Tuesday 27th May 2014 - Narrowing school curricula

So I suppose that in future the GCSE course in Music will only feature study of the works of Vaughan Williams and Elgar - Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Rossini and Tchaikovsky will all be left out. And in the study of art the whole of the Italian Renaissance, the flowering of Dutch art in the seventeenth century, and Impressionism will be ignored in favour of the study of Constable, Turner and perhaps the Pre-Raphaelites.

I am referring to the excision of any texts not written by English authors (I've not seen mention of other UK authors such as Dylan Thomas or Seamus Heaney being acceptable) from future school syllabuses, reported in the newspapers over the past weekend as part of government thinking on educational policy. I had thought that the study of English Literature meant the study of works produced in English, but that idea is perhaps too avant garde. Some of the greatest novels that affected me as a teeneager - Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton, or The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck - seem now to be off limits.

As a geographer, and one interested in teaching about social, demographic and political issues, I wonder where this parochialism might leave me. In teaching about urban structures I have always sought to take examples and case studies from around the world. In teaching population geography I have always placed local developments in a wider international context. Perhaps I have been wrong in doing so. Perhaps I should have spent my career developing students' understanding of the United Kingdom strictly speaking, with no comparative recognition of how the same forces that affect us in Britain have been accommodated elsewhere. But to undertake such a task would be incredibly narrow, and limiting on student experience.

It seems to me that we are in particular danger at present of pursuing a Little Englander agenda, seeking to pull up the drawbridges that link us to the rest of the world. In doing so we are at risk of burying our heads in the sand and totally ignoring the forces of globalisation (of economies, cultures, political structures and so on) that shape our contemporary circumstances.

And if we do that we will not prepare our students for what their future lives will surely hold - engagement with people all round the world as part of their careers, their leisure activities, or their personal development.

Thursday 22nd May 2014 - Understanding where the money comes from

"Why does it always come down to money?" he growled, picked up his bag and walked out.  "I've got to catch a train" he said.  I saw him 75 minutes later at the station and we re-opened our conversation.

I was speaking at a disciplinary conference at another university, giving an executive board perspective on certain developments across all our institutions. The discipline is immaterial. The same reaction could come from many different audiences.  And I don't blame the individuals involved for their feelings. The fact is that many of the practices involved in delivering key parts of our university activities necessitate cross-subsidisation from another activity. We need constantly to check these cross-subsidies, to see whether there are alternatives (for example changes of practice in the departments where costs are being incurred. But we also need to check that the cross-subsidies are defensible to stakeholders such as students, student sponsors, research funders and others.

I have written about this before, but I am increasingly convinced that as institutions we fail to develop enough understanding in all our staff of the business models on which their areas of activity depend. But is isn't just an understanding of the business model that is important - it is recognising that in today's university a business model is a legitimate tool for strategic thinking and operational management. It all comes down to money because salaries have to be paid, books bought, software licences paid for, equipment renewed and so on. And if the income generated by a particular activity isn't sufficient to cover the costs of delivery of it then decisions have to be made about whether the activity should be continued with in its current form, and if so where the money is to be generated to pay for it. But business models shouldn't be the only basis for decision-making. Universities are and should be value-drive institutions, and many things we do are for a wider good and cannot be solely reduced to an income and expenditure account. We look at our activities in the round, but we can't necessarily support all of them indefinitely if they take up huge costs. And it all comes down to judgement in the end.

So what would I emphasise in all forms of staff training is an understanding of how the university is financed, and how individual departments make their income and incur costs.  I think that would be salutary information for many people.  It should also create a more flexible attitude towards change - with a willingness to alter practices in some areas, drop some aspects of our portfolio, and take new opportunities elsewhere.  All I was asking for at that conference was some rethinking of traditional ways of achieving a particular teaching goal where there might be alternatives that are as effective and require less cross-subsidy from other activities.