Savings will have to be made, regardless of how they are distributed within each university. It is impossible to calculate the actual amounts that could be saved from each sort of central service, because no attempt seems to have been made to check whether they are spending wisely, and no attempt has been made to discover the amount that they actually need. Anything that the productive departments make is simply swept up by central services. This post is to point out some things that the College would benefit from losing.
If UCL is mentioned here, that is only because that is the place that has my loyalty, and the place that I want to defend. The same arguments apply to all UK universities,
The problem how to make them without damage to UCL’s core activities, teaching and research. It seems obvious that they way to do it is not to fire people who do teaching and research
It will be no surprise to anyone who circulates within any UK university that there is essentially universal agreement (bolstered by the results of our preliminary survey) that the prime targets for cuts are the following.
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Human resources
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Organisational & Staff Development (Human Resources)
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CALT (Centre for the Advancement of Learning & Teaching)
In addition, the expensive and inefficient reorganisation of FLS could be trimmed to remove the some of the extra administrative posts that were created. Some thoughts one each of these follow.
Human resources
It seems to be a near universal view among academics that HR has expanded far beyond its proper area of expertise, and that many of the activities could be cut without loss to UCL. In fact cutting them would improve UCL. The things that come to mind particularly are useless (or worse) ‘staff development’ activities. A vast number of courses is listed on the HR web site. Only one (on bioinformatics) seems to have any intellectual content.
We ourselves run a summer workshop, Understanding Ion Channel Currents in Terms of Mechanisms. For some years, this ran as part of UCL’s graduate school. It is the sort of thing you might find in a US graduate school so that seemed appropriate. But then we were told that it was not suitable for the graduate school, because the graduate school dealt only with “generic and transferable skills”. It seems that our course is education not “training”. We protested that there was no more generic skill for any scientist than understanding linear algebra, and know what an eigenvalue is. But to no avail. You can learn ‘networking in the graduate school, but not linear algebra. One despairs of the intellectual standards.
I offered to give a ‘generic skills training course’ myself. And I offered, as usual, to do it free rather than for the £700 charged by external contractors. It would be about the most useful generic skill of all, ‘How to Detect Bullshit’. Oddly enough, I got no response to my offer.
Those who have been forced to do these course rarely seem to have a good word for them. Admittedly the course that offered to teach you the principles of neurolinguistic training and Brain Gym has now vanished, though one wonders if it would have gone if I hadn’t written about it in Times Higher Education, thus.
This booklet arrived within a day or two of Ben Goldacre’s spectacular demolition of Brain Gym “Nonsense dressed up as neuroscience”
“Brain Gym is a set of perfectly good fun exercise break ideas for kids, which costs a packet and comes attached to a bizarre and entirely bogus pseudoscientific explanatory framework”
“This ridiculousness comes at very great cost, paid for by you, the taxpayer, in thousands of state schools. It is peddled directly to your children by their credulous and apparently moronic teachers”
And now, it seems, peddled to your researchers by your credulous and moronic HR department.
Although that particular course (which cost UCL £700 per day) has gone, much psychobabble remains. In fact it is through HR that pseudoscience gets into the most respectable universities,like, for example, at Leicester.
More psychobabble. In March 2009, an anonymous note was pushed under my office door (note again, the atmosphere that makes people want to stay anonymous), It drew attention to
the fact that HR was advertising two jobs, at near professorial salaries (£51 – £55k), at a time when academics are threatened with being fired. It is impossible to produce a short description of what NLP is about. It is a hodge-podge of woolly ideas typical of the self-help industry and makes the usually wildly extravagant claims that are characteristic of that industry.
"The HR team leads many aspects of UCL’s change programme and plays a key role in its organisational development"
"to review, develop and implement HR and OD strategies that will support UCL’s corporate agenda"
And, guess what, the job description says: it is desirable that the applicants should have training in neurolinguistic programming (NLP) or MBTI. Read more about NLP here or here.
A recent analysis by Gareth Roderique-Davies states
“NLP masquerades as a legitimate form of psychotherapy, makes unsubstantiated claims about how humans think and behave, purports to encourage research in a vain attempt to gain credibility, yet fails to provide evidence that it actually works. Neurolinguistic programming is cargo-cult psychology.”
And Fringe Psychotherapies Bayerstein, B. 2002 Sci rev Alt Med
“Fringe practices such as “rebirthing” and neurolinguistic programming are based on what Richard Rosen has aptly dubbed “psychobabble” most of them probably do little harm in the long run –providing we overlook the costs of pandering to the narcissistic irrationalism of society’s most affluent worriers.”
Or, from here,
“Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is one of many New Age Large Group Awareness Training programs. NLP is a competitor with Landmark Forum, Tony Robbins, and legions of other enterprises which, like the Sophists of ancient Greece, travel from town to town to teach their wisdom for a fee.”
The Yale neurologist, Steven Novella, said in 2007
“In the case of NLP it has failed every test of both its underlying theories and empirical tests of its efficacy. So, in short, NLP does not make sense and it doesn’t work.”
Margaret McCartney, the Glasgow GP said, in in her column in the Financial Times,
The Royal College of General Practitioners is running NLP “master classes” But there is no reason to think it works
And, finally, from Derren Brown’s book Tricks of the Mind 2006, Channel 4 Books, London
“The pragmatic approach of the originators has now been swamped in a huge industry of daft theories and hyperbole, evangelical mind-sets and endless self-perpetuating courses, to the point where it resembles something of a pyramid scheme . . . ” [p. 177]
“. . . .grinning, flaccid course-junkies, delusional flower fairies and ridiculous tactile businessmen, and some of the taken-as-read wild claims made by NLPers at all levels . . .” [p.188]
MBTI is almost as baseless, being based on Jung’s psychoanalytical type (read about it here).
In other words, just about the only people who take these sorts of psychobabble seriously are HR departments. And they seek to infiict them on people who know better.
Cutting out this sort of waste would not only save money, but would improve the standards of the university.
At UCL there are only two people above HR. The provost and the vice-provost (Operations). Both are aware of what’s going on but either they don’t understand what nonsense it is, or they don’t care.
HR should have no part whatsoever in academic development. They know nothing about scholarship or science. In fact they corrupt science by introducing pseudoscientific junk like NLP. It seems that they can’t understand this even when it is pointed out to them. And they talk in a sort of ‘managerial’ jargon that has no detectable relationship to the English language. I’ll quote Luke Johnson again. He wrote, in the Financial Times,
“I have radically downsized HR in several companies I have run, and business has gone all the better for it.”
“HR is like many parts of modern businesses: a simple expense, and a burden on the backs of the productive workers”, “They don’t sell or produce: they consume. They are the amorphous support services.”
“Training advisers are employed to distract everyone from doing their job with pointless courses”
“Of course, senior executives understand that HR is powerful – a bit like Mossad or the CIA.”
These words were written, remember, not by a disgruntled professor, but by the “unrepentant capitalist”, Luke Johnson. He is in the Times’ Power 100 list, he organised the acquisition of PizzaExpress before he turned 30, he was chairman of Channel 4 TV.and runs Risk Capital Partners Ltd.
The sort of balderdash introduced in some universities in the guise of “wellbeing” was exposed recently in Times Higher Education in a piece called “Get happy“,
As one commenter said
“Knowing that my employer provides sub-Harry Potter magical nonsense like reiki and reflexology (alongside genuine health provision) actually reduces my mental wellbeing.”
Every time an academic gets one of those condescending letters from HR about work-life balance (after failing to find anyone in HR to answer a question at 16.50 on a Friday) the blood pressure rises and the view that the people who write them should be fired gains strength. The people who write them clearly have not the foggiest idea how science and scientists work and, while well intentioned no doubt, they merely clutter up the place.
UCL has a vast number of courses. With are one exception (bioinformatics) none have much intellectual content. Most are run by external “consultants” at considerable expense. The “consultants” who are supposed to develop your academic career are typically people who have failed to develop their own. You can be taught how to write a paper by someone who has written very few themselves, and be taught how to write a grant by someone who has done no serious grant-writing themselves. You can be taught “leadership” by someone who has never lead anything. Almost all of this stuff could be cut with nothing but gain for the College,.
It is simply ludicrous that people who run this sort of thing should suffer a cut that is barely more than half that which FLS has been asked to suffer.
Human resources should be stopped from interfering in matters beyond its expertise and the money put into people who produce, not consume.
Centre for the Advancement of Learning & Teaching (CALT)
Almost everyone regards CALT as another prime source of psychobabble. Everyone wants better teaching and better service for students, Next to nobody seems to think that departments like this are very effective in providing them. Take a look, for example, at he Times Higher Education article on the topic, Dummies’
guides to teaching insult our intelligence. The article, and the comments, make interesting reading. There is essentially complete unanimity that these generic teaching courses are a waste of time and energy. but nobody listens. Here are a few quotations from the comments on the article.
” . . .a lecturer at Imperial and they find the whole teacher training thing a huge waste of time – time they can ill afford, which takes time away from helping real students and actual teaching. They spend hours and hours (whole days in many cases) in seminars / workshops being treated like children, “
“. . . there is no scientific evidence that generic learning theory is mature or sophisticated enough to assist in the teaching of specialised HE subjects (from quantum mechanics to immunology). Secondly, almost every other post has emphasised that PGCHE courses are made compulsory but fall under the “lions and donkeys” paradigm: in the vast majority of cases the intellectual standing of PGCHE ‘lecturers’ (as measured by common criterion of publications) is way below that of their ‘students’. The problem is that this sort of pedagogy infantilises both lecturers and students.”
“PGCE(FE). Best six week course squeezed into two years I ever did.”
Estates and Facilities
The most expensive central services are Estates and Facilities. There is also a great deal of dissatisfaction with what we get from them, but we have no way to discover how much they could save. One thing that is baffling is that lights are left burning all night in many buildings and huge amounts have been spent on refurbishing lecture theatres that were perfectly functional.
How to get the most out of people
UCL is not unique in imposing an old-fashioned, highly hierarchical, system of management. Since the reorganisation of Life Sciences in 2007 there are now twice as many ranks intervening between the head of a research group and the provost. Everyone has a ‘line manager’ (or two) whom they quite possibly have never met.
According to the business management site, bnet.com,
“The new rules of management call for keeping employees happy, which in turn keeps them productive and contributes to the company’s bottom line.”
The reorganisation in Life Sciences seems to have ignored this, and indeed it has done exactly the opposite. It has made those who do the actual work of the College, the research and teaching, rather unhappy, and so reduced loyalty to the organisation.
Sometimes I think that PR people have no idea what gives a university a good reputation. It is not PR, not silly displays at graduation ceremonies (and here) and it is not a fancy web site. In fact a university as a whole does not really have a reputation. Its reputation lies largely in reflected glory from great people who have worked there. If you are a physiologist or pharmacologist, UCL has a reputation because it was the home of AV Hill, AJ Clark, Heinz Schild, Andrew Huxley, Bernard Katz If you work in German history the luminaries would be a totally different set of people. It is their collective eminence that gives UCL its reputation. It would be no loss to fire the people who invent embarrassing mottos about globality, and write 61 page manuals about how to use the logo, or telling us what tone of voice to use.
Management at Google has taken a direction that is precisely the opposite of management at UCL. It has a very flat hierarchy and small working groups. I was there last year. It was impossible to be sure whether the person sitting next to you in jeans and T-shirt was an impoverished postdoc or a billionaire. Of course the aims of Google are not the same as those of a university, but we are both interested in innovation and we are both interested in staff loyalty. Perhaps some of our dark-suited bosses should pay them a visit, to update their ideas about how to get the best out of people.
A call to action
The following clarion call was sent to me by a senior FLS academic, after seeing the draft for the financial analysis.
“Now the figures are at last clear (or as clear as the administration is capable of making them), the College should admit its mistake, withdraw the threats still being made to staff, and consider whether, in any further “economies” it should cut its bloated and ineffective central administration rather than attacking those who have actually made it what it is: one of the world’s great Universities.”
David Colquhoun (with the help of innumerable academics)
Hello,
Please note I do not do things anonymously.
David Colquhoun’s sentiments regarding HR I completely agree as I understand them. For once, I would actually prune one of his already well honed statements, thus:
“Human resources should be stopped from interfering” (full stop)
I also agree that pseudointellectual ideas should not be dressed up as intellectually rigorous, and meaningful words and phrases should be used.
Regarding training, perhaps it reflects some dysfunctionality that we have use of English, effective communication and dealing with personnel problems(including bullying) figure in the lists each year.
As a member of support staff, I have attended several courses on how to deal with staff and students’ very human problems. But, every course group I have known agreed that the people we would most like to attend these do not come.
As for training for technical staff, when our numbers have been reduced further, more of the technical tasks will begin to settle on the shoulders of non technicians (including safety and all other activities which are regulated and inspected). At this point, the value of such training may become clearer.
Regarding lights left burning into the night, I know that Estates and Facilities have had an officer for some years with the remit of reducing electricity and water use. I have spoken to two holders of this office.
I tried to help out with their last poster campaign, buit have had to admit defeat. It is we, the staff, who leave lights (and even taps) on when not needed. In fairness, such areas as fire means of escape do need to be lit whenever buildings are occupied.
Overall, though, I believe David Colquhoun is right. Economies just don’t seem to be sensibly directed.
Yours Sincerely
Optimist, 29-04-2010
These heroic efforts would seem to be consistent with UCL HR’s definitions of professorial ‘enabling’, viz:
‘Evidence of academic leadership and a proven ability to lead, develop and motivate colleagues, working as part of a team to achieve Departmental, Faculty or university goals’;
‘Evidence of contributions to peer review bodies / committees, professional organisations, learned societies, government committees or Research Councils, etc’;
‘Well-developed enabling skills and evidence of a significant contribution to the management/administration of a Department / Faculty’.
Sadly, the irony could be lost on the current management.
When sanity is restored and the parasitic burden cast off, UCL will recognise its debt to DC et al: they epitomise its true academic spirit.
While I agree with the broad thrust of David Colquhoun’s comments, I feel it is important to defend the few good personal development courses I have attended.
The career structure in academia necessitates a considerable degree of attrition at many levels, particularly between post-doctoral research and PI. The numerous post-docs (myself included) leaving academia therefore require additional skills to enhance our employment chances, especially in the current economic climate. Staff development activities can provide some of these skills if they are appropriate and well-run.
As David has noted, and as I and many I know have experienced, the majority of courses provided by HR are poor and a waste of time. It is notable that the two courses I attended that were excellent were externally provided by Catalyst Business Dynamics and the London Business School. This highlights two issues: HR need to make huge improvements to the quality of the courses they provide, and externally provided courses should not be vetoed.
It seems significant cuts can be made in HR and the quality of courses provided urgently needs to be improved. However, we must recognise the benefit appropriate and well-run courses can give to researchers leaving academia.
@Matt Bence
Thanks for the comment. I’m sure that there are some good ones too. But I think things of this sort should not be run by HR at all, because they clearly can’t distinguish between the good ones and the fruitcake nonsense.
From Michael Bovingdon
Just a thought.
Does anyone on this list have a wide beam understanding of what training is offered at UCL and who “runs” all this? A better argument might ensue ondce we have this information.
For example, I know that safety courses are run by Safety Training – an office within Safety Services, which is part of Estates and Facilities. I am not aware of HR having any input, nor would they be competent…………………………………..
Biological Services give (required) courses under Home Office regulations and I expect that applies with all regulated activities; the accredited experts train the inexpert.
Similalry, is CALT in thrall to HR? I don’t rcall HR appearing anywhere in the paperwork when I was involved, nor would I have allowed anyone from HR to so much as suggest content. My experience is that the college offices that co-ordinate courses have no veto over content, but simply collect feedback. I presume if this were damning enough, changes would ensue.
In short, why should HR have anything to do with training at all – and how much of it do they “run” in any hands on way at the moment?
Yours Sincerely
Thanks for putting up the comparison between the old (until 2004) management structure and the current one (since 2009). A figure says more than words.
Whether the elected academic Dean should have been shown in the straight line of management (as you did) or whether a direct line between Provost and Head of Department with the Dean in a consulting function is probably an …. academic discussion.
However, what is not obvious from your figure is the granularity of the new management structure. The management down to an academic lab head in your division of the FLS is as follows:
ONE Provost -> THREE Heads of Schools -> TWO Heads of Departments -> TWO Heads of Division -> FOUR Heads of Research Department -> FORTY-FIVE academic lab heads (approx).
Experts in management will certainly have a view on the efficiency of this deep management structure and its granularity, and on the CEO in charge of it.
During the Academic Board meeting today the Provost announced his 10% pay cut, http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/1005/10052703.
It is said that a single voice from the French side broke the ensuing deafening silence.
Has academic board just provided another example of academic lethargy, or has academic board just missed the political astuteness of Malcolm Grant?
Few, if any, had could have seen Vince Cable’s interview by then http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/7768709/University-vice-chancellors-pay-out-of-step-with-reality-says-Vince-Cable.html. Honni soit qui mal y pense.
[...] The fact of the matter seems to be that “research managers” are just one more layer of hangers-on that have been inflicted on the academic enterprise during the time new labour was in power. They are certainly not alone. We have now have “research facilitators” and offshoots of HR running nonsense courses in things like Brain Gym [2]. All of these people claim they are there to support research. They do no such thing. They merely generate more paper work and more distraction from the job in hand. Take a simple example. At a time when there was a redundancy committee in existence to decide which academics should be fired in my own faculty, the HR department advertised two jobs (on near professorial salaries) for people trained in neurolinguistic programming (that is a well-known sort of pseudo-scientific psychobabble, but it’s big business [3]. [...]
The centralization towards, school and division management structure had started in some Universities (e.g. Surrey) long before nu lab.As far as UCL is concerned, me thinks it was the venerable North report that resulted in the right hand side of the management hierarchy in the figure in your blog.
I would add two more examples of stifling bureaucracy that dampens the spirit.
In the olden days (until 2004), when grant applications were sent out by snail mail, one would deal with the department and the finance office of the University. Three signatures were required that took a couple of days: Applicant, head of the department and finance officer. The applicant would then post the application and live in hope.
Now the sender of the application is not the person who devised and wrote the project but a bureaucrat in business development or whatever, who presses the send button. [An insignificant physical shift but a great psychological one]. Because of the school structure, it takes longer because four or five administrators are involved and each demands that they get ‘sufficient’ time to ‘process’ the application. In the bargain you are treated like a buffoon who should know that submitting grant applications is a privilege bestowed upon you by the ‘leaders’ and their ‘facilitators’.
The other example is the overcomplicated interviewing process for short term contract research posts or even studentships. Why on earth do you need 6 member panels including representatives from lord knows which part of the division and school and administration at the interview for a Ph D studentship or for a 2year post doctoral position in a highly specialized area?
Universities are not businesses nor are they private enterprises (at least in the UK). They have been forced to take on the guise of these over the last three decades. Cuts will happen. It could however be a great opportunity for the scientists and teachers to help re-shape Universities for what they are ie places of exchange of ideas, thought, experimentation and teaching with minimal bureaucracy, administration and management.
For every uni flake promoting pseudoscience, there is an equal and opposite uni expert giving it a good hiding
https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=dfbw8nz3_1hqgpsbf7
It would be nice to hear about a more organized group who would systematically remind universities what is likely to be pseudo-scientific fluffbunny nonsense.
Estelle