Today it’s the big vote at Oxford. From libraries and labs they come, through arches of mellow stone and from concrete bunkers; they converge to vote on the future of the oldest university in the English-speaking world. It is all about a Council and a Congregation and an Academic Board and a Nominations Committee and . . .
Sorry. I sense that I am starting to lose you. I hear resentful mutterings about ivory towers, port-sodden old tortoises clinging to privilege, epicene youths from Eton shuddering at chavs.
Oxford gets used to this hideous misrepresentation; it is an inversion of older British snobberies and no more likely to be helpful than they were. Oxford in reality is a powerhouse of learning and thought, a democratic federation of colleges, halls, academic departments, libraries and institutes.
It has developed rapidly in the past decade, increasing student numbers by 20 per cent, doubling its income and its expenditure, tripling its research. It provides a rare undergraduate education based on tutorials and personal argument. It struggles valiantly to extend its social reach, despite the considerable shortcomings of many schools that serve the poorest communities. It takes the trouble to interview candidates (often three times) to counteract the weaknesses of a formulaic and often ill-assessed examination system. Oxford may seem old-fashioned and nothing is perfect: but it shines. And those who make it shine — fellows and teachers and researchers — may often be lower paid than they would be elsewhere, but they know that they run a university that punches above its financial weight and ranks among the world’s best. They are proud of that. Its method of governance is eccentric in the world of universities, but the results have been good, resisting the attrition of three decades of government underfunding and increasing interference.
Now, under a new Vice-Chancellor, John Hood, there are proposals for radical change in the way Oxford is run. Dr Hood speaks passionately and convincingly about the tutorial system, the independence of colleges and the retention of the University Press. He is proud of the place. He may perhaps be forgiven for attempting to impose modish corporate nasties like “performance- related pay” and seems to have accepted its rejection. But this latest governance reform, which is splitting opinion (and some days, seems perilously close to splitting heads), is about the University Council.
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This would be separate from an academic board, but would have sway over “audit and scrutiny, finance, investment and remuneration” and wide powers including investigation, summoning of officers and of any document it chooses. As we all know, it is the paymaster committee in any organisation that really runs the show. And the council — central to decisions and strategy — would have a narrow but definite and permanent majority of outsiders: lay members, not academics. In this it would follow the prevailing fashion for institutions and charities to have outside directors from business, industry, media, or indeed politics.
Alarm bells jangled in the cloisters. Why a lay majority? Why not a narrow minority, instead? The claim that it is a condition of funding by the Higher Education Funding Council is weakened by the fact that Cambridge rejected a similar plan and has not been cut off at the knees by government paymasters (as if!). The view that unworldly dons must be outweighed by men-of-the-world is insulting: some of the greatest economists and political thinkers of the age are inside Oxford already.
The argument that it would streamline decision-making is countered by the fact that Congregation — the unwieldy parliament of the university — could technically overturn its decisions. The promise that most of the laypeople would be committed alumni is attractive, but still they would be harder for university members to meet and lobby: council would become a more distant body, dependent on what the vice-chancellor’s office told it, perhaps distant in the direction of the City, of Whitehall, of Westminster . . .
And in Westminster, remember, lurk people like Charles Clarke who feel that medievalists are “ornamental” but the State shouldn’t pay them; and others who would love to meddle with curriculums, exams and admissions just as they have done — with grievously mixed results — in the school system.
My own instinctive worry was born at a particular moment. At a Reuters meeting between journalists and Dr Hood, it seemed to me that those who want this system want it rather too much. A narrow majority either way, after all — why does it matter? Outsiders and insiders rarely line up precisely according to their status, on any board. Yet when, with a genuinely open and curious mind, I raised the question from the floor and got a perfectly civil answer from Dr Hood, moments later one of his henchmen cornered me, snapped aggressively “You’ve obviously been nobbled, you won’t listen”, and closed the argument.
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That little Alastair Campbell moment bothered me. If this is, as they say, a mere matter of streamlining that would preserve the basic democracy, why so shrill? Why so urgent? One is reminded of the Government’s slyly bustling insistence that the vast European constitution was only “a tidying-up exercise”.
Well, it could be that today the dons will accept the vice-chancellor’s wishes rather than lose him. It may be the right thing to do. I don’t know, I am not a professor of government. But if they do say no, let us hope that media and politicians do not take the lazy option and start jeering about ivory towers and tortoise dons.
It’s not a small thing, and it has raised fears that are not groundless. It is their right to say no.