This anonymous letter appeared in today's THES...
A mismanaged performance? - letter to the THES
Published: 20 April 2007
Your report "Staff 'swotted' by managers" and Frank Furedi's column (April 13) express universal concerns about the growth in managerialism in universities, particularly how it undermines collegiality. Collegiality, however, is in itself partly to blame.
Academics tend to be respectful and supportive towards one another (academic spats and private rivalries aside) and this is widely extended to university servants. Indeed, many academics are extraordinary
deferential to central administrators and take them very much at their
own estimation as "managers". This allows managerialism to catch hold.
A
moment's reflection should tell us to be more sceptical. Administration
is a career, like any other, with practitioners on a spectrum from
highly able to dismally incompetent. If I were an able young person
considering a career as an administrator I would want to advise
ministers at the Treasury or the Foreign Office, have an impact on
millions and rise to be in charge of many thousands of administrators
in my department. First-rate would-be administrators are drawn to
Whitehall. So are second and third-rate ones.
Even the best
university administrators are at best only fourth-raters, content to
take a teensy salary and benefits, to make policies that affect only
the minuscule and transitory population of one university, and - if
they make it to being a registrar - to run an organisation with, say,
4,000 staff.
We need to apply detached academic judgment to the
abilities of these people and stop being deferential to them. That is
the only way to turn back this incoming tide.
Name and address supplied
Any readers who have not joined the Whitehall brain drain might like to comment?
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