering a broad range of material in a very accessible fashion, and very well and clearly illustrated.  The topic and the broad sweep of the discussion took me back to my first head of department when I arrived as ayoung lecturer in geography in  Sheffield in the 1970s.

He was a man who avidly read Nature and Science and who then immediately transferred the fruits of his reading into his inspirational first year lectures.  When I had done Geology in my first year at Oxford my notes on the final lecture contain the words 'there is also a theory of continental drift but nobodoy yet believes it'.  Within a very few years first year students at Sheffield were being taken right to the edge of scientific thinking on that topic by the head of department.  He brought in consideration of acid rain and its effects before it was accepted science.  He even touched on climate change as an interesting hypothesis.  These things were far removed from my own expertise in population and social geography, but I found it exciting keeping up with the new thinking in order to support discussions in tutorials which were carried out by all staff across the whole range of departmental teaching.

In recent years many ex-students have commented on those lectures by the head of department - how they realise that they were cutting-edge, that they inspired students, and that they encouraged many to take a new interest in aspects of their discipline or even to change their longer-term career intentions.

That head of department - his name was Ron Waters - was deeply respected not just by his students but also within his discipline.  He gave advice on the setting up of departments in new universities both in the UK and in the wider Commonwealth.  He managed the rapid growth in the size of his own department.  He served as a Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University.  He took a leading role in developing and teaching a highly successful Masters course, supported by UNESCO for students from 'developing countries', at a time when both overseas students and pgt programmes were a rarity.  In the wider world he was involved in the organisation of major expeditions, including one to the Karakoram mountains that provided some of the jigsaw pieces to prove the continental drift hypothesis.  He was elected President of the Institute of British Geographers - the premier disciplinary body for geography in higher education (which later merged with the Royal Geographical Society).

Yet in his whole career Ron scarcely published more than half a dozen academic papers - perhaps even less than that - and no books.  Reputations were made very differently in the 1960s when he was appointed to a chair at Sheffield.  But I suspect that his legacy is still felt more sharply in many parts of his discipline, and in many of his ex-students, than does the legacy of many highly-published research stars of his day.  But Ron would never have been considered for a chair today, nor for many of the positions of distinction he held.  What a waste it would have been if today's criteria had applied to his career.

(I've just read through what I've written below and it seems perhaps a little over-reflective. Still, a blog is supposed to be spontaneous and it perhaps it reflects my mood this evening!)

It started in the VC's room yesterday evening. We had just done an interview for Forge Press about the Browne Review.  Keith got out his copy of a book by Cardinal Newman and set me the task of finding a single word to encompass everything that education and learning results in for the participant: a mixture of knowledge, understanding, personal growth, self-awareness and a number of other attributes.  After some thought the nearest I could come up with was a word that we more often associate with age rather than youth, but which seemed to me the best I could offer: 'wisdom'.  Keith was pleased with this because he went on to read from Newman's text which ruminated on the appropriateness of that specific word (although ultimately discarding it, saying that there is no English word to translate the word the ancient Greeks used).  

Then this morning we had one of our regular meetings when all the Heads of Department in the university (with other faculty officers) meet with the executive board to chew over current issues.  The issue today was inevitably the implications of the Browne Review.  During the discussions Tony Ryan offered a personal view that nearly had me applauding (although that would be without precedent at such meetings).  Tony's argument was that although the Browne Report takes a totally functionalist view of higher education and discards the idea of public support for a whole swathe of what we do (see my blog for Sunday 17 October), we should hold fast to our ideal of 'whole person education' to develop the wider attributes of our students so that they can develop as responsible citizens of the world, and not just as specialist fodder to the current needs of the labour market.  That word 'wisdom' came into my mind again.

This evening I had been invited to attend evensong at Sheffield Cathedral which was to revolve around the installation of the University's new Anglican chaplain.  The Bishop of Sheffield preached the sermon, starting with a discussion of the university's Vergilian motto 'to know the causes of things' and moving on to embrace a quotation from the Book of Job, Ch 28, v 12: "But where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding?"  And I cast my mind back to the service that was held five years ago, in the Cathedral, to celebrate the university's centenary.  That same quotation was used as the cornerstone to the whole service, colouring the reflections on what a university is and should be - a place for the development of knowledge, but also a place for personal development and growth.

That seems to me to be what we should be holding on to during the coming months of discussion around the future of the university in a time of system change and anxiety.  And the development of 'wisdom' in our students and graduates seems to me to be a reasonable target.

Would others agree?  Or can they think of a better all-encompassing word?

(A footnote for linguists: I have thought through possible answers to the VC's, and Newman's, question for other languages.  I can't think of an all-encompassing word in French or Italian.  But I wonder if those who have a better knowledge of German than me would like to comment on my suggestion that in that language Bildung is a reasonable attempt to bring the whole idea together - although it is not a word that I ever remember seeing in connection with university education in Germany.)

We have had an all-day awayday of the University Council today.  Council is probably one of the areas of the university's governance that is least visible to the majority of the university's members.   But then the same would be true in schools where the visibility of governing bodies is also very low.  But these bodies do play a significant role in organisations. In particular they create the opportunity for members of the university's executive (of which I am one) to be asked crucial questions about how the university will tackle key issues.  Lay members of Council bring their expertise from a variety of sources and ask what are at once both innocent and deeply experienced questions about what is going on in the university.  Current lay members of council include the ex-Finance Director of John Lewis Partnerships (and a chair of the funding council at the same time); a senior executive from the steel industry; the chair of a Strategic Health Authority; and a retired senior civil servant.  We benefit greatly from thei devotion to the university and from their role as 'critical friends' to the institution.  Some, but by no means the majority, are Sheffield graduates.

Discussion today roamed over the Browne Review, the state of the university's finances, proposals for revisions to the university's pension schemes, the detail of key performance indicators for monitoring our performance, and the role that Council should play in the next few challenging years for the institution.

There were understandably particular concerns over how the university will respond to the Browne Review (if it is implemented) and what this will mean for the stability of the institution and for its size and shape in the future.  Many inside the university will regard the events of this month as creating a crisis. It was reassuring to hear a senior industrialist, with many years of experience, advise us to bide our time before responding to changing events. There is a big task to be done of gathering evidence before we take decisions - but as a research-led university we should be prepared for such a sequence.

Inevitably the last month or so has been spent thinking about the possible implications of the Browne Review and of the Comprehensive Spending Review that will follow it this week.  Informed guesswork, based on discussions with various informed individuals, led to me having a shrewd idea of what the whole package would contain.  But the final publication of the Browne Report last Tuesday has nevertheless left a sour taste in my mouth.  This relates to two inter-connected issues. I will quote from the report:

Page 14, Section 1.1:
"Higher education matters.  It helps to create the knowledge, skills and values that underpin a civilised society.  Higher education institutions (HEIs) generate and diffuse ideas, safeguard knowledge, catalyse innovation, inspire creativity, enliven culture, stimulate regional economies and strengthen civil society.  They bridge the past and future, the local and global.
Higher education matters because it transforms the lives of individuals. On graduating, graduates are more likely to be employed, more likely to enjoy higher wages and better job satisfaction, and more likely to find it easier to move from one job to the next.  Participating in highere ducation enables individuals from low income backgrounds and then their families to enter higher status jobs and increase their earnings.  Graduates enjoy substantial health benefits - a reduced likelihood of smoking, and lower incidence of obesity and depression. They are less likely to be involved in crime, more likely to be actively engaged with their childrens' education, and more likely to be active in their communities."

One of the things I teach my students is to identify ideaologies, discourses and arguments around the provision of 'public' and 'private' goods - and then to apply their understanding to the analysis of the different ways in which welfare regimes operate across Europe to infleucne the life chances of people.

These excellent two opening paragraphs of the Browne Review are eloquent in their justification of higher education as being both a public good (from which the whole of society benefits - first paragraph) and a private good (benefiting those who participate in its consumption - the second paragraph).  I would actually argue that certain of the features identified in the second paragraph (for example the lower crime rate or better health outcomes) are actually also a public benefit and should be seen as part of the 'public good' aspect of higher education.

By pages 20/21 the mood of the report has changed.  The scales have now been weighed, and the verdict now is that in terms of the provision of highere ducation "the public also receives a benefit but this is less than the private benefit."

By page 47 this new argument has led to the overturning of a key tenet of page 14 - that higher education is a public good with a range of benefits for the whole of society.  We now arrive at the point where only a very limited range of courses are seen as a public good - and should thus be publicly funded.  These are courses "that deliver significant social returns such as to provide skills and knowledge currently in shortage or predicted to be in the future ... Typically the courses that may fall into this category are courses in science and technology subjects, clinical medicine, nursing and other healthcare degrees, as well as strategically important language courses."

So everything else will be taken out of the realm of public funding (or "a hidden blanket subsidy" to repeat the dismissive language used in the report).  The first paragraph of the report has been completely forgotten.  Apparnetly there is no public good in:
- studying for a degree in Economics, with all the insight and knowledge that would bring to solving major world problems;
- becoming a commentator on social change, through Politics or Sociology. [Where is the analysis of the "civilised society" trailed at the start of the reprt?]
- becoming a lawyer or architect, a librarian or an educationalist
- becoming skilled in the science of management
- studying geography or town and regional planning with a view to "stimulat[ing] regional economies" (page 14)
- studying philosophy and getting to grips with the "values that underpin a civilised society" (page 14)
- studying literature or music in such a way as to comment on endeavours to "enliven culture" (page 14 again).

None of these should be seen as public goods: studying these subjects has no intrinsic value to society at large. I'm afraid I just do not accept that position.

And related to this is the view that anyone who wants to study such subjects must pay the full whack for doing so - something which goes against the complete tenor of European welfare thinking for the past 70 years or more.  In Europe every country has defined public goods in a relatively broad manner - accepting the benefits of public sector finance and involvement in areas such as health care, housing, pensions, and education at all levels.  With the Browne Review the UK is in danger of stepping outside that European mainstream and turning its back on decades of experience in producing social justice and the development of the common interest through public policy.

I squirm when I hear right-wing American commentators describe the NHS and other healthcare systems in Europe as "socialist, bordering on Marxism" (as I heard one Tea Party supporter say last week).  But the path from the Browne Review's espousal of claims that many social sciences and humanities disciplines should  not be funded could easily lead us in a few years to rather similar views about whole areas of university education.

It's not so long since Charles Clarke, a Labour minister of education, shared his belief that it was OK to have a few medieval historians around for ornamental purposes. Lord Browne and his team have not created their vision - they have borrowed from existing thinking.

But it is time for EVERYONE in higher education to support the public benefit argument for the sector as a whole, and for those parts of it that are now being regarded as of private benefit only and not worthy of public support. 

I spent the morning getting ready for teaching my final year option - the first class of which will be on the Friday afternoon at the end of the first week of the semester.  I have to leave it relatively late before actually setting the week-by-week schedule because there are so many other things that come into my diary.  This year it looks as if I will be able to teach every session bar one - and that will be on a day when I will be viting CITY College in Thessaloniki and, appropriately, a Greek member of staff will take over with the class for that afternoon.

Already I am relishing seeing the effects of changes I will make as a result of lessons learned (by me) last session.  For instance, last year I experimented with running a formal debate on a particular issue - stating that the European parliament was considering legislating on ethnic equality rights. But that did not work because I held the assumption that students would have some notion of how a formal debate (such as in the House of Commons) worked - in reality they had no idea whatsoever of procedure, and no confidence in role playing within the structure I had set up.   This year I am changing the topic of that afternoon a little and will ask groups of students to make a pitch on their suggested policies for promoting community cohesion in the UK, based on their reading and evaluation of policies in other European countries.  And I have persuaded a recent Masters student who works in a policy consultancy to come to listen to the student groups and to give her reactions to them to give a flavour of how it is to make a pitch to an audience that has decision-making powers over whether to implement something or not.  There will also be changes to other sessions within the module - but one will remain as it has been over recent years, and that is the session on the break-up of former Yugoslavia where I get pairs or small groups of students to role play each of the main protagonist groups to explain to a new European Commissioner what happened and what the unfinished business still is.

What often disappoints me is that students are reluctant to move outside the comfort zone of the teaching and learning methods they have experienced to date - and these are third years.  There seems to me often to be both a strong element of risk aversion in our students, and a lack of self-confidence to project themselves as individuals who can stand out in the crowd.  I expect final year students to be preparing to enter the labour market and to try their hand at new things - and I am prepared to challenge them with a variety of learning methods.  In most years they thank me afterwards for having goaded them to think more than they have often done before, but they also complain that because my classes are different week by week and generally involve them in very active roles they end up with fewer notes than they feel comfortable with.  They need reassurance that they can learn by doing rather than by being talked to by me. I wonder if my reactions are shared by lecturers in other departments.

I shall report in a month or two on how it is going with this year's group of 27 students.

I went to a funeral today.  No: please don't stop reading.

Jill Halpern arrived at the University of Sheffield from Bristol as a postdoctoral research assistant in the late 1950s to work in George Porter's research team in Chemistry - indeed her name appears in the citation for the Nobel Prize that Porter won.  Here  she met David Grigg, a lecturer in Geography who had recently arrived from Cambridge.  They married; she gave up her career; they raised three children; David rose to become professor and a leading authority on world food production and consumption.  He died in 2004: she died last week at the age of 74. A simple and (apart from the Nobel Prize work) a relatively 'ordinary' academic life story for a woman of her period.

But what was thought-provoking about today's funeral was the massive representation from a whole range of departments from across the university.  There were chemists, of course, but I counted friends of Jill (and David, her late husband) from Mechanical Engineering, French, Psychology, Germanic Studies, Law, the Library, Mathematics, Education, Molecular Biology and a whole range of other disciplines.

I doubt that any funeral of an ex-University employee in 20 years time will have such a broad representation from across the institution.  When Jill started work at Sheffield it was a university of a couple of thousand students and fewer than 200 academic staff.  There were few female lecturers, and it was the custom for new male lecturers, on arrival, to take a tutorship or assistant wardenship in a Hall of Residence.  It was thus a university staff world where almost everybody knew almost everyone else, and where disciplinary affiliations played a much less significant role as a personal identifier than they do today.  Inter-disciplinary conversations in senior common rooms were the norm, and close friendships were formed across the university.

Today we talk much about the need for inter-disciplinary research.  But I suspect that the truth is that the majority of academics, certainly those who are relatively young in their career, know few other academic staff outside their own department - and then only those who have a direct connection with their own research field.  The growth in size of the institution has led us all to retreat into our own disciplinary worlds, and much of that wider community feeling of earlier times has been lost. I suspect that is also reflected in the perceptions of who we all work (or worked) for: for many of the septuagenarians at Jill's funeral today their answer to the question of where they had worked would be 'The University of Sheffield': whilst for many younger staff today their answer to a similar question would be 'I work in the Department of X at the University of Sheffield' with the disciplinary affiliation rather than the university taking precedence.  Those who work across the disciplines today, and who work primarily for the University, are very often colleagues from the professional services.

Martin Williams this morning, at the Russell Group PVCs meeting, proved very interesting (see yesterday's blog) ... but unfortunately I can't say much about it because we govern ourselves via the Chatham House rule.  So in this case I can't say what he said, but it's quite easy to find a lot of it because he quoted extensively from David Willetts' speech to UUK on 9 September, a speech that it was clear he had a hand in writing.

For those who are interested see: http://www.bis.gov.uk/news/speeches/david-willetts-uuk-conference

Something that surprised me at the end of our PVCs meeting was that I found myself chosen by the others to be the new convenor of the group and therefore the chief link for Russell Group head office to issues and opinions about learning and teaching.  This could actually turn out to be quite a tricky task over the coming months. There is a complicated diary that we teased out this morning and which goes something like the following. It is worth noting that some of the scheduling does not happen in a logical order.  I am also putting in my own interpretation of how things may pan out.

Early October 2010.  Lord Browne reports on the work of his group and recommends a change in student fee and loan arrangements to take effect from October 2012, which will need parliamentary legislation to get through.
20 October 2010.  The Comprehensive Spending Review is published, cutting BIS's budget significantly.
21 October 2010. BIS announces a deep cut in the teaching funding allocation to universities, with the expectation that the cut will be made up, in aggregate (note those two words), by increased student contributions.  The cut is actually postponed until 2012-13 - but we should note that the CSR is intended to deliver its full range of cuts by fiscal year 2014-15, so the savings have to be delivered in three fiscal years rather than 4 if they had taken effect for 2011-12.  This postponement becomes known as 'Browne's bridge'.
March 2011.  Universities put the prospectuses for 2012 entry to press without any firm indications of what the student finance arrangements will be, since opposition to the Browne review recommendations is considerable.
Spring 2011.  The Bill to change student funding is rejected by Parliament.  (I won't go so far as to suggest that the coalition falls apart - but it is notable that in 2004 the then Labour government came closer to losing its majority over tuition fees than it did over the war in Iraq: student funding is an emotive issue).
Summer-Autumn 2011. The 2011-12 admissions round (for 2012 entry) starts without any agreed change to student financing, such that candidates have incomplete information on which to base decisions.
December 2011.  A watered down student funding proposal is passed by parliament, which results in a much lower reduction of the cost to government of fee and maintenance support.  Universities are enabled to declare increased fee levels, up to a cap.
February 2012.  The Treasury announces that the savings mapped out for BIS and the university sector on 20 October 2010 must still be made, even though there is no longer going to be a £1 for £1 rise in student contributons to offest the cut in government spending.  Ignoring the fact that the current admissions cycle is half way through, BIS therefore announces that the number of funded places available will be significantly cut for 2012 entry - part of the justification being that applications have been lower anyway (but that is the result of a lack of clarity about student funding, such that many potentrial applicants have held back from applying until late in the cycle).
August 2012.  The most chaotic admissions season of recent times.

I very much hope I'm wrong with this timetable.

Twice a year the Pro-Vice-Chancellors of the Russell Group universities meet up for 24 hours of discussions around issues of common concern to all of us.  We now go around each other's university cities, although originally (I was in on the very first meeting exactly 6 years ago) we met in a small hotel on the outskirts of Swindon.  Today we are in Leeds, staying and meeting in the Weetwood Hall conference centre that is owned by the University.  Our speakers to date have been Phil Jones from Sheffield Hallam (who chairs the sectors's Quality Assurance in Higher Education group), Craig Mahoney (the new Chief Executive of the Higher Education Academy) and Michael Arthur (VC of Leeds and chair of the Russell Group). We have Martin Williams, head of HE strategy at DBIS to come.

Something that inevitably dominates our discussions is the dual issue of the outcome of the forthcoming Browne Review and of the Comprehensive Spending Review - both to report within a month.  The effect of the latter on the financing of DBIS looks pretty certain - although how that will translate into HEFCE action is rather more unknown and an obvious cause for speculation.  On the other hand, even at this late stage there still seem to be innumerable views, leaks and rumours on what Browne will recommend. It is certain that students will have to pay a higher contribution towards the costs of their education, but how that is to be achieved is still up for grabs, and what that payment might be is still open.

However, something that seems to me to be becoming clearer is what the universities will have to do in response.  The quid pro quo for any change in funding is likely to be the publication of a defined set of data for candidates, verifiable indpendently from outside an institution, covering not only levels of student satisfaction but also issues around graduate employment, contact hours, who students will be taught by (for example, are postgraduate students delivering first year tutorials and seminars), the costs of accommodation, and satisfaction with the local Students' Union.   I asked last month that we should look to see the extent such information was already available in departments here in Sheffield and found that a lot of the 16 points we are likely to be asked for are not currently covered by materials available to candidates in any way.  We are going to have an interesting time compiling some of these data and reflecting on them in relation to the messages about us that they convey to interested candidates.

The buzz is back.  The new students are here.  All is back to normal. I don't like the atmosphere of the quiet months of July (except for graduation week) and August as much as the feeling on campus today. And I know that feeling will grow stronger over the coming days as more second, third and fourth year undergraduates arrive back for the re-start of teaching next Monday.  A university without students is like a concert-hall without the audience.  The orchestra may be there to rehearse and play, and even to be recorded, but there is no one to hear them directly.

Today, along with Andrew West from Student Services and Josh Forstenzer from the Union of Students, I spoke to four groups of our new undergraduates - totalling over 5000 students.   They are setting out on what should be an incredible voyage of discovery - about their subjects, about other people, but also about themselves.  I think we put that message across strongly to them - perhaps more strongly than we have in previous years.  They will graduate into a more difficult labour market than did the students of ten years ago. The global challenges they will face in their working lives are arguably growing year by year.  What we tried to do today was to present to the new students a vision of our university as a place that will support their endeavours to become different, that will give them the opportunities to explore and to grow, and that will present them with challenges but not in such a way as to leave them without advice and guidance.

Only time will tell whether we did a good job today.  I speak to a lot of big audiences, and as anyone who does so knows, one develops certain ways of detecting the mood of the group.  Today I sensed that this year's new entrants are perhaps more serious and attentive than those of some recent years.  They perhaps recognise some of the difficulties that the country is facing, and that beset the wider world at large.  There seemed to be a different mood around, and I will be interested in the coming months to see whether I have actually totally mis-read them, or whether this cohort has a more reflective and determined approach to making the most of its time with us.

I found a similar level of seriousness last Friday evening at what is always, to me, one of the highlights of my year - the dinner that rounds off the orientation week for international students.  In my blog for the end of graduation week in July I wrote of the privilege of working amongst gifted and idealistic young people.  The dinner on Friday also gives me a kick because of the way in which it brings together students from every continent of the world: as I go round the tables and talk to many of those present I reflect that nowhere else can I have conversations, within a very few minutes, with students from India (from the city where my father was stationed during the second world war), Germany (including a student who told me she is a distant relative of the pope), Finland (with a student who corrected me on my pronunciation of 'welcome' in Finnish in my opening remarks), Australia (a student who told me about life in the most isolated big city in the world - Perth), and the Netherlands (a student who told me about his enthusiasm for the postgraduate programme he is to take in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities).  But on Friday evening, just as today, I found a serious, diligent, committed and responsible attitude prevalent in the company at large.

It is a privilege to have the students back with us, and it is going to be an enthralling year if this spirit of commitment that I have detected so far actually continues throughout the  coming months and years that the new cohort will be with us.

Lest readers might get the erroneous idea that PVCs never take a break, I should point out that I have been away on holiday for part of the time since my last blog entry. I had a break in France - partly in the Medoc wine region north of Bordeaux, and partly in the French Basque country, very close to the Spanish border - and that location also provided the opportunity for a drive to Bilbao to visit the Guggenheim.

The Pope's visit to the UK has led to a surge in interest in Cardinal John Henry Newman. Some of this has revolved around his role in creating the modern unviersity - his 'The Idea of a University' has been cited quite a lot.  I'm afraid I am in a very different camp.  I much prefer the thinking of the German Wilhelm von Humboldt - and it is notable that we are in the 200th year since the founding of the institution that bears his name, on Unter den Linden in Berlin.

Newman's university, were it to be functioning today, would be almost exclusively concermed with the teaching of the Catholic faith, with English linguistics, and with Latin.  It would be solely a teaching institution, with no research activity, no science, and no consideration of society or human beings beyond their understanding of one religious position.

Humboldt's university in contrast (and it is an idea that pre-dates that of Newman) would provide the dual functions of research and teaching. Research would be built around the scientific paradigm of empirical-positivist investigation.  Teaching would be informed by research.  And the reach would cover the breadth of subjects that we today regard as worthy of university study - natural science, society, medicine, cultures, and the practical application of knowledge (Humboldt was writing before the concept of Engineering came to the fore).  And while Wilhelm von Humboldt is rightly credited as the founder of the university, his brother Alexander (whose statue is paired with Wilhelm's at the entrance to the Humboldt University) brought a strongly international feel to the whole enterprise. Alexander spent a good proportion of his life as an explorer, geographer and anthropologist, and realised that global and comparative dimensions to study needed to be provided in universities that might otherwise become purely national and inward-looking institutions.

Much of the Humboldtian view of universities therefore resonates with higher education today: to my mind, Newman's views do not.  But there is one other Humboldtian element that I rather like - although not directly connected with the founding brothers.  On entering the lobby of the main building in Berlin, the visitor is met with a frieze carrying, in gold letters, a quotation that I again think has great relevance to what we should be doing in higher education.  My translation from the German goes like this: "It is the job of the thinkers not just to understand the world, but also to seek to change it".  That's another aspect of what we are about - using knowledge to improve human conditions. The quotation is from Karl Marx.

We are drawing to the end of what has been a very busy confirmation and clearing period (even though the university didn't go into clearing at all) leading to the registering on the student database of our new intake.  The transfer of their records from their UCAS files to our student records started this afternoon.  And thus in three weeks time we shall see the arrival of over 4200 new home / EU undergraduates as well as (probably) in excess of 700 new overseas undergraduate students.  On top of that there will be 2000 or more new postgraduate students (taught or research) plus several hundred exchange stduents from various countries around the world.

Friends from outside the university world often assume that we close down almost completely over the summer.  Yet the number of people involved in the huge volume of activity that the timeatble for new arrivals entails results in constant pressure throughout this period.  Academic selectors, administrators, and heads of department in all academic departments have pored over UCAS forms and over the aggregate statistics of how their departments are getting on in meeting their planning totals.  And that isn't just for A level results.  This week we have had the confirmation of resaults for August finishers from Sheffield International College to handle as well, with decisions to be made on borderline candidates.  The Student Services Admissions team has been working at full blast, accompanied by colleagues from Planning and Governance Services considering the financial implications of the distributions of admissions numbers around the university.  By next Tuesday I will have chaired three meetings of the University Executive Board at which the admissions position has been the dominant agenda item.  Staff in Accommodation and Campus Services have already sent out around 4000 accommodation contracts since A level results were declared (only 8 days ago) and have received a majority of signed contracts and direct debits back as well.  Student Services is preparing the registration process.  And in every academic department module handbooks are being updated and welcome packs collated.

The pressures on admissions this year brought about by the HEFCE cap on recruitment have led to some of these processes being handled under stronger tensions than is usual.  The bare period of 4 weeks between the declaration of A level results and the start of Intro Week is narrow in the best of years.  The question of whether we as a country should move to a post-qualifications admissions system is something that, in my view, should be aired once again.

Refereeing proposed journal articles is a crucial aspect of an academic's task.  Yet to my mind it is undervalued and is becoming more difficult as time goes on.

At one time I would have received a brief letter from the editorial staff of a journal enquiring whether I would be willing to provide comments on a manuscript.  I would phone or write back and would then receive through the post a full copy of the manuscript, along with any general guidelines the journal had for referees' comments.  I would be asked to respond within 1 - 2 months.

Yesterday the editorial team of a journal contacted me by e-mail, asking me to referee a paper within less than a month. I e-mailed back to ask for a few extra days (given future travel commitments: the 4 hour round trip to London by train provides an excellent opportunity to give serious first-stage consideration to a manuscript).  They allowed that, but I was then faced with the task of registering and logging on to the publisher's archive of manuscripts and then printing out a 47 page article already formatted in a style that might be very useful to those making up the final pages of the journal but which render it very difficult to read.  I would argue that, given the cross referencing between different sections of a paper that one has to do when one reads an article, it is impossible to do this satisfactorily on screen: a paper copy is needed.  But the effort and cost of producing this has been shifted from the publisher to the reviewer.

I then downloaded the form that I am asked to use to provide my referees' comments.  Many of the questions that I must answer areg irrelevant to the nature of the paper itself, whilst other issues that need to be addressed have no place on the form.  I'm also asked to tick boxes with very black and white possibilities, and not given room to add nuances to my answers.  The editors don't want me to send back an annotated version of the paper - yet I know from past experience that many detailed comments are best made against the actual words in the manuscript.

So the editors are going to get a poorer set of comments from me than would have been the case a few years ago. They have shifted quite a lot of the administrative burdens on to me.  And I also know that because of the pressures to publish and the demands of the RAE / REF (and because publishers can see the possibility of pushing up their income) the journal has moved from 4 issues per year to 12.  FInally, I also suspect that for many articles today that are read by three referees, they will constitute at least half of the total readership of the article.

And if this particular article is eventually published, I will not be sent an offprint of the article or even a message to tell me which edition of the journal it is appearing in.

Yet the whole peer refereeing system depends on the significant input of time involved in this whole process.  I have actually stopped accepting refereeing tasks for one research council since their demands for a speedy turn around (gerenally 7 days for a proposal of up to 100 pages) are completely unreasonable.

At least one side benefit of the RAE and the citations fixation is the fact that of the 47 page manuscript I received yesterday, half of the pages are the references - I suspect largely to the works of friends of the anonymous authors (which reduces their anonymity) on a 'you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours' basis.

At a recent meeting of our Careers Advisory Board one of our employer representatives related how his international firm had taken a Sheffield graduate into a temporary placement and was so satisfied with him that they offered him a permanent position on a very good starting salary: he turned it down because he wouldn't move to London where the job was to be located.

I remember a couple of years ago asking a final year tutee about his search for jobs.  He said he was prepared to spread the net quite widely - but then added "as long as it's still within an hour's drive of Darlington" (his home town).

A recent Student Union officer observed to me how many students didn't want to leave Sheffield on graduation because they had had such a great time being a student in the city.  He coined the phrase "the Sheffield bubble" and argued that the university nees to do as much as possible to prick that bubble so that students see the possibilities of going elsewhere.

I have tried to persuade students to take languages modules here to broaden their career propsects.  I remember one saying that she'd never been any good at foreign languages, anyway she didn't want to work abroad, and everyone anywhere these days speaks English anyway.  Yet when she was shortlisted for a good job (in London as it happens) she lost out to a Swede who was seen by the employer (and it was a civil service department and not an international company) as having more to offer because of her ability to work in different cultural contexts.

Finally I was talking to a recruitment manager recently who said that her firm, which used to have separate recruitment operations for the UK and for mainland Europe, is now running one integrated operation - and that UK graduates don't stand up very well in that competition because of their narrow horizons.

I have today been starting to draft some consultation papers for the university's next 5-year Learning and Teaching strategy.  I am absolutely convinced that we will be letting our students down if we don't do everything in our power to give them the ambition and the skills (including what our Careers Advisory Board calls the 'cultural agility')  to seek employment anywhere within the global labour market.  And that includes working in the UK because, as one of my earlier examples shows, even if our UK students don't want to work abroad they are competing with foreigners who do - in the UK.

But I recognise that the strongest dose of apathy towards such an agenda for the university will almost certainly come from our UK students who don't want to move out from the blanket of a familiar environment and who don't want to be challenged to think of themselves in wider international ways.  There is a paradox here: we seek to entice students to come to Sheffield because it offers what they have come to expect.  But we need to shift their expectations to new things - to widen their horizons for things they initially are reluctant to consider - and to do it because we have their long-term interests at heart. This will be an ongoing issue over the coming year as we work towards our new teaching strategy.