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.