ࡱ>  ZbjbjVV ;<<?|BB8Lw7\77777779u<7?"?"?"717)))?"7)?"7))5h6i'57G70w75_>)"_> 6_>6l` r) \.!77)w7?"?"?"?"_>B K:  Intellect and Democracy A report submitted to the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning by the University and College Union Scotland as a contribution to the 2010 Green Paper consultation GLASGOW, Monday 4 October 2010 (Slightly re-edited for the joint 鶹 Scotland EIS/ULA conference on The Future of Scottish Higher Education at the Storytelling Centre, Edinburgh, on Tuesday 22 February 2011). Summary This document is intended: to give an account of 鶹 Scotlands efforts to launch the public debate about the future of Scotlands universities that the Cabinet Secretary now seeks; to argue that there is no immediate pragmatic solution to the funding crisis HE in Scotland now faces; and that whatever short-term decisions may be taken should not compromise the ability to make serious, intellectually and philosophically coherent reforms in the longer term; to make the case that the attempt has to be made at the highest level to improve the public perception of what universities are, what they should be doing, the way in which they should be publicly accountable, and how they should be governed and how, therefore, the Scottish people can be sure they are getting the greatest possible benefit from a predominantly publicly funded system; to insist that academic freedom, and collegial governance, lie at the core of the ability of universities world-wide to fulfil their social function in a modern, democratic society; to open up a discussion on the best system of accountability that could win widespread support for much-needed substantial public investment in higher education and scientific and humane research; to ensure that a proper and useful sense of the historical distinctiveness of the Scottish university system informs perceptions domestically and internationally of the practical, contemporary benefits of Scotlands evolving portfolio of universities. The document is based substantially on a report of the conference Intellect and Democracy held by 鶹 Scotland in St Cecilias Hall, Edinburgh in October 2008. It begins with a new preface, and an updated introduction, by conference chair and then 鶹 Scotland President, Terry Brotherstone, on the circumstances of the conference. In the absence of the full-scale, independent review of Scottish HE, which 鶹 Scotland called for from 2007 onwards, the current Green Paper discussions provide a welcome, if more limited, opportunity for the debate that such a review could have provoked on a more solid foundation. The historical and international perspective, which the St Cecilias Hall conference aimed for, remains essential to the discussion. 鶹 Scotland, it is also indicated, has recently found itself in the new position, in which, although it supports the call of the university principals for more adequate funding, it cannot support them in their appropriation of the role of CEOs of corporations rather than collegial academic heads, often with priorities based on institutional competition rather than academic teamwork. University governance must be part of the discussion now required to restore the link between institutional autonomy, which (in line with the UNESCO statement we print in part as an appendix) we support, and academic freedom (also carefully defined by UNESCO) which, in terms of research practices at least, now finds itself under attack from within the system. Next, the distinguished historian Professor Robert Andersons paper provides an overview of Scotlands university history and how it is perceived by international scholars. Anderson notes Lord Reays 1885 comment to the effect that, if Scotland had her own parliament, its first act ought to be to recognise that Scotlands principal asset is brain-power and that, therefore the first number on the legislative programme of that parliament should be the organisation of the universities. But Anderson does not argue that history provides either any ground for nostalgic complacency, nor directly applicable lessons (abolition of fees for example has to be justified by more contemporary argument rather than by reference to Scotlands past experience). But the Scottish system is recognised by scholars (even if not by all of the countrys principals) as distinctive. And, in dealing with the dilemma of universities as they move from an elite to a mass system the dilemma [defined by ...] two different views of social justice [] liberal democracy and social democracy, Anderson concludes, Scotlands present situation provides a unique opportunity for us to look realistically at the national [Scottish] system which history has bequeathed to us, and to make some genuinely imaginative choices about how to develop it. Jens Vraa-Jensen, from the Brussels-based, higher-education union, Education International, begins his paper, which sets the Scottish discussion in a broader world context, with the international implications of the liberalisation or commercialisation agenda; comments on the ministerial process beginning from the 1999 Bologna Declaration; explains how resistance to attacks on academic freedom and institutional autonomy has been organised; and concludes with some comparisons of particular national situations. He commends 鶹 Scotlands response to the first draft of the report of the Future Thinking Taskforce as something to be built on. He stresses the need for trade unions to be closely involved in all discussions of HE reform and that the perception of unions as simply opposed to reform must be countered by making it clear that reforms to enhance academic freedom, increase public funding and improve opportunities for students to enter higher education will be warmly welcomed. He critiques much of the language in which governmental discussions about higher education is conducted (and, on this, see too, the reference in Appendix B to Professor Stephen Collinis review, entitled HiEdBiz, of the Westminster Governments 2002 Higher Education White Paper). He returns to the dangers of the attempt to include HE in the GATS agenda. He stresses the need to draw attention to the 1999 UNESCO statement on academic freedom and the need for it to be policed. He concludes that the issue is not to refer to some past golden age, and that it needs to be understood that universities have to change to meet the needs of changing societies. But he insists that universities must return to a concern with being good, not looking good in league table terms; with developing knowledge for its own sake and the good of democratic societies; and with producing students who are genuinely capable of taking care of humanitys intellectual future. In a roundtable discussion and general debate, a former Funding Council executive drew attention to the ongoing role of the Council notwithstanding the Taskforces call for a lighter touch, and advocated the active engagement of academics concerned to defend the humanist purposes of universities with the governments more pragmatic, economically driven agenda. A leading Scottish trade unionist spoke about the unions people-centred approach to higher and further education, stressed that the Union Learning initiative was not just about workplace skills but embraced personal development as well, and expressed the hope that the lack of serious consultation by the Task Force would not be repeated as new policies were put in place. An experienced former rector of two Scottish universities raised important issues concerning the operation of university governing bodies and was severely critical of the negative effects of the Research Assessment Exercise. A 鶹 national leader pointed out that the type of degrees, and the assessment systems, called for by a mass-participation HE system were inevitably different but need not be worse than those appropriate when only a narrow elite enjoyed a university education; and called for university teachers to be entrusted with the responsibility to inform their courses with employment-friendly skills without surrendering to an externally-imposed business agenda. A student leader stressed the need for universities to recognise inevitable student priority of equipping themselves to secure and hold down remunerative employment; to care as much about outduction as they currently do about induction. The predominant themes in further general discussion were: universities should be publicly funded as centres of critical autonomy; teaching should be valued properly alongside research; increasing reliance on casualised employment has created a rot at the core of a system that relies on the dedication of researchers and teachers; underfunding is the underlying key issue, creating a tension between academic values and a perceived managerial need for, in effect, cheap labour and league-table competition; academic decision-making has increasingly been taken away from teaching and research staff and placed in the hands of relatively highly-paid managers; attracting lifelong learners into HE is essential but cannot be achieved without increased funding; the need for wide participation in an evidence-based discussion on the purpose of universities in providing a challenging period of personal liberation rather than simply training for employability; 鶹 Scotland would continue to campaign for increased funding in general but could not simply endorse Universities Scotlands statements, not least because the periodic scandals about principals and senior management salaries often undercut efforts to enhance public support for increased He funding; there are lessons to be learnt from other countries as to how the democratic intellect might once again become an important and practical concept. A concluding section makes some points about the relationship between this paper and the Green Paper discussion. One appendix is devoted to extracts from the UNESCO standards for universities and their relationship with government; a second draws attention to several recent articles about the source of the crisis British universities in general and Scottish universities in particular now face. CONTENTS PREFACE p. 08 1. 2008 INTRODUCTION (Edited, 2010) p. 11 2. HISTORY: Robert Anderson Intellect and Democracy: Then and Now p. 17 3. BEYOND SCOTLAND: Jens Vraa-Jensen The European and International Context p. 26 4. THE STATE, THE TRADE UNIONS AND GOVERNANCE The Role of the Funding Council p. 39 (ii) Scottish TUC Policy p. 42 (iii) A Rectors Perspective p. 46 5. BEGINNNING A DEMOCRATIC DISCUSSION p. 48 6. LOOKING TO THE FUTURE: THE GREEN PAPER p. 58 7. APPENDICES (a) UNESCO on academic freedom p. 60 (b) Professors Stefan Collini and Walter Humes on recent history and current problems p. 72 PREFACE (October 2010) Two years ago, recognising that higher education in Scotland faced a major crisis, 鶹 Scotland held a conference Intellect and Democracy at St Cecilias Hall, Edinburgh. It aimed to promote a democratic, public debate about the role of higher education in general and its place in Scottish society particularly. Informing this initiative lay the perception that the public funding necessary to sustain the system can only be raised if there is a renewed, informed, social consensus about the importance of the countrys universities and about their accessibility to all those qualified, and wanting, to benefit from higher education; and if there is also general confidence concerning the governance of universities and the way money allocated to the sector is spent. Part of the report of the St Cecilias Hall conference and the keynote papers are reproduced here. Two years on, the crisis is more widely recognised than it was in 2008, or in the summer of 2007 when 鶹 Scotland first engaged with the Scottish National Party government on the issues raised. The new (2009) Cabinet Secretary for Education, Michael Russell, now proposes to produce a Green Paper at the end of 2010, and has called for contributions relevant to the exercise and the discussion it will initiate. 鶹 Scotland welcomes this opportunity to revive a debate we ourselves tried to begin some time ago. Secretary Russell has ruled out two things: an independent review of higher education; and the reintroduction of upfront undergraduate fees. The latter position is fully supported by 鶹 Scotland which has no allegiance to any political party, and which, in 2007, congratulated the new Nationalist government on a number of its HE policies, such as its rescue plan for Crichton College and its equal treatment of overseas students. But the Cabinet Secretarys refusal, following his predecessor, to contemplate an independent review is less justifiable. There has been no comprehensive, intellectually serious review of universities since the UK Robbins Report of the early 1960s (which paid important attention to Scotland and its traditions). Times have changed enormously since then and a renewed (and reinvigorated) public commitment to universities as essential to a modern democracy can only come about on the basis of an open, evidence-based public discussion. In 2007, Scotland had the chance to lead the way in adopting this approach by promoting a genuinely independent, evidence-gathering review of the Scottish HE system as it now exists. 鶹 Scotland recognises, however, that the immediate opportunity that the new Scottish government had to promote such a review passed, when, at the beginning of its term of office (perhaps understandably given its minority status and the partisan political atmosphere at Holyrood), it preferred to make what was in effect a deal with the university principals. Their criticism of the funding settlement was offset by inviting them to participate in an exclusive, so-called Future Thinking Taskforce. This despite its title and some rhetoric about planning for the next generation could only produce short-term proposals about a limited range of problems. Its New Horizons report left unaddressed key issues such as sustainable funding, creeping privatisation, the managerialist agenda that has replaced (or is replacing) collegial university governance, the exponential growth of salary differentials amongst university staff, and the need if educators and researchers are to play their full part in a democratic and innovative society for a renewed commitment to effective academic freedom. Clearly there is now no possibility of a review to inform the 2011 Holyrood election campaign. Nor would it be easy at this moment given the deeply divisive, ideologically driven, approach of the Westminster Coalition to public expenditure to find a truly independent panel of informed citizens to conduct such a review and arrive at evidence-based proposals. Nevertheless the future of Scotlands universities is too important a matter to be subjected to a further round of reform based on policy-based evidence rather than evidence-based policy. In the absence of the proposed review, 鶹 Scotland while, as a trade union, its first responsibility must always be the defence of its own members as they bear, in HE, the brunt of the Westminster Coalitions assault on the public services more generally welcomes this more limited opportunity to promote, and participate in, informed, democratic debate; and to make the case for a step-change in the public funding of universities. We begin below with the two keynote talks at the St Cecilias Hall conference, given by acknowledged experts, and dealing, first, with the historical, and, second, with the European and international, context of the plight in which Scotlands universities find themselves at the end of the first decade of the 21st century. There follow accounts of the contributions by a former employee of the Scottish Funding Council, a leading Scottish trade unionist and an experienced university rector; and a summary of other contributions in the discussion. The next section is an open-ended update on the issues, as they appear two years on. Finally, some important appendices provide an important reminder of the way any discussion about the social and intellectual role of universities should be conducted. I: 2008 Introduction (edited, 2010) Terry Brotherstone Universities and their Role in Scotland, Past, Present and Future: beginning a democratic discussion Intellect and Democracy is a contribution to an urgently needed discussion about the future of Scottish society and the nations standing in the world and of the place of universities in that future. It has been produced because that future is far from certain. What follows does not deal directly with the unprecedented global crisis of the capital system or its particular impact in Scotland; nor does it address the environmental catastrophe that the world faces. But it is relevant to how the Scots still collectively at a historical moment of redefinition, after generations in active imperial partnership with a much larger neighbour are to confront these questions. Doing so successfully requires critical analysis of the past, not simply the aspirational, and ideological, statements about the future that characterise so much public rhetoric today. Intellect and Democracy is concerned to begin an urgent public discussion about the socially necessary role of critical intellect. Accordingly it rehearses a variety of opinions rather than arguing a predetermined case. A thread, however, runs through it one of concern for the present and future of Scotlands national system of higher education. If evidence-based policy is to be reinstated as the guide to future social well-being, if the potential of science is to be unleashed for human good, and if rounded intellectual and cultural development is to become the focus of mass higher education (not least so that it can become the essential basis for more specific training programmes rather than being displaced by them), then universities, how their role is defined, and how they are governed and funded, must become central to Scotlands democratic debate. University principals and their senior management teams tell us that to speak of their institutions as part of a national system is now out of date:universities are discrete organisations, vying for prestige in an ever more competitive global environment. They require more money but that money should be given on trust that, they are being run in the best possible way and are safe in the hands of their current bosses, with their various managerial prescriptions. In the autumn of 2007, to try to secure more public funding given that the main political parties in Scotland have all so far ruled out the English solution of making students pay top-up fees the Scottish principals suppressed their collective anger at the unexpectedly low financial settlement they received in the first funding allocation made by the minority Scottish National Party administration at Holyrood. They agreed to participate with the government in a Joint Future Thinking Taskforce. The Scottish Funding Council, given its statutory responsibilities, had also to become involved. There could have be little objection to such an exercise had it been confined to examining the consequences of the 2007 settlement and attempting to find ways of avoiding further such disappointments. But its remit went further: it was to envision the future of Scotlands universities to 2028. And its outcome was a report which referred grandiosely to New Horizons, although there was little enough radically new in it, other than what some perceived as a threat to academic freedom. In truth little more than a band-aid deal between the government and the principals two parties who both see themselves as under heavy cash constraints could have been expected from such a narrowly based group. The University and College Union Scotland the countrys main higher education union representing lecturers, research workers and related staff was the strongest of a number of voices arguing that a very different type of review was needed. It is nearly half a century since the epoch-reflecting, UK-wide Robbins Report on higher education devoted substantial space to the distinctive Scottish university tradition and its place in the contemporary world. In the meantime that world has changed hugely as have the demands placed on higher education. The election to office of the first SNP government, committed to free education for all, at a time of an impending crisis in university funding, provided a fine opportunity for a major new exercise in public reflection. When it became clear that the government saw the Task Force as a substitute for, rather than a prelude to, a more wide-ranging and intellectually serious review, we decided that modest though our efforts were bound to be we, as the union representing most academic staff and the academic-related teams that work with them in Scotlands universities, had a responsibility to initiate it. On October 31st 2008 a symposium organised by 鶹 Scotland, of which I was at that time president, took place at St. Cecilias Hall in Edinburghs Cowgate. It was a kind of intellectual salon des refuss, a place where those denied participation in the Task Force could begin to rehearse some of the broader issues that body had not considered worthy of examination, discussion and redefinition as part of their very limited enquiry... . In his 2008 Rectorial address at Edinburgh University, the distinguished journalist, Iain Macwhirter, remarked that: Edinburgh University is one of the few things Scotland as a nation has left to write home about. We used to be the workshop of the world, but the heavy engineering that built half the world's shipping a century ago is long gone. We had the electronics industry, Silicon Glen, which came and went in the blink of an LED. Then we were supposed to be leading the world in financial services until our banks exploded and we discovered that they were run by reckless gamblers playing with other peoples' money. Only in our universities, and pre-eminently Edinburgh, is Scotland still a global player. He may be excused (given the local patriotism appropriate to such occasions) the particular stress on Edinburgh. Edinburghs international reputation is hard to imagine were it not, historically and now, part of a very distinctive Scottish university tradition and system. But his more general point was well made. Scotlands world-class universities could soon be more vital than ever to what the jargon-merchants like to call the Scotland brand. But if that is to be the case it is important that this is not interpreted to mean what governments tend to assume that universities social utility is to be perceived mainly, or even exclusively, as instrumental drivers in what is usually referred to (as though it were some kind of machine powering a separate entity called society) as the economy. An educationalist wrote a few years ago that the UK higher education reviews of the 1990s had archived the Robbins Report. It was a historically misguided comment. Robbins produced his report in very different times: its recognition of the role of higher education in easing a still sclerotically grand-paternalistic society towards social democracy now looks highly conservative. But the Robbins Report was of a quite different intellectual quality to the enquiries that, within the new social and policy environments of the 1990s and early 21st century were supposed to replace it. A return to the quality of discussion Robbins promoted would be entirely beneficial. There is also a pressing need to encourage serious study of such documents as the UNESCO statements on academic freedom designed perhaps mainly for developing countries but increasingly standing as a rebuke to the practices of at least some institutions in the advanced world, including Scotland. Nor is there some necessary contradiction between the universities economic role and the longstanding values to which they aspire, or certainly should aspire. Higher education and higher research cannot serve a socially useful economic purpose if the institutions in which it takes place lose sight of what their essential nature is. Universities cannot be, and should not attempt to be, knowledge factories and/or training schools though they are centres of knowledge and of the sort of education that makes high-level training possible. But whereas, in the 1980s, when some of us were fighting the first systematic round of government cuts in university spending, it could still be said that the autonomy of institutions and the academic freedom of individuals were almost synonymous, that is no longer the case. Too many principals have turned themselves, willingly or otherwise, into CEOs rather than academic exemplars: they are staunch defenders of autonomy but often perceived as enemies, not necessarily of freedom of expression, but of academic freedom in a broader sense. Were universities to be under threat of funding cuts because they were acting as centres of practical criticism of the abuse of authority and financial power, they would deserve unreserved support. In reality today their problems arise from superficially justified public policy assumptions in which they as institutions have, for the most part, been uncritically complicit. We need to promote public debate about these things, including the political dangers Robbins highlighted that no society is immune from the dangers to freedom that arose in Nazi Germany and elsewhere; and against which institutions dedicated to academic freedom are a bastion. We need to talk about what universities are and what they should be not just to assume that all will be well with them, given additional funding. They do need more money actually a step-change in public funding not least because many staff are, relative to comparable professions, underpaid, and students are seriously under-supported in absolute terms. But we need to be clear what the money will be used for? They do need reform but what sort of reform? What is the best form of university governance collegiality, as a business corporation, or what? What is the right relationship between government and universities? To speak concretely about the most recent period in Scotland, 鶹 Scotland has found itself in a curious situation. On the one hand, we are urged by university managers to join a united front arguing for more public money without raising criticisms about how our higher education institutions are being run, without drawing too much attention to the stress the current working and decision-making environment creates for teaching and research staff. On the other, we are informed by the Scottish government (which has often offered a friendly ear to our increasingly overworked members concerns and a willingness to at least listen to suggestions about defending their interests) that if there is to be even marginal additional funding it must be linked to a measure of government direction of institutional priorities. Our dilemma is this. We do not see this erosion of institutional autonomy as a defence against attacks on individual academic freedom the key to intellectual creativity; but neither can we any longer see the uncritical defence of institutional autonomy as per se the guarantor of that freedom. In raising these issues for public debate we hope to contribute and encourage the Scottish people to contribute to a much broader, indeed international, discourse about universities and their future in the modern world. Scotland is an excellent place to initiate such a discussion. The Scottish Enlightenment, to which homage is all too often paid in a historically uncritical way, played particularly through its outcome in the Common Sense philosophy an important part in informing the idea of a university in many countries in the 19th century: perhaps the rethinking of the university for the post-neo-liberal world of today could begin here too. Furthermore, if, as the SNP government says, there is to be a serious national conversation about independence, Scotlands university tradition should surely have a greater place in it than it has so far. In the 1960s, when modern Scottish nationalism began to establish electoral credibility, its attraction to intellectuals was facilitated by the philosopher-historian George Elder Davies attribution to the Scottish universities of a nationally identifying, secular ideology, he (adapting a phrase of the 1930s Tory Secretary of State for Scotland, Walter Elliot) called the democratic intellect. And, but for its distinctive educational system (with the universities as a key part of that distinctiveness), there might have been no separate Scottish departments of the UK state established in the late-19th century and expanded in the 20th, no administrative basis for the devolution settlement of 1997, and no consequent opening of the door on SNP electoral success and the prospect (whether a strong one or not remains to be seen) of a velvet divorce from the UK. Were that to take place, it is to be hoped that an independent government would pay more attention than the first Nationalist devolved one has so far done to Lord Reays 1885 comment Robert Anderson quotes below: The development of brain-power ... is what a Scottish statesman has to look to. If we had a Scottish Parliament sitting in Edinburgh, I have no doubt that the organisation of the universities would be the first number on the legislative programme. II: History Robert Anderson Intellect and Democracy, Then and Now Historians like to think that their discipline sometimes has lessons for the present, and it is certainly true that Scots seem more inclined than others to appeal to their history when discussing educational policy. The Scottish universities have always been seen as a national system, with public responsibilities, and not as private institutions. As the Edinburgh philosopher William Hamilton put it in 1835, 'A university is a trust confided by the State to certain hands for the common interests of the nation'. And the Scottish universities have often been seen as central to the creation and maintenance of Scottish identity. It is thus relevant to consider whether Scotland's past traditions should provide any guidance, or perhaps warnings, about what policies we should adopt today. But there is also a wider historical issue. The higher education system we have now is a product of British policy as it has evolved since the Second World War, since the Robbins report in 1963, and since the end of the binary system in 1992; a hierarchical system with specifically British features. How far does this history condition what we can do now, and how far should we be questioning this inheritance? The title of this seminar is, of course, a reference to George Davie's famous book The Democratic Intellect, which appeared more than 40 years ago. This has had a profound influence on Scottish intellectuals, especially on the nationalist left, though it is less clear that this influence has extended to politics since devolution, apart from ritual invocations of the title phrase. It is a book more appealed to than actually read, and in fact it doesn't make easy reading. I am not going to discuss it today, but the relationship between intellect and democracy is a fruitful theme. It has been tackled again very recently by the historian Sheldon Rothblatt in a book called Education's Abiding Dilemma (2007). This is essentially a comparative study of British and American higher education as they have moved from an elite to a mass system, and of the relationship between schools and universities. The dilemma in Rothblatt's title lies between two different views of social justice, between what he calls liberal democracy and social democracy. Does justice mean seeking out talented individuals and giving them the fullest opportunity to develop their merits, or does it mean securing the widest possible access for all? What should the balance be between the needs of an advanced society for high intellectual achievement, and the broader demands of citizenship and participation? Can intellectual excellence, which is to be approved of, be separated from social elitism, which is not? You might think that Rothblatt's dilemma is another statement of the contrast between the individualist North American social model and the European model of social solidarity and the welfare state. But not so. The United States moved to mass higher education before anywhere else, and egalitarian impulses within its educational system were always powerful, as policies such as affirmative action show. Rothblatt's argument is that the tensions between liberal and social democracy are built into every system, and that Britain and America are grappling with the same problems, though arriving at them from different directions. It is a strength of Rothblatt's work as a historian that he is very well informed about Scotland, and he discusses it separately. The United States, England, and Scotland are the three 'trans-atlantic democracies'. There is no doubt that the whole tradition of the democratic intellect and the lad o' pairts, which can be seen in its classic form in Scotland in the 19th and early 20th centuries, belongs to Rothblatt's model of liberal democracy. It was about talented, male individuals, and the mechanisms that allowed them to get access to what remained an elite university system. In the twentieth century that ideology did help to shape a broader egalitarianism, and arguably the Scottish idea that no talented person should be denied an education because of poverty fed into the era of the welfare state and Robbins. When we say that Scottish universities were more democratic than others, we mean, before the First World War, that the age participation ratio in Scotland was something like 1.9% of the cohort compared with 1.3% in England. Even in the 1950s, it was no more than 4%. Universities were marginal institutions, even in middle class life. Essentially, they prepared for the traditional professions the church, medicine, law plus schoolteaching. But most middle-class children did not go to university, and lost nothing by it. Entry to universities was not selective or competitive, and for a long time there was not even an entrance examination. In this situation, it was possible for Scots to feel that democracy was satisfied when bursaries and scholarships were available (these of course were competitive), so that a small number of rural or working-class children could climb the rungs of the ladder of opportunity - a favourite image of the time and join the elite. Even if the class differential in university access was enormous, the achievements of individual lads o' pairts were real. Today, of course, the situation is quite different. University education has become essential for most desirable careers, and is the badge of middle-class status itself. In a sense, university entry is more competitive, and social exclusion is more damaging, with an age participation ratio of 40% than one of 2%. Higher education has become a positional good, and left to themselves, educational markets will always reproduce the structures of social inequality. Equality of opportunity remains a universally accepted ideal, but has changed its nature with the shift from the post-war welfare state, with its sense of organic social solidarity and of the state's obligation to redress inequalities, to a consumer democracy. The image of the ladder has been replaced by that of the climbing wall. Opportunities are open to aspirational families, but the concept of a school and scholarship mechanism designed specifically to seek out and promote the talented poor has been lost. We all know, and it is a point that Rothblatt illustrates again and again, that even the most objective and well-intentioned meritocratic selection mechanisms have been unable to neutralise the advantages of family and cultural background, or to fully counter the weight of class and race. One of the most interesting ideologists of Scottish education in the 19th century was the scientist and politician Lyon Playfair. As a lobbyist for science and technical education, he was as important as Thomas Huxley, though less well known. He was a great exponent of the lad o' pairts ideal, even though the phrase itself hadn't then been invented. He had two especially interesting arguments. The first was that the universities' traditional task of educating the professions should be extended to the new scientific and technical occupations being created by industrialisation. The task of universities was to 'liberalise' the professions, by combining vocational training with a broader education, which provided the scientific or knowledge base on which graduate occupations depended. Playfair's second idea was that Scotland owed its prosperity to its intelligent use of human resources. Scotland was, he said in 1884, 'a country small in area, with a rigorous climate and a barren soil, with, except in one small area, no mineral riches or anything of that kind to promote prosperity and wealth.' But since the Reformation Church and state had sought out and educated the brains of the country wherever these were to be found. 'By this means Scotland, through her educational system and the brains of her people, got into the state of prosperity and happiness' which we see today. On another occasion, he pointed out that while Glasgow had industrial wealth, Edinburgh is 'a city dependent upon intellectual production. Its only products are doctors, ministers, lawyers, and books, - all intellectual products intimately connected with the University in which they are manufactured. Here we seem to have the doctrine of the knowledge economy. Another propagandist of the same era, Lord Reay, declared in 1885 that: 'The chief wealth of Scotland consists in the natural resources of Scottish brains. The development of brain-power on a wide scale is what a Scottish statesman has to look to. If we had a Scottish Parliament sitting in Edinburgh, I have no doubt that the organisation of the universities would be the first number on the legislative programme.' Well, industrialisation has come and largely gone. Mineral riches, in the form of oil, have come, and are going. Reliance on financial services does not look such a clever idea as it used to, as Gogarburn threatens to become the middle-class Linwood. So perhaps Scottish statesmen need to think again about the best use for Scottish brains. But they should also remember that a knowledge economy depends on the quality and independence of the knowledge. Intellect can only be a creative force when it is free. When Playfair talked about liberalising the professions, he meant that the functional elites of his society needed a basis of theory and learning which would give university-educated individuals self-confidence, intellectual autonomy, and a professional ethos at the service of society. This was one version of the classic liberal university ideal of the 19th century. It was rather different from the narrowly instrumental view of education so popular in political circles today, and certainly different from the notion of students as consumers, or of university education as a series of managerially defined competences and outcomes. It is important to emphasise that the Scottish university tradition was a teaching rather than a research tradition. Discussions of university policy in the 19th century, and most of the 20th, were on educational issues like the curriculum, the social composition of the student body, or the universities' relationship with schools. Davie's Democratic Intellect was, among other things, a powerful defence of general, liberal education against research specialisation. It has always been agreed that university teaching should be informed by learning and the critical pursuit of truth, but the primacy of original research as an independent activity was slow to emerge, in Scotland as in the rest of Britain. It is barely more than a hundred years old, and the idea of research, detached from teaching, as the central mission of the university and the criterion by which the status of universities is judged, is newer still. Every age has its characteristic forms of the 'idea of the university', but to the university historian the current research fetish and its detachment from undergraduate teaching seems a particular and recent distortion. It is true that the actual results of research matter more to the economy and society than was ever the case in the past, and this is irreversible. But I would suggest that its organisation, and the balance between teaching and research, are due for a fresh look by Scottish statesmen. Scottish universities are not betraying their past if they focus on teaching and on a broadly conceived vocational preparation as their mission. And do all forms of vocational education really require a theoretical basis supported by the elaborate and expensive machinery of university research? Scotland inherits a specific situation created by British university policy, and especially by the abolition of the binary system in 1992. In principle, all universities are of equal status, and all embrace research. The reality, as we know, is that beneath this formal equality the hierarchy of prestige created by history persists. The deep structures of social institutions are very resistant to change, and many of the recent travails of the university system result from a failure to face up to the contradictions built into it and to talk honestly about social and class issues. It is in the nature of the political process to suppose that such contradictions can be reconciled (for which see the British government's 2003 White Paper), but it needs hard and critical thinking to see how this hierarchical pressure can be countered in Scotland. The British university system was built up by the addition of successive strata. In Scotland, this stratification has been simpler than in England. Important English layers like the civic universities of the Victorian era and the greenfield universities of the 1960s each have only one representative, Dundee and Stirling respectively. Among the pre-1992 universities, the four ancient universities were differentiated more clearly than in England from those institutions, Strathclyde and Heriot-Watt, whose precursors were already being described around 1900 as 'industrial universities' and were closer than anything in England to the German technical high school model. Among the post-1992 universities, the technical and vocational role was preserved much more explicitly than in England by the policies of the old Scottish Education Department, which kept a firm hand on the then 'central institutions' and stood out against academic drift. So one question is whether these distinctions are strengths to be built on, or weaknesses to be abolished in the name of equality. Nearly all countries apart from Britain have a formal functional division within their higher education systems. It is perhaps worth quoting from the Lisbon Declaration of 2005, which was the European universities' collective response to the European Union's higher education policy, itself formulated at Lisbon in 2000. The relevant passage reads: Universities recognise that moving from an elite to a mass system of higher education implies the existence of universities with different missions, and strengths. This requires a system of academic institutions with highly diversified profiles, based on equality of esteem for different missions. Institutions will increasingly offer different kinds of study programmes leading to a wide spectrum of graduate qualifications that allow progression routes from one institution to another and will develop research, innovation and knowledge transfer activities in line with their diverse missions. Where does the Scottish government, or the UK government for that matter, stand on this? A particular problem of British education is that 'equality of esteem' has always proved impossible to achieve when institutions are functionally differentiated. Today research prestige, the ability to select the best students, and the class profile of universities have come to be fused, exemplified by Oxford and Cambridge, creating the central problem of how access to the supposedly best universities can be kept open to all. It might be a useful start to tone down some of the feel-good rhetoric so popular on both sides of the border. Not every student can be excellent, not all standards can improve miraculously from year to year, not all research can be cutting edge, not all universities can be world class. Perhaps it is too brutal to say that the function of a mass higher education system is to prepare students of average ability for routine business and professional positions. But at least we can recognise that there is also a need for distinctive achievement at the highest level, and that since elite positions after all do exist, as in any society, the task is to ensure that these are not monopolised by a privileged middle class. One answer to the rhetoric would be to say: Yes, we can have world-class universities if you give us a staff-student ratio of one to five, as at Princeton. Yes, if you spend two percent of GDP on higher education, as the Lisbon declaration recommends, instead of the 1.1 percent we spend now, compared with 2.6 percent in the USA. As for research, it is a fact that to compete on an international level is very expensive; the quest to appear high up in international league tables may be good for universities' self-esteem, but does it actually make them better servants of their national and local communities? What sort of universities can a small, peripheral country, with a narrow economic base, actually afford? And within the context of globalisation, what can we do best? Perhaps we need to look closely at what has happened in Ireland, where many people think a country of four million cannot sustain more than two front-line universities, and where the populist abolition of fees is now widely regarded as a mistake which deprives them of a useful resource. My opinion on that probably differs from that of the 鶹 as well as the Scottish government. So I will confine myself to saying that there is no Scottish tradition of free higher education. That dated from 1962, as elsewhere in the UK. But there was a tradition of cheap university education, of state subsidy, and of generous student support. British university opinion is remarkably ignorant of continental European systems. I have mentioned the 2005 Lisbon declaration, but how many British academics know about it? How many could tell you the difference between the Bologna charter of 1988 and the current Bologna process to which we are all supposed to be conforming? It is only necessary to look in THE (Times Higher Education) at the proportion of European to American, Australian or Asian stories to see this. When there is a story about Germany, or Italy, or France it is usually on the lines that these countries have bizarre and anomalous systems, and the sooner they fall into line with the Anglo-American model the better. But we surely have lessons to learn about intellect and democracy from other European countries, and not least from France. The French revolution virtually invented the concept of merit, nor is it a coincidence that the word elite is French: the relation between the two, and the question of how a legitimate elite can be formed in a democracy, was debated in France throughout the 19th century as it was too by Scots like Playfair. We think we know a lot, on the other hand, about the United States, but we usually look only at the untypical handful of top universities. Politicians tend to see American universities as being fabulously endowed, so that they are no longer a burden on the taxpayer. But that is a largely incorrect view, and there are warnings as well as examples to be derived from America, including the dangers of dependence on private money, whether from alumni, corporate donors, or industrial research. My final point, perhaps, would be to refer you again to Sheldon Rothblatt, who spent his career at Berkeley, and who is a staunch advocate of the tripartite California state system, with its multi-campus research university, its essentially undergraduate state universities, and its community colleges, all linked by the 'progression routes' of the Lisbon declaration. That is one way of countering the fusion of research and social hierarchies, as is the French system of maintaining immensely prestigious and selective teaching institutions which are partly decoupled from research. I do not say California is necessarily the right model for Scotland. But I do suggest that the present situation provides a unique opportunity for us to look realistically at the national system which history has bequeathed to us, and to make some genuinely imaginative choices about how to develop it. III: Beyond Scotland Jens Vraa-Jensen The European and International Context It is important for our work at the European level to know the consequences of global politics in higher education and to familiarise ourselves with what is happening in the different nations, so Im very glad to have been asked to participate in this discussion. I want to start with some references to the general global and European agenda with regard to the commodification, commercialisation or liberalisation of higher education, and to some extent also of research. Then Ill say a little about the ministerial process stemming from the Bologna Declaration of 1999. Next, I want to make some comments about the mechanisms that are available to us in the universities to mount a defence against attacks on academic freedom and institutional autonomy, including the other Bologna system the Magna Charta Universitatum. This charter was signed by university rectors, or vice-chancellors, at the 900th anniversary of Bologna University in 1988. In conclusion, Ill say something about the consequences of current policies as they concern us in different European countries and other parts of the world. But first, a word on the teaching-research connection. It is obvious that many of the league tables and ranking systems that we see today are based on measuring research the publication of research results and research articles in differently ranked scientific journals. Not much attention is paid to teaching. A Danish professor said recently: What is research actually? His point was that, if we are to have the highest quality of teaching in universities, the teachers need to be highly qualified, and the way they qualify is by doing the research. You can see the research as the further education of university teachers, and the money governments spend on research as in part the further education of those teachers. And you would need to spend the same amount or more to ensure that the teachers are highly qualified without doing research. They would need further education, professional development, of another sort. The sums spent on research in universities quite apart from its other benefits is small compared with what you would be spending if individual teachers did not have the benefit of participating in research, and thereby gaining higher qualifications that inform the quality of their teaching. This is another way of seeing the connections between teaching in higher education and research. We talk about research-based teaching but teaching-based research is just as important. Turning to the substance of my talk, I want to start with what is actually happening out there in the world. The first organisation to focus on is the OECD. It is the biggest and wealthiest player arguing for the reform of higher education, especially in the member countries but they also want worldwide reforms. Their latest review, Tertiary Education for the Knowledge Society, involved a number of member states and it was presented at a conference in Lisbon in spring 2008. Most of it is focused on the role higher education can play in the knowledge economy and on how universities can be transformed into institutions supporting economic development. The basic assumption is that governments should have a national strategy, which all universities should be involved in and responsive to. This will reduce the autonomy of institutions because there will be political or strategic goals, for meeting which the universities will be answerable. The report acknowledges the importance to universities of academic freedom, but insists that this must not compromise accountability for meeting institutional or national goals. We should be in no doubt that it is individual academic freedom as institutional autonomy that will be reduced. The report argues that it is important to build consensus. I note that 鶹 Scotland, in its response to the first draft of the Universities Future Thinking Taskforce report, now issued as New Horizons, stresses that strongly. I was impressed when I read that response: it is very good, and it is something to build on. We must take note, however, that when the OECD says it is important to include all stakeholders in the process of reform, they also say that governments must be prepared for the trade unions to be most opposed. The Education International delegates I was one of three in attendance told them that was not necessarily true. If reforms are proposed that enhance academic freedom, increase public funding, and improve opportunities for students to enter higher education, they will have enthusiastic support from the trade unions. What we reject are reforms that would reduce academy freedom and institutional autonomy; and reforms that would commodify higher education and teaching, making students into customers, as Robert Anderson said. The problem is that it is these kinds of reforms that the OECD is talking about. 鶹 Scotlands response to New Horizons illustrates my point: it is not opposed to reform as such, only to some of the reforms the Scottish Government in line with most governments these days is actually seeking to implement. The OECD also has something to say about the academic career structure. It is positive that they acknowledge the need for careers that will enable universities and institutions of higher education to attract qualified people. This is a very important aspect of the higher education system. But what do their formulations actually mean? Give institutions autonomy over the management of human resources, they say. So we are talking about managerialism definitely not about collegial governance. I think we have to say clearly that what is needed is to get away from the whole idea of managers managing human resources. We are human beings and not human resources, and we should be treated as human beings. Of course it is positive that they at least talk about the importance of enhancing the attractiveness of the academic career and of integrating professional development. But that should be obvious, hardly needing to be said in a report like this. Any serious institution should be aware of that, and universities particularly so. The OECD talk about improving entrance procedures for academics and the reward system for their accomplishments. But what do they mean? Are they referring only to salaries? There is also mention of developing support mechanisms, which of course we support, as we do the proposal that mobility should be increased. But then, we have statements about managing the academic career in a flexible manner. Flexibility! That is very often synonymous with part-time, or fixed-term contracts, through which academics are used for very short periods for specific projects and then have their contracts terminated without further notice. And then there is reference to the need to strengthen the management project; and to leadership. In all this, there is nothing about collegial governance, nothing about involving the academics in the management process, but rather the suggestion that there must be a layer of managers managing the academics. This is also something that should, I think, be strongly opposed. The OECD uses some excellent language, for example words such as autonomy. Academics should be free to research; they should not be prevented from publishing their results, and so forth. But there is always a sting in the tail. This freedom must go together with greater accountability for the outcomes of their academic activities; and of course these are outcomes that are monitored on a yearly basis, when the ranking lists and league tables are being produced, or which have to be cited when applying for further research grants or whatever. Let me give one example the latest Danish Nobel Prize winner, Jens Chr. Skou. He won the prize a few years ago on the basis of research he actually did twenty or thirty years ago. At the time it seemed of absolutely no relevance: only a handful of colleagues could see its importance. It concerned transportation inside cells. It was hard to get much of it published because no scientific journals were interested in the subject. But eventually it was published and then, twenty-five years later, the scientist wins the Nobel Prize for that work! He said recently, and was quoted in a Danish newspaper, that if he were trying to do this research today, in the current environment, in which he would be accountable on a daily basis for what he did, he would be at greater risk of being fired than of being awarded the Nobel Prize. It goes to show that academic accountability cannot be like that of a football league in which, at the end of the season, you know which team wins the championship and which teams are to be relegated. Academic research and teaching has a much longer perspective. The OECD has also developed some future scenarios, based on criteria that indicated that will separate out universities as either national or international. This would mean that institutions of higher education will either steer the course the government decides on; or they can be oriented to the market. According to the OECD there are four possible future scenarios. I will not go into all the details here. The higher education scenario one of the four is called Higher Education Inc. It is the most international category: institutions so designated will be the most market-oriented, using tuition fees as a major way to fund teaching. There will be an almost total separation of teaching and research, on the grounds that those in the top ranks as teachers are not necessarily good in research, and vice versa. This takes me back to the argument I highlighted in my introduction about teaching and research. Market forces say: You are a good researcher, you do the research. You are a good teacher, you do the teaching! and This institution is better as a research institution, let it do the research. That institution is better at teaching, let it do only teaching! Let me tell you another Danish story. Our Education Minister, Bertel Haarder, presented this argument at a ministerial conference in Athens in 2006. He claimed that such a system was the most likely future for higher education systems, and, of course, this was accepted by some other ministerial representatives from the OECD countries. But what is the assumption behind this self-fulfilling prediction? It is, of course, that higher education should be incorporated into the development of the knowledge economy and the knowledge society. They are avoiding the fundamental issue of whether this is the right way forward from the point of view of higher education itself. The direction of the discussion is being prejudiced by the assumption that higher education must be developed to serve the interests of the knowledge economy and the societies based on it. The latest idea, which also came up in Athens, is something called Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes or another acronym! AHELO. It is the higher-education version of PISA (the Programme for International Student Assessment) the version for primary or secondary schools. The ministers think they can measure learning outcomes of universities in the same way. One of the International Secretariats discussion papers argues that this will provide governments with powerful instruments to judge the effectiveness and international competitiveness of their higher education institutions. This looks like yet another OECD-certified ranking-list of institutions, but the OECD insist this is not the case that they simply want to develop a tool to assist institutions to develop their systems. Academics and trade unionists, however, will find it hard to see it as anything other than a further exercise in competitive rankings. However much the OECD claims that this will not be developed as another ranking list, I have no doubt that that is how it will end up a ranking list this time based more on teaching than on research and publications. The basis of the PISA system for schools is standardised tests; and that will be case too for AHELO. Across different countries, different universities and, as Robert Anderson indicated there will still be, for many years anyway, different higher education institutions with different goals, a different way of seeing themselves, different status in society. How can you meaningfully compare across languages, cultures, disciplines, institutions? Would the standardised tests really show anything about how the institution is performing? That would be one of the challenges such a system would have to solve. The OECD plan is that from now until 2010 there will be a feasibility study, starting with the generic skills strand. How can you measure the competence of a student in thinking critical about the subject he or she is studying? It is impossible meaningfully to measure the intellectual process of teaching in higher education. The OECD itself argues that critical students with critical minds are important for the employers; so it is still saying we must teach students to be critical. But how to measure that? I do not think that is a question they will be able to answer. The reality is that the OECD ideologues have fallen in love with the collegial learning assessment system, which runs in some institutions in the USA. But, even there, the system is much criticised. How can it actually encompass the difference between Yale, Berkeley, and other Ivy League universities and (say) a local community college in the Midwest. The differences amongst these institutions are huge and, in this case we are talking about a situation where they are at least, by and large, united by the same language and by having substantially the same cultural base. How to devise a system to measure these things across language, across cultural and other differences? That is what the OECD feasibility study is supposed to show. They have taken two disciplines engineering and economics to try to measure how much knowledge the individual student has actually gained within the discipline. So, for example: before you entered the discipline you did not know how to build a bridge; afterwards you know how to build a bridge. That is a very specific type of knowledge you gain through your higher education in a particular discipline. And then there is the value-added strand. This is when you say what a student did not know before we taught them that they know afterwards; so that is a measurement of the value university teachers added to the workforce. Since that idea of adding value is to be one of the main things higher education institutions will be told they should do, it is clear that we are once again back in the ideology of human resources. As a teacher, you add value to your students, measured as something that will be of use to the employer: and that will be seen as central to the purpose of what you do. Look at all this from a budgetary point of view. Just think how much higher education you could have for 15 million euros, spread over two years: that is what they will be spending on trying to develop this system. It is quite incredible that such sums are being used so tendentiously to develop a system that only aims to promote one view of higher education the idea that it is about adding value to the workforce. Support for the commodification of higher education come also from the General Agreement on Trade and Services (GATS), the brainchild of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). GATS covers four modes of service supply: it is very important to be aware of its implications, and not only for educational services but also for financial services, tourist services, and gaming services. Within these four modes, the member countries of the WTO agree that they will liberalise their systems perhaps with some limitations. In the fourth mode, educational services, for example, they acknowledge that migration issues may come into play the effect of the movement of what they call natural persons. (No one, by the way has explained what an unnatural person would be. Perhaps it would be a way of describing someone who works in the WTO!) The interesting thing is that they say that public services are not included in the liberalisation of services. Where does this put the public responsibilities of universities? In other words, what is meant by public services? What is the borderline between what is public and what is private? In the GATS agreement itself, the line is a very narrow one: it states that a public service is one that is neither commercial nor in competition with other services. Where does this leave higher education? Some institutions are in effect private suppliers. There are private for-profit suppliers, operating on a commercial basis with students paying. Can it be said that, when students pay their tuition fees, it is still a public service? And, if so, is there a limit, a point at which say when over fifty per cent of an institutions funds come from sources other than the public purse it becomes more private than public? Arriving at this sort of definition will obviously be very contentious. In the recent DOHA development round talks, agreement could not be reached because of problems related to primary agriculture and other matters unrelated to higher education. But there have been requests from some countries, led by Australia New Zealand, the USA and others some of the smaller ones have actually formed a group called Friends of Trade in Higher Education to other WTO members, including the EU. Because this is essentially a trading agreement, the EU negotiates for the member states, even though, in education matters generally, it does not have that competency. The EU has been asked by the Friends of Trade in Higher Education countries to agree to define public in higher education as referring only to state-owned universities. But for some European countries Denmark for one this would put all higher education institutions into the private sector because they are self-owned not state-owned. So one small sentence in a trade agreement the way the world works today can, in effect, dramatically change the entire system. One other part of the GATS agreement called Domestic Regulations can even affect some aspects of higher education accreditation, quality control and other things without its even being explicitly mentioned. For example, the Necessities List: higher education may have requirements to providers that can be seen as a burden on trade, perhaps by making it difficult for outside providers to enter into their market. If quality-control or accreditation systems make demands on (say) foreign providers, this could be affected by some of the GATS provisions. The GATS negotiators say quite openly that they cannot be sure about such matters because they are experts in trading regulations and know nothing about higher education, or indeed education in general. The reality is that the effect of their actions on a specific area like higher education is very little understood by the decision-makers. When we look at the European system itself, all the same tensions are present. The modern word for tuition fees is cost-sharing; but it is the same story. The watchwords are competition, partnership with business, employability or added value for the labour market. However the Bologna Process which must not be underestimated if we are to be realistic in understanding the challenges ahead for those of us who are involved in, and care about, the future of our universities is slightly different. When they met in Bologna in 1999, the government ministers could have said that, if students want to go to another university in another European country and buy a chunk of education, they could simply do so and, when they returned to their home institution, they would have to negotiate whether they were able, as it were, to sell it there in exchange for so many credits towards their final degree award. But the ministers did not do that. Instead they decided to try to establish a more transparent system one in which the student knows that there are inter-institutional agreements which should guarantee that the credits and marks earned in the host institution will be accepted, at an equivalent level, when they return to the university from which they will graduate. The Bologna Process is therefore rather more sophisticated: it is not only about trade and commodification of the system. As to the work we do with student unions, Education International, representing European academic trade unionists, has focused on enhancing mobility within the EU. For the students the priority is ensuring recognition for graduating purposes for courses taken in another university. On the staff side what is particularly needed is recognition of our professional status. A professor, or a lecturer, from Poland who wants to work in a Scottish university should not have to start all over again as a probationer. As a teacher, the professional competences she or he has already acquired need to be recognised. This is essential if staff mobility is become an effective reality. There is no doubt that the current direction of thinking about, and policy-formation for, higher education on the international arena points to some nightmare scenarios. But there are also some mechanisms that can be used to defend the real values of universities including academic freedom, institutional autonomy, collegial governance and working conditions. This is not the place to go into all the horrors confronting the Danish system at the moment but I do want to mention a complaint made to UNESCO by the Danish universities teachers union, DM the union I work for in the early part of 2008. It makes the case that Danish university laws actually violate some of the basic principles of the UNESCO recommendation it is the recommendation concerning the Status of Higher Education Teaching Personnel from 1997. The intention is to test whether UNESCO is prepared to rule the legislation in question breaches their protocols. UNESCO recommendations are of course only that recommendations. They are not legally enforceable; and UNESCO cannot make the Danish government change the law. Nevertheless a judgement against the government would be an important addition to our lobbying armoury. After we submitted the complaint, the Danish minister said he was sure the Danish system does meet UNESCO and international standards, but that if it is shown that this is not so he will have to address the matter. I think the UNESCO recommendations should be studies and used in this way as even governments bent on a neo-liberal course usually do not want to be seen to be in breach of such international standards. The Council of Europe, too, in 2006, produced a statement on academic freedom and university autonomy, which can be found on its website, and may be useful in similar ways. My last word in this context is about the Magna Charta Universitatum. It is actually a document, signed by rectors and vice-chancellors, about what a university is and should be. They also have a website, where the text can be read and all the universities that have signed are listed. I attended their annual conference where new principals can come and sign. It is like a Harry Potter movie in which everyone wears funny hats and gowns; but it is significant nonetheless. According to the General Secretary, if a university that has signed is charged with failure to respect the principles of the charter, the matter will be investigated. He has said that, if a letter is received, for example from a trade union, claiming that one or more of the signatory universities is not respecting the charters principles, and if, on investigation, that is shown to be true, the university, or university concerned will be asked to explain. Here is another instrument that can be used if university principals are doing something contrary to the principles that at least some of them have committed their institutions to respect and do everything in their power to implement as the basis for the future of universities. In conclusion, my central point is that, for Education International, education, including higher education, is a general human right. The very real risk is that over-commercialisation and liberalisation of universities too much direct connection of their teaching- and research-related activities of universities to private, for-profit industry will undermine their essential intellectual role. Lacking serious commitment to academic freedom, and reduced to assessing teaching as nothing more than a way of adding value to the student rather than as an intellectual process where the students learn how to think for themselves the university will become the intellectual baby thrown out with commercial bathwater. The issue, as [the chair] Terry Brotherstone said in his introduction, is not that universities were much better in some past golden age: they have of course to develop with the society they are a part of. The choice is not between a neo-liberal, added-value university and an old-fashioned, unchanged and unchallenged institution in an ivory tower. What is needed is a discussion about how universities can both preserve their intellectual status, the very practical and necessary values of genuine academic freedom as the basis for critical thought and original research, while at the same time engaging appropriately in the knowledge economy. Knowledge has always been at the centre of the university and it still is, including its practical applications. A mobile phone a very simple example contains materials that cost very little: much of what you pay for it is the knowledge embedded in it. Of course knowledge has become a bigger part of the economy and of course institutions that produce and disseminate new knowledge will have a more and more important function in the economy. But this must not be at the expense of academic freedom and the values that allow that knowledge to be produced. What is happening in Denmark and, the New Horizons document warns us, here in Scotland, and of course in many other European countries and in the wider Western world, not to mention countries in Africa and Asia is that government policies are directed towards the effective abolition of collegiality in university governance though institutional mergers, the establishment of new types of institutions and restructuring of even long-established institutions. All this is linked to the development of study programmes that focus on employability. The finance is to come more and more from the use of tuition fees and income-contingent loans (in effect regressive taxation). And assessment systems at all levels are being put in place with the object of making universities look good, not ensuring that they actually are good. We talk about world-class institutions. But what is world-class? If you consider that worldwide there are about 17,000 higher education institutions, number 500 would be within the top three per cent. Being in the top three per cent in my view is world-class; but that is not the view being encouraged. World-class institutions, we are encouraged to believe are the top twenty; or the top 100; or at most perhaps the top 200. But surely the top 500, the top three per cent, would be world-class on any rational judgement. Are we concerned with being good or looking good? Are we concerned with universities that can develop knowledge, produce students who are genuinely capable of taking care of humanitys intellectual future? That is the question that should be asked; and I think it is only gatherings such as this that are capable of doing so. IV: The State, the Trade Unions and Governance (i) David Wann The Role of the Funding Council Wann explained that, until retirement in February 2008, he was Deputy Chief Executive of the Scottish Funding Council, since when he had followed with interest the work of the Joint Future Thinking Taskforce on universities. He had been asked by 鶹 Scotland to provide a commentary on its interim report, but he was speaking here for himself, not for the SFC or for 鶹. Throughout the Taskforce report there was a theme of reduced regulation, which could be interpreted as less influence for the SFC; but, Wann thought, the Council would not, in practice, see its importance diminished. The powers and duties of the Council are enshrined in the 2005 Act, which was not to change, nor was there any likelihood of that being revisited in the foreseeable future. The Council would continue to determine the grant allocations to universities and to apply conditions in order to achieve desired outcomes; and to be responsible for approving which bodies are fundable. Wann also expected the SFC to continue to require universities to adhere to the Financial Memorandum especially in the areas of governance, policy delivery, and financial, staffing and asset management. The light touch approach to regulation mentioned in the Report should probably be interpreted as a balanced touch, light where there is clear evidence of a good track record, but strong where the record is mixed or poor; or where there are new issues about which there is no track record. It should be common ground that superfluous detailed monitoring should be eliminated; but the Scottish Parliament and its watchdog, Audit Scotland, would surely continue to require effective regulation. Deregulation in general was no longer universally regarded as beneficial. When the Cabinet Secretary for Education (Fiona Hyslop) met the Council in September 2008, she, according to the minute, described the Council as an agent of change, suggesting that the she envisaged it still having a strong central role, but that it would operate more on the front foot. It would, thought Wann, be likely to continue with its inclusive, consultative approach as required by the legislation. The Taskforce Report, said Wann, had a very strong focus on the economy, which was no surprise, given that that was the Scottish Governments overarching priority, one from which other parties would not dissent, especially in todays economic climate. Inevitably, however, this raised concerns for those who uphold the traditional values of higher education; which made it all the more important that such people were involved in policy development. The First Minister had said that a key characteristic of economic success is the utilisation of a countrys human capital. Wann was at one with him on that and saw it as dovetailing with the people-centred approach advocated by the STUC and 鶹. From the point of view of higher education, the relevant human capital is the graduates who come through the university system each year, and the staff of universities who make it all possible. And if the strong flow of good graduates coming out of our universities is fully to benefit the Scottish economy, the poor capacity of Scotlands employers to absorb them needed to be addressed. This does not apply only to blue-chip companies, in which opportunities, particularly with the credit crunch, will inevitably be scarce. There needed to be improvement in the employability of our graduates and the utilisation of their skills and this statement was based on a good definition of employability one that assumes self-confident graduates with skills to adapt to changing labour markets. Lessons could be learned and applied from projects like Aiming University Learning@Work funded by the SFC, and led by Glasgow University. They include the promotion of self-employment among graduates, important particularly as long as the absorptive capacity of Scottish companies remains weak. Self-employment can be beneficial for graduates themselves and in due course to future generations. There had to be an increase in Knowledge Transfer Partnerships. KTPs normally involve the embedding of a graduate in the work of an employer which traditionally does not employ graduates, with academic staff brokering the process. Existing schemes are successful in giving graduates sustainable opportunities and in improving business productivity, but the volume of activity needed to be scaled up and simplified to reduce transaction costs. The valuable work of academic staff in these innovations also needed to be better recognised. Wann insisted that the strong focus on the economy in the Report would require deeper engagement between universities and business, which must mean more staff as the activity must be additional and not replacement. Careful thinking would be needed to achieve the balance between specialist staff (for example, to develop and manage new relationships with bodies such as local Chambers of Commerce and national industry bodies) and general staff, who need new skills to develop teaching curricula, and research agendas and to embed employability. To achieve the transformational changes needed to address the needs of the economy, Wann thought, requires a national programme of staff development, rather than piecemeal activity. It is vital that the university staff unions are part of such a programme, which ultimately should benefit the country, the students and the staff. Wann realised that many 鶹 members might not want the union to collaborate in this way with what they might see as an ideologically motivated policy, but the much less desirable alternative will be the uninformed imposition of such an agenda by employers. Wann later responded to criticisms of his approach by pointing out that, in his view, the argument for increased funding, particularly in tough times, had to be couched in terms that it would be an investment bringing a return, rather than simply a pouring of money into salaries. He picked up on some particular issues that had been raised. The concern that private companies were being allowed to take over English teaching to overseas students, he thought, should be met by the Funding Councils demand that university managements are responsible, whoever is actually providing the teaching, for quality and standards. He agreed that the current trend was towards a more homogenised university experience not only between institutions in this country but across national boundaries. The upside was the free flow of people in search of enhanced opportunities and bringing new connections; the downside was a reduction of local flexibility and freedom and increased standardisation. (ii) Mary Senior Scottish TUC Policy Senior spoke as the assistant secretary of the Scottish Trades Union Congress. STUC, she said, supported 鶹 in trying to create the space for a wide-ranging discussion on the universities. The Scottish Governments Joint Future Thinking Taskforce on Higher Education, and the Taskforces subsequent interim report New Horizons, first published in June 2008, created concern because of the way key stakeholders had been excluded. This has been widely aired elsewhere, but it had to be emphasised that that the content and the tone of New Horizons even in its final form strongly reflected the membership of the Taskforce. It came as no surprise that university principles want even more autonomy from outside influence and control of their institutions for themselves. In May 2008, the STUC contributed the unions vision for higher education in the coming twenty years to a very brief consultative meeting with the Task Force a vision derived from the thinking of affiliates in the higher education sector (鶹, EIS, Unison and Unite) and it included considerations arising from the work STUC was pursuing through Scottish Union Learning, through which workplace learners have a relationship to higher education. It was a people-centred vision, embracing widening access, but recognising that there are significant barriers to that including making time and securing financial support faced by many. Part-time students have particular funding problems. For the STUC free education is a basic principle, an ambition that remains at the centre of the social aspirations of trade unionists. Through Scottish Union Learning the STUC had learnt how receptive people are to higher study at different points in their lives, but also that the current system often does not permit that. And the evidence is that people from lower socio-economic groups are less likely to be able to benefit from higher education when they are in the 17-21 age group; but are far prepared to do so at later stages in life. Not all ways of delivering higher education, moreover, are suitable for all potential students. There had to be provision that could be delivered in flexible and imaginative ways, accommodating peoples working practices and caring commitments. Employers had to support employees in accessing higher education courses if their full potential is be realised, recognising, as does the STUC, that there are social, economic and cultural benefits to be gained. During an economic downturn in particular the importance of giving people opportunities to develop and enhance their skills and abilities is even more crucial, since individuals life chances in terms of employment, mobility, family life and health outcomes can statistically be shown to improve dramatically with degree-level education. Labour-market predictions, moreover, had underlined the need both for a highly skilled workforce in general, and, in particular, for people with postgraduate qualifications. Widening access would support the development of a high-skill economy with innovations in job design, and more effective utilisation of peoples skills. A people-centred vision for higher education is of a system that supports learners and assists them to progress through learning. It would recognise learners many different individual circumstances and needs, allow them to balance caring, family and work responsibilities with learning, assist Trade Union Learning Reps in workplaces in demystifying higher education for workers, and provide continuing support for those who embark on new learning journeys. Too many people had been turned away from further education by bad experiences at school; and there were great opportunities to, and significant benefits to derive from, reintroducing them to learning in later life. There were already examples of this policy in practice at a number of institutions, and, in 2007, the STUC signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Open University, which is supporting many workers to access flexible learning options. To be people-centred was also to value staff; and in higher education this is fundamental. There had to be a greater acknowledgement of the fact that the quality of education, knowledge transfer, research, student support, and the learning environment is dependent upon recruiting and developing highly motivated academic and support staff; and that this means both an inclusive approach to staff involvement at institutional level and strategic involvement at sector level. It means valuing the contributions made by all staff, providing meaningful continuing professional development opportunities to all staff, and addressing the insecurities faced by too many because of fixed-term contracts, and outsourcing. For the STUC, democracy is vital, and the proposals in New Horizons for a light touch Funding Council had rung alarm bells. Higher education is a public service, funded with significant resources from the public purse, and so the lines of accountability are crucial. These lines, grounded in the 2005 Further and Higher Education Act, regularly refreshed through the Ministerial Guidance letter, and scrutinised through the Scottish Parliaments Education Committee, ensure democratic credibility. This did not contradicting National Strategic Priorities, nor any potential outcome agreements: it was rather a central part of the accountability and governance process. Much had been said about New Horizons new funding proposals around the idea of two funding streams, one general and one horizon. Since the issue of the report, the STUCs dialogue with the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning had been productive and Senior hoped that there was a shared agenda in establishing funding flexible enough to enable effective contributions from academics and institutions. The governments commitment that the Scottish Funding Council will continue to consult widely and look at funding priorities can encourage giving proper value to the full range of academic activities, including teaching, pastoral care, and other more practical contributions, is to be welcomed. Consultation is crucial, and everyone is aware of the Scottish Funding Councils statutory obligations in that regard. Resourcing our ambitions for higher education remained the stumbling block. The STUC would not criticise a Government for increasing spending on the health service, but that was sometimes posed as a justification for abandoning the commitments of the previous administration to higher spending on education. It had to be recognised that a failure to invest in education and training is a failure to invest in the future skills of our people, and the economic and social development of our country. Given the importance that the SNP government places on its Economic Strategy it was disappointing that they have not committed the funding to education and lifelong learning to help to deliver the smarter, wealthier and fairer Scotland they want to see. Later Senior expressed a concern that contributors to the wider debate had shown a tendency to underestimate what the Scottish TUC meant by employability. The Union Learning programme was concerned to enhance and develop human capabilities and talents in creative ways, precisely to assist workers in challenging the often narrow and initiative-stifling values dominant in to many work environments. It was not simply about training for particular jobs. As well as being concerned that employability and vocational programmes should not be narrowly interpreted as necessitating something absolutely opposed to personal liberation, Senior thought it important to stress that government could have a positive and benign role in the further and higher education agendas and that far greater dangers came from the low-tax, hands-off policies that had recently been predominant. She endorsed the concerns of those who had spoken eloquently against casualisation and assured the meeting that the unions were constantly raising the need for extra funding, although this did not always receive favourable press coverage. (iii) Robin Harper MSP A Rectors Perspective Robin Harper, MSP, is a former rector at two universities first, Edinburgh, and more recently, Aberdeen. He pointed out that, at the former, unlike the other three ancient Scottish foundations, the rector is elected by the staff as well as students. Over his four years at Edinburgh a period of considerable upheaval much of his work was in helping staff with their problems with management. It had been useful to be able, outwith the formal appeal procedures, to play a conciliatory role in difficult disputes over regrading, new job descriptions and so on. Student problems had mainly concerned the perennial issues about accommodation and debts rather than complaints about courses and teaching. Harper referred to some comments made by the symposium chair. Terry Brotherstone had spoken of the moves at Aberdeen University to end the right of the rector to chair Court, and Harper, reflecting on his involvement in governance in that role, said he thought that one of the best ways of drawing a rectors teeth was have him or her chairing Court: it was an effective way of reducing the role to the limited though important one of making sure that the students are heard. That ought to be incumbent on any chair of course though Harper said he had seen cases of chairing that was quite brutal in denying those who should have been able to speak the right to do so. Brotherstones view that it was the business interests sitting on governing bodies who had the most influential voice, thought Harper, was right. But such people should not be there to represent business interests as such, but rather to bring expertise that academic staff often lacked. He could not speak in detail about discussions at the two universities he had served, but at both there were issues, for example, in financial matters, in which the input of the lay members were very helpful to him and to the academic administrators. On the issue of academic freedom, Harper thought it a very important; and that principals and senior management had a major role in defining a universitys ethos. Before people go to university, they should have a choice and if all universities were exactly the same they would be denied it. Students want to know which will be the best university for business studies, or for translation work, or for particular science subjects and so forth. Universities should have the freedom to develop specialities. The environment was very competitive, and, from working with both Courts, Harper knew how administrators pore over league-table figures to see if they are number 293 in the world this year and whether they can get into the top 200 or even the top 50. This concentration is symptomatic of a competition some of which is certainly negative. But in the sense that universities can define themselves as being different to other universities, an element of competition is good. Harpers view of the Research Assessment Exercise was that it has been extremely negative. As a former teacher, he said he thought that the majority of students at universities were mainly concerned with how they are taught. Only a minority of very good students want to carry on to do research. Teaching quality should not be made subservient to research, so that a university that comes high in all approval ratings for its teaching might come bottom in an overall rating because of its limited research output. Harper thought this was to get things upside-down. V: Beginning a Democratic Discussion Some of the points made by the key speakers from 鶹 Scotland and NUS Scotland, and in general debate, were as follows. Alastair Hunter, then president-elect of the UK University and College Union, alluded to the importance of Andersons reference to the idea that universities were a trust delivered by the state into particular hands; and to the threats, raised by Jens Vraa Jensen, posed by the GATS agenda. But he was mainly concerned with widening participation, rather than the philosophical aspect of the democratic intellect. Even in Scotland with its lad o pairts tradition, Anderson had shown that participation was as low as 1.9% in the early twentieth century, whereas we speak of targets around 50% which must impact on the character of the degrees made available. Into the 1980s, participation in university education was still confined to what might be described as an elite, who had performed well in school exams. The honours degree made academic demands in a relatively narrow field, or directed students to the vocational requirements of the professions. Selective entrance meant that drop-out rates were low. Hunter thought that were still affected by this relatively recent history, attaching a stigma to non-completion or failure, and paying little attention to the later successes in life of so-called drop-outs, many of whom benefit in their own way from their incomplete university experience. With completion still a standard measurement of success, degree programmes and assessment methods had inevitably been adapted become different though not necessarily worse. In discussing standards there was a need for an honest assessment of such changes and their validity in the 21st century. One little-commented-on consequence was the long hours that many lecturers devoted to helping students who had had little preparation at school for higher study. Hunter said that a specialised degree that prepares a small number for postgraduate research or very particular careers was different from but not necessarily worse than a broader degree that prepares a large number of students for a variety of roles in life. A system that allowed students to be assessed in a variety of ways was not necessarily worse than one that relied on the memory and lateral thinking skills needed to do well in a punishing series of all-or-nothing final examinations. These issues, said Hunter, had to be related to the wider social agenda. If the goal is a society in which the university experience is extended to the widest possible numbers, the modifications in the student experience from what it was in the 1960s and 1970s are probably inevitable. But what was ironical was that a major social goal of all these changes had not been achieved: the most underrepresented social groups in higher education were still those from the most deprived backgrounds. Perhaps, if Scotland were to take a lead to make the lad o pairts rhetoric relevant today this question needed to be more seriously examined. Those coming to university in the 1960s and 1970s were often first-generation students (the first in their families to go to university), but this was now less true. A further point Hunter made was that, in a mass higher education system, a postgraduate degree was increasingly replacing the first degree as the passport to academic distinction; and access to a further degree remained anything but fair and equal. How to extend the right to higher education to postgraduate courses as a truly radical step to democratising opportunity would require funding: should the Scottish four-year degree, which arguably no longer had the same logic behind it as in previous centuries remain sacrosanct? Might a more flexible approach release funds to allow much greater postgraduate fee-support? Challenged later, Hunter said he was not questioning the four-year degree as such; merely drawing attention to the changing patterns of inequality within an underfunded system that politicians have so far shown little will to address. Hunter later responded to points made in discussion by saying that, of course, most people, in embarking on a course of education, have somewhere amongst their priorities the idea that it may benefit them materially. But there was a difference between teachers being aware of that, and making it a consideration in designing courses, and an agenda that would see the content and delivery of courses determined by interests outside the university. Most lecturers were well able to recognise the distinction, and must be allowed to do so. That way students coming to university with narrowly instrumental goals may well have their eyes opened to much more intellectually stimulating possibilities. It was the responsibility of professional, qualified and experienced teachers to give students to offer courses they believe in, not to respond to some perceived popular demand. Gurdjit Singh, then president of the National Union of Students Scotland, said that NUS Scotland wanted an HE system that was free, fair and funded; one in which students could benefit from a world-class higher-education experience with the best lecturers and the best facilities. This would be for the benefit of students themselves and Scotlands future. He drew attention to research suggesting that someone with a degree can expect 80% higher lifetime earnings and greater security than those without qualifications. It was important that all those qualified had access to it. Nor was university only about academic development. Personal and social development was also important and the student experience can widen horizons and the ability to engage constructively in society. Further and higher education, therefore, had to be funded in a way that ensured a high-quality learning experience for all. Volunteering, mentoring, community liaison, exchanges, debates, representation and leadership were all experiences available to students through student unions, which are also an important part of what university and college life is about. Most people who have had the student experience think it should be made available to others. The difficulties that confront students in Scotland today had to be addressed; so that as many as possible could become not just good learners but also better workers, parents, home-owners; and more critical researches, thinkers and teachers. The good work being done in encouraging student involvement at all levels in the universities should be encouraged further. Students are key stakeholders in the future of Scottish HE. Singh thought that New Horizons might provide an opportunity to maximise opportunity. A lighter touch Funding Council approach could give universities the freedom to do what they do best. But monitoring remained important so that underperforming universities could be helped to ensure that all students had equal access to quality learning environments. Outcome agreements between government and universities had to be realistic and serve the best interests of Scotland and Scotlands students. They should involve three key principles: teaching, student involvement and student experience. As to the proposal to have a general fund and a horizon fund, student support must remain in the former, and the big question about the latter was: where was the money coming from, unless something else was to be cut? In the current economic climate, there needed to be an improved relationship between places of learning and workplaces, with employers, who benefit greatly from the former giving something back. Training agreements and placements should become commonplace. But they should be developed in a realistic and reflective way; and universities need the funding to do this. Universities teach many skills presentation, group-working and so on which come as a package with their academic knowledge not as something separate. This should be recognised as preparing students for the world of work. All this could help convince people facing long-term unemployment that finding their way back into education is a way forward towards greater life-chances and relief from the prospect of a life of poverty. NUS Scotlands response to the recent Westminster Green Paper had drawn attention to the failure to mention further education and criticised proposals that will discourage the unemployed from considering this as an option. NUS Scotlands immediate aims were to secure a minimum student income to combat student poverty; and to engage in discussions about how Scottish higher education could remain competitive, how fairer funding could be achieved, how student debt could be reduced. The aim had to be a common effort to secure a secure and viable future for Scotlands universities. Later, in response to other contributions, Singh said that he thought it was unrealistic to discount the fact that employability was a main student concern. Universities showed great concern for the induction of students: they needed to pay more attention to outduction, recognising the multiple skills that students develop at university as a package to be more explicitly recognised and made use of in the way in which higher education prepares people for the world of work. Singh was also concerned about what is often called the democratic deficit. The government had to be accountable if for example the Funding Council could not meet shortfalls in the required student support budget. There had to be redress against universities who were not seen to be spending public money well, spending it for example on expensive and ridiculous marketing campaigns. He thought, too, that there should be greater recognition that league tables mean relatively little to students faced with making their best choice about what course to pursue and where. Universities could do more to inform students about the scientific achievements of staff in the often rather anonymous buildings they passed daily on the way to lectures. Lecturing and research staff were crucial to the quality of the student experience and more could be done to make the link between research and teaching more explicit. Terry Brotherstone drew attention to the difficulty in moving directly from what he thought were the vital keynote contributions with which the symposium began to the more practical discussion that was developing. While the symposiums timing was the result of the failure of the Future Thinking Taskforce to be an inclusive exercise or to produce a report that could meaningfully inform policy beyond the immediate future, its objectives went far beyond the requirements of the current political conjuncture. The idea was to begin a discussion on the relevance to discussion about the longer-term future of Scotlands universities of the historical and international perspectives that Robert Anderson and Jens Vraa Jensen had contributed. But the development of this wider discussion was not something that could be accomplished on a single occasion. In general discussion, there were nonetheless those who thought that there had been too little connection made between the keynote themes and more practical, immediate concerns. Failure of imagination on all sides was a danger, as all interested parties tried too hard to frame their concerns in bureaucratic and managerial terms. The first emphasis, this line of argument went, had to be to explain universities in intellectual terms and, on that basis, to fight for higher education as opposed to training for employment per se. Academic freedom as enshrined in some of the statements that Jens Vraa Jensen had referred to and the UNESCO declaration was central and it was wrong to pretend that the current ideological priorities on university managements did not threaten it. The main justification for state funding of universities, several argued, was the maintenance of critical autonomy. Too often today, within universities that rightly protect their autonomy, its purpose was subverted when critical thinking was bureaucratically centralised into centres of excellence, funded in line with managerial priorities for the prestige of the institution rather than to ensure the freedom of individuals to develop unconventional lines of research and to publicise awkward truths. A second recurrent theme was the undervaluing of teaching. Universities depended on respected teachers, not all of whom might see their research and scholarship as contributing to research assessment exercises. Far from meaning that they should be valued less, these lecturers often played a vital role as contributors to a collegial team and that should be equally recognised. Not to do so was to disregard the views of students for whom the way they are taught was usually their greatest concern. Thirdly, it was forcefully argued, there is a rot at the core of way universities are currently funded and managed. This lay in the treatment of fixed-term and hourly-paid staff. They are essential to the viability of the system and are usually highly committed individuals; yet they are treated as casual labour, condemned to a life of insecurity, liable to be released at relatively short notice from universities to which they are all too often only too anxious to demonstrate their loyalty. Fourthly, a further well-rehearsed subject resurfaced: underfunding. This, it was suggested, was what created the conflict of interest within the university between academic values and dependence on casualised research workers on the one hand and, on the other, the failure to value teachers who are not prominent as published researchers. Fifthly, connected to the funding issue, there arose a further set of issues about academic decision-making. It might still be possible for teachers and researchers to feel meaningfully represented by their union at the level of discussions with government and the funding council, but within institutions most felt disenfranchised. And few, if any, of those who did take the decisions were interested in the alternative vision of higher education one not dominated by simplistic considerations of employability and success in a highly competitive international market that many university teachers and students want to see. Sixthly, it was suggested that good points had been made about universities potential role in attracting life-long learners and about the need to make it possible for those from poorer families to access postgraduate programmes. But this should not be the result of redistributing already inadequate funds within the university and student-support systems. When the billions of pounds being found to bail out culpable bankers were considered, why should universities continue to accept the argument that there is no alternative to underfunding? All the assumptions of the past three decades were now being called into question as the worlds neo-liberals looked to some version of Keynesianism to rescue the situation. The only thing certainty was that there would be changes in higher education and academics and trade unionists should be engaged in arguing for new, genuinely progressive, priorities. Seventhly, more general issues were rehearsed. What is the purpose of higher education: to enable students to get good jobs or to liberate individuals to think for themselves? Real university education, several contributors stated in different ways, should be about personal liberation rather than just employability. Two particular contributions should be specifically mentioned. First, a speaker from the principals representative body, Universities Scotland, countered a suggestion that principals were abusing university autonomy by collaborating in getting staff to submit to government demands to police immigration controls, by pointing out that the principals collectively had in fact spend months arguing against the new government demands, and getting them substantially modified. What was needed, this speaker suggested, was a vigorous united front of unions and employers to demand more funding. He challenged 鶹 particularly to join US in seeking publicity for a reasoned case against underfunding, but the idea that the union had been backward in making such a case was vigorously refuted. Indeed, some argued, it was the behaviour of principals in accepting huge salary rises while others saw their relative pay cut that made the case for additional funding difficult to argue with a sceptical public who only saw this as another example of fat cats on the make. Second, Christopher Harvie, Nationalist MSP and Professor of British Studies at the University of Tbingen, who had written elsewhere about the practical uses to which the idea of the democratic intellect, might be put today, spoke about the ways in which much might be learnt from the ways in which the, in other senses very conservative, tradition of the 19th-century seminar had served to preserve important elements of academic freedom within the German system. Related to this point, an up-to-date regeneration of the value of the old philosophy-based first year of the Scottish degree should be considered as part of the current discussion. Contributing in discussion and in conclusion, Robert Anderson said he thought that the Bologna Charter of 1988 that had been referred to may have to be seen as a classic restatement of principles of academic freedom (in the run-up to the Maastricht agreement), which was more of a swansong for the old university rather than the key to the foundation of new ones. Academic freedom had been an important part of the post-war consensus, when the experience of fascism remained in the public mind and universities were seen as bastions against it. It depended on consensus about what it means and what were the underlying political and social values underpinning it. Maybe that is not the case in the same way now, so that the need for academic freedom could not be isolated from the requirement to re-establish social consensus. In response to some comments about there being greater continuity between the pre-1950s period when an elite went to university with professional careers in view and the mass university of today when the demand was simply for a different range of employment, Anderson acknowledged some force in the point, although in those days there was not the same division between education and training. On the idea that a recession would boost university attendance potentially allowing for a serious discussion about what education they should provide at a time when the job market itself would be uncertain, he thought history gives contradictory messages. In Glasgow in the 1930s there were signs of people seeking to prolong the university experience; on the other hand public expenditure cuts meant a declining demand for schoolteachers so that the percentage of women graduating feel. At many moments of historical crisis it should also be remembered the authorities became afraid of universities which might produce too many people overeducated for the opportunities available who might turn towards revolutionary activity. Jens Vraa Jensen came back on the question of accountability. Accountability of whom, to whom and for what? Universities should be accountable to the long-term needs of society and the way knowledge is and can be developed for intellectual improvement and human need. Accountability for short-term goals on the basis of assessments covering only a few years or even less was not what should be required of them. And employability was a term that needed to be questioned: a graduate with a degree in archaeology might have knowledge that could be put to creative use in a toy factory, but that was something very different from establishing degrees in toy manufacture, because of a market demand. Narrow focus on skills-training, as others had said, is counter-productive in todays world especially: a skill that is high demand today may well be redundant a year or two hence. VI: Looking to the Future: the Green Paper 鶹 Scotland welcomes the discussion now called for by the Cabinet Secretary and in addition to this report is encouraging its members to raise both their immediate concerns and their positive ideas with him and his colleagues. We would stress however that this report provides an important historical and international context that should not be dismissed as mere background. In the absence of the Scottish Robbins Report for the 21st Century we have advocated, we believe this report provides an important starting point. It has been pointed out that history provides no mechanical answers to the problems that HE internationally now faces. But it does suggest that there are always alternatives and that successful policy has to be based on a sensitive reading of the past, the gathering of serious sociological evidence and frank, democratic debate about what universities are, what they should aspire to be, and what balance they should aim to achieve between their role as educators of the next generation and innovators in scientific and humane research. As Robert Anderson argued, those who stress rightly in our view the crucial role of academic freedom in underpinning universities educational, research roles and the need for them to be autonomous centres of social critique must be ready to engage in democratic debate about how it should be defined in relationship to the social needs of a particular period. We might add that university autonomy and academic freedom are not today the near synonyms they appeared to be in the days of Lord Robbins and those who pushed forward the expansionist policy his report endorsed. It is essential that governments, in facing challenging times, are not rushed into pragmatic decisions that simply endorse the current structures of university governance while calling on them to deliver government policies with less public money. This situation is, moreover, a real challenge for the devolution settlement and its evolution, not to mention for the national conversation that the SNP has decided to extend into the next Holyrood election and beyond. Scotlands universities do have a distinctive history, one that Robbins did not have to go all the way with G. E. Davie who elevated that history, with its particular philosophical outlook, almost to the status of a national ideology to celebrate. No one would now suggest that reiterations of the idea of Scotlands democratic intellectualism (Walter Eliot) or democratic intellect (Davie) will provide answers to the difficult questions now posed. But a critical interrogation of that idea in 21st-century circumstances could be the inspiration for a Scottish strategy for higher education that would provide an example to a post-neoliberal world that, at Westminster and in other major centres of the west, has still found no practical alternatives to neoliberalism. In short, 鶹 Scotland endorses the Scottish TUC campaign against swingeing public service cuts in general There Is a Better Way. But we also believe that Scotlands universities working democratically with a government, which seriously believes in higher education as an essential benefit to the Scottish people and their society, and is prepared to persuade its electorate that the Scottish universities should continue to be part of a publicly well-funded system should have a critical role in the redefinition of the political priorities of the next period. Heavy industry, silicon glen, the financial sector: all in turn have been hailed as Scotlands philosophers stone, but have turned in time, certainly if over-relied upon, into fools gold. The universities, at the pinnacle of a historically admired but also in-need-of-critical-scrutiny educational system, retain their essential role. They remain, given support and internal reform, at the service of the Scottish people and their future prosperity. VII: Appendices A: Some useful urls and references. Stefan Collini, HiEdBiz and Brownes Gamble from the London Review of Books http://www.lrb.co.uk/v25/n21/stefan-collini/hiedbiz http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n21/stefan-collini/brownes-gamble Stephen Head The Grim Threat to British Universities from the New York Review of Books http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/jan/13/grim-threat-british-universities/ Walter Humes, Tribalism and Competitive Branding in (Scottish) Higher Education, Scottish Educational Review, vol. 42, no. 2 (November, 2010). Bridget Fowler, Sociology and the Cuts, British Sociological Association blog at  HYPERLINK "http://sociologyandthecuts.wordpress.com/2011/01/06/the-new-mode-of-funding-by-bridget-fowler/" http://sociologyandthecuts.wordpress.com/2011/01/06/the-new-mode-of-funding-by-bridget-fowler/ B: For reference and as a reminder of the international consensus on the need for universities to be collegial institutions founded on responsibly exercised academic freedom. UNESCO on academic freedom The Recommendation concerning the Status of Higher-Education Teaching Personnel, signed on 11 November 1997 at the General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Paris concerned the responsibility of states for the provision of education for all in fulfilment of Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). It referred particularly to responsibility for the provision of higher education in fulfilment of Article 13, paragraph 1(c), of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966). It affirmed that that higher education and research are instrumental in the pursuit, advancement and transfer of knowledge and constitute an exceptionally rich cultural and scientific asset; and that governments and important social groups, such as students, industry and labour, are vitally interested in and benefit from the services and outputs of the higher education systems. It therefore recognised the decisive role of higher education teaching personnel in the advancement of higher education, and the importance of their contribution to the development of humanity and modern society, and that higher-education teaching personnel, like all other citizens, are expected to endeavour to enhance the observance in society of the cultural, economic, social, civil and political rights of all peoples. In expressing concern that, because of the need to reshape higher education to meet social and economic changes and for higher education teaching personnel to participate in this process, the academic community could be vulnerable to untoward political pressures which could undermine academic freedom; and asserted that the right to education, teaching and research can only be fully enjoyed in an atmosphere of academic freedom and autonomy for institutions of higher education and that the open communication of findings, hypotheses and opinions lies at the very heart of higher education and provides the strongest guarantee of the accuracy and objectivity of scholarship and research. Despite the diversity of situations in different countries with regard to patterns and organization of higher education, it held that similar questions arise in all countries with regard to the status of higher education teaching personnel and that these questions call for the adoption of common approaches and so far as practicable the application of common standards ... Referring to previous UNESCO instruments, including those of the International Labour Organization on freedom of association and the right to organize and to collective bargaining and on equality of opportunity and treatment, it made recommendations of particular relevance to higher education institutions and their teaching and research personnel. The first section of the Recommendations deals with definitions of higher education, research, scholarship, extension work, institutions of higher education, and higher-education teaching personnel, all of whom, it states in section 2, are covered by the recommendations. There follow (section 3) guiding principles, including education for peace and in the culture of peace; education to create qualified and cultivated graduates of higher education institutions, capable of serving the community as responsible citizens and undertaking effective scholarship and advanced research and, as a consequence, a corps of talented and highly qualified higher-education teaching personnel. It makes clear that institutions of higher education, and more particularly universities, are communities of scholars preserving, disseminating and expressing freely their opinions on traditional knowledge and culture, and pursuing new knowledge without constriction by prescribed doctrines; and that advances in higher education, scholarship and research depend largely on infrastructure and resources, both human and material, and on the qualifications and expertise of higher-education teaching personnel as well as on their human, pedagogical and technical qualities, underpinned by academic freedom, professional responsibility, collegiality and institutional autonomy. University teaching is to be seen both as a profession and a form of public service that requires of higher education personnel expert knowledge and specialized skills acquired and maintained through rigorous and lifelong study and research ... a commitment to high professional standards in scholarship and research. Accordingly working conditions for higher-education teaching personnel should be such as will best promote effective teaching, scholarship, research and extension work and enable higher-education teaching personnel to carry out their professional tasks. Furthermore, organizations which represent higher-education teaching personnel should be considered and recognized as a force which can contribute greatly to educational advancement and which should, therefore, be involved, together with other stakeholders and interested parties, in the determination of higher education policy, and there should be respect for the diversity of higher education institution systems in each Member State in accordance with its national laws and practices as well as with international standards. Objectives and policies in line with these principles follow in section 4. In planning for higher education, States should ensure that it is directed to human development and to the progress of society; it contributes to the achievement of the goals of lifelong learning and to the development of other forms and levels of education; that where public funds are appropriated for higher education institutions, such funds are treated as a public investment, subject to effective public accountability; and that the returns on [such public investment] are, for the most part, necessarily long term, though subject to government and public priorities that have to be justified before public opinion. HE staff require access to libraries which have up-to-date collections reflecting diverse sides of an issue, and whose holdings are not subject to censorship or other forms of intellectual interference... [and] access, without censorship, to international computer systems, satellite programmes and databases required for their teaching, scholarship or research. Publication and dissemination of research should be encouraged and facilitated with proper attribution of authorship. And the intellectual property of higher-education teaching personnel should benefit from appropriate legal protection, and in particular the protection afforded by national and international copyright law. The free exchange of ideas should be actively promoted, requiring that higher-education teaching personnel should be enabled throughout their careers to participate in international gatherings on higher education or research, to travel abroad without political restrictions and to use the Internet or video-conferencing for these purposes; and that there is the broadest exchange of higher-education teaching personnel between institutions, both nationally and internationally, including [inter alia] the organization of symposia, seminars and collaborative projects... Conscious of the exodus of higher-education teaching personnel from the ... least developed countries, however, Sates and institutions should encourage aid programmes to the developing countries to help sustain an academic environment which offers satisfactory conditions of work for higher-education teaching personnel ... It is also important that just and reasonable national policies and practices for the recognition of degrees and of credentials for the practice of the higher education profession from other states should be established that are consistent with the UNESCO Recommendation on the Recognition of Studies and Qualifications in Higher Education of 1993. The sections on institutional autonomy and academic freedom are worth full reproduction. V. Institutional rights, duties and responsibilities A. Institutional autonomy 17. The proper enjoyment of academic freedom and compliance with the duties and responsibilities listed below require the autonomy of institutions of higher education. Autonomy is that degree of self-governance necessary for effective decision making by institutions of higher education regarding their academic work, standards, management and related activities consistent with systems of public accountability, especially in respect of funding provided by the state, and respect for academic freedom and human rights. However, the nature of institutional autonomy may differ according to the type of establishment involved. 18. Autonomy is the institutional form of academic freedom and a necessary precondition to guarantee the proper fulfilment of the functions entrusted to higher-education teaching personnel and institutions. 19. Member States are under an obligation to protect higher education institutions from threats to their autonomy coming from any source. 20. Autonomy should not be used by higher education institutions as a pretext to limit the rights of higher-education teaching personnel provided for in this Recommendation or in other international standards set out in the appendix. 21. Self-governance, collegiality and appropriate academic leadership are essential components of meaningful autonomy for institutions of higher education. B. Institutional accountability 22. In view of the substantial financial investments made, Member States and higher education institutions should ensure a proper balance between the level of autonomy enjoyed by higher education institutions and their systems of accountability. Higher education institutions should endeavour to open their governance in order to be accountable. They should be accountable for: (a)effective communication to the public concerning the nature of their educational mission; (b)a commitment to quality and excellence in their teaching, scholarship and research functions, and an obligation to protect and ensure the integrity of their teaching, scholarship and research against intrusions inconsistent with their academic missions; (c)effective support of academic freedom and fundamental human rights; (d)ensuring high quality education for as many academically qualified individuals as possible subject to the constraints of the resources available to them; (e)a commitment to the provision of opportunities for lifelong learning, consistent with the mission of the institution and the resources provided; (f)ensuring that students are treated fairly and justly, and without discrimination; (g)adopting policies and procedures to ensure the equitable treatment of women and minorities and to eliminate sexual and racial harassment; (h)ensuring that higher education personnel are not impeded in their work in the classroom or in their research capacity by violence, intimidation or harassment; (i)honest and open accounting; (j)efficient use of resources; (k)the creation, through the collegial process and/or through negotiation with organizations representing higher-education teaching personnel, consistent with the principles of academic freedom and freedom of speech, of statements or codes of ethics to guide higher education personnel in their teaching, scholarship, research and extension work; (l)assistance in the fulfilment of economic, social, cultural and political rights while striving to prevent the use of knowledge, science and technology to the detriment of those rights, or for purposes which run counter to generally accepted academic ethics, human rights and peace; (m)ensuring that they address themselves to the contemporary problems facing society; to this end, their curricula, as well as their activities, should respond, where appropriate, to the current and future needs of the local community and of society at large, and they should play an important role in enhancing the labour market opportunities of their graduates; (n)encouraging, where possible and appropriate, international academic co-operation which transcends national, regional, political, ethnic and other barriers, striving to prevent the scientific and technological exploitation of one state by another, and promoting equal partnership of all the academic communities of the world in the pursuit and use of knowledge and the preservation of cultural heritages; (o)ensuring up-to-date libraries and access, without censorship, to modern teaching, research and information resources providing information required by higher-education teaching personnel or by students for teaching, scholarship or research; (p)ensuring the facilities and equipment necessary for the mission of the institution and their proper upkeep; (q)ensuring that when engaged in classified research it will not contradict the educational mission and objectives of the institutions and will not run counter to the general objectives of peace, human rights, sustainable development and environment. 23. Systems of institutional accountability should be based on a scientific methodology and be clear, realistic, cost-effective and simple. In their operation they should be fair, just and equitable. Both the methodology and the results should be open. 24. Higher education institutions, individually or collectively, should design and implement appropriate systems of accountability, including quality assurance mechanisms to achieve the above goals, without harming institutional autonomy or academic freedom. The organizations representing higher-education teaching personnel should participate, where possible, in the planning of such systems. Where state-mandated structures of accountability are established, their procedures should be negotiated, where applicable, with the institutions of higher education concerned and with the organizations representing higher-education teaching personnel. VI. Rights and freedoms of higher-education teaching personnel A. Individual rights and freedoms: civil rights, academic freedom, publication rights, and the international exchange of information 25. Access to the higher education academic profession should be based solely on appropriate academic qualifications, competence and experience and be equal for all members of society without any discrimination. 26. Higher-education teaching personnel, like all other groups and individuals, should enjoy those internationally recognized civil, political, social and cultural rights applicable to all citizens. Therefore, all higher-education teaching personnel should enjoy freedom of thought, conscience, religion, expression, assembly and association as well as the right to liberty and security of the person and liberty of movement. They should not be hindered or impeded in exercising their civil rights as citizens, including the right to contribute to social change through freely expressing their opinion of state policies and of policies affecting higher education. They should not suffer any penalties simply because of the exercise of such rights. Higher-education teaching personnel should not be subject to arbitrary arrest or detention, nor to torture, nor to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. In cases of gross violation of their rights, higher-education teaching personnel should have the right to appeal to the relevant national, regional or international bodies such as the agencies of the United Nations, and organizations representing higher-education teaching personnel should extend full support in such cases. 27. The maintaining of the above international standards should be upheld in the interest of higher education internationally and within the country. To do so, the principle of academic freedom should be scrupulously observed. Higher-education teaching personnel are entitled to the maintaining of academic freedom, that is to say, the right, without constriction by prescribed doctrine, to freedom of teaching and discussion, freedom in carrying out research and disseminating and publishing the results thereof, freedom to express freely their opinion about the institution or system in which they work, freedom from institutional censorship and freedom to participate in professional or representative academic bodies. All higher-education teaching personnel should have the right to fulfil their functions without discrimination of any kind and without fear of repression by the state or any other source. Higher-education teaching personnel can effectively do justice to this principle if the environment in which they operate is conducive, which requires a democratic atmosphere; hence the challenge for all of developing a democratic society. 28. Higher-education teaching personnel have the right to teach without any interference, subject to accepted professional principles including professional responsibility and intellectual rigour with regard to standards and methods of teaching. Higher-education teaching personnel should not be forced to instruct against their own best knowledge and conscience or be forced to use curricula and methods contrary to national and international human rights standards. Higher education teaching personnel should play a significant role in determining the curriculum. 29. Higher-education teaching personnel have a right to carry out research work without any interference, or any suppression, in accordance with their professional responsibility and subject to nationally and internationally recognized professional principles of intellectual rigour, scientific inquiry and research ethics. They should also have the right to publish and communicate the conclusions of the research of which they are authors or co-authors, as stated in paragraph 12 of this Recommendation. 30. Higher-education teaching personnel have a right to undertake professional activities outside of their employment, particularly those that enhance their professional skills or allow for the application of knowledge to the problems of the community, provided such activities do not interfere with their primary commitments to their home institutions in accordance with institutional policies and regulations or national laws and practice where they exist. B. Self-governance and collegiality 31. Higher-education teaching personnel should have the right and opportunity, without discrimination of any kind, according to their abilities, to take part in the governing bodies and to criticize the functioning of higher education institutions, including their own, while respecting the right of other sections of the academic community to participate, and they should also have the right to elect a majority of representatives to academic bodies within the higher education institution. 32. The principles of collegiality include academic freedom, shared responsibility, the policy of participation of all concerned in internal decision making structures and practices, and the development of consultative mechanisms. Collegial decision-making should encompass decisions regarding the administration and determination of policies of higher education, curricula, research, extension work, the allocation of resources and other related activities, in order to improve academic excellence and quality for the benefit of society at large. VII. Duties and responsibilities of higher education teaching personnel 33. Higher-education teaching personnel should recognize that the exercise of rights carries with it special duties and responsibilities, including the obligation to respect the academic freedom of other members of the academic community and to ensure the fair discussion of contrary views. Academic freedom carries with it the duty to use that freedom in a manner consistent with the scholarly obligation to base research on an honest search for truth. Teaching, research and scholarship should be conducted in full accordance with ethical and professional standards and should, where appropriate, respond to contemporary problems facing society as well as preserve the historical and cultural heritage of the world. 34. In particular, the individual duties of higher education teaching personnel inherent in their academic freedom are: (a) to teach students effectively within the means provided by the institution and the state, to be fair and equitable to male and female students and treat those of all races and religions, as well as those with disabilities, equally, to encourage the free exchange of ideas between themselves and their students, and to be available to them for guidance in their studies. Higher-education teaching personnel should ensure, where necessary, that the minimum content defined in the syllabus for each subject is covered; (b) to conduct scholarly research and to disseminate the results of such research or, where original research is not required, to maintain and develop their knowledge of their subject through study and research, and through the development of teaching methodology to improve their pedagogical skills; (c) to base their research and scholarship on an honest search for knowledge with due respect for evidence, impartial reasoning and honesty in reporting; (d) to observe the ethics of research involving humans, animals, the heritage or the environment; (e) to respect and to acknowledge the scholarly work of academic colleagues and students and, in particular, to ensure that authorship of published works includes all who have materially contributed to, and share responsibility for, the contents of a publication; (f) to refrain from using new information, concepts or data that were originally obtained as a result of access to confidential manuscripts or applications for funds for research or training that may have been seen as the result of processes such as peer review, unless the author has given permission; (g) to ensure that research is conducted according to the laws and regulations of the state in which the research is carried out, that it does not violate international codes of human rights, and that the results of the research and the data on which it is based are effectively made available to scholars and researchers in the host institution, except where this might place respondents in peril or where anonymity has been guaranteed; (h) to avoid conflicts of interest and to resolve them through appropriate disclosure and full consultation with the higher education institution employing them, so that they have the approval of the aforesaid institution; (i) to handle honestly all funds entrusted to their care for higher education institutions for research or for other professional or scientific bodies; (j) to be fair and impartial when presenting a professional appraisal of academic colleagues and students; (k) to be conscious of a responsibility, when speaking or writing outside scholarly channels on matters which are not related to their professional expertise, to avoid misleading the public on the nature of their professional expertise; (l) to undertake such appropriate duties as are required for the collegial governance of institutions of higher education and of professional bodies. 35. Higher-education teaching personnel should seek to achieve the highest possible standards in their professional work, since their status largely depends on themselves and the quality of their achievements. 36. Higher-education teaching personnel should contribute to the public accountability of higher education institutions without, however, forfeiting the degree of institutional autonomy necessary for their work, for their professional freedom and for the advancement of knowledge. VIII. Preparation for the profession 37. Policies governing access to preparation for a career in higher education rest on the need to provide society with an adequate supply of higher-education teaching personnel who possess the necessary ethical, intellectual and teaching qualities and who have the required professional knowledge and skills. 38. Preparation of higher-education teaching personnel should be free from any form of discrimination. 39. Amongst candidates seeking to prepare for a career in higher education, women and members of minorities with equal academic qualifications and experience should be given equal opportunities and treatment. IX. Terms and conditions of employment A. Entry into the academic profession 40. The employers of higher-education teaching personnel should establish such terms and conditions of employment as will be most conducive for effective teaching and/or research and/or scholarship and/or extension work and will be fair and free from discrimination of any kind. 41. Temporary measures aimed at accelerating de facto equality for disadvantaged members of the academic community should not be considered discriminatory, provided that these measures are discontinued when the objectives of equality of opportunity and treatment have been achieved and systems are in place to ensure the continuance of equality of opportunity and treatment. 42. A probationary period on initial entry to teaching and research in higher education is recognized as the opportunity for the encouragement and helpful initiation of the entrant and for the establishment and maintenance of proper professional standards, as well as for the individuals own development of his/her teaching and research proficiency. The normal duration of probation should be known in advance and the conditions for its satisfactory completion should be strictly related to professional competence. If such candidates fail to complete their probation satisfactorily, they should have the right to know the reasons and to receive this information sufficiently in advance of the end of the probationary period to give them a reasonable opportunity to improve their performance. They should also have the right to appeal. 43. Higher-education teaching personnel should enjoy: (a) a just and open system of career development including fair procedures for appointment, tenure where applicable, promotion, dismissal, and other related matters; (b) an effective, fair and just system of labour relations within the institution, consistent with the international standards set out in the appendix. 44. There should be provisions to allow for solidarity with other institutions of higher education and with their higher-education teaching personnel when they are subject to persecution. Such solidarity may be material as well as moral and should, where possible, include refuge and employment or education for victims of persecution. B. Security of employment 45. Tenure or its functional equivalent, where applicable, constitutes one of the major procedural safeguards of academic freedom and against arbitrary decisions. It also encourages individual responsibility and the retention of talented higher-education teaching personnel. 46. Security of employment in the profession, including tenure or its functional equivalent, where applicable, should be safeguarded as it is essential to the interests of higher education as well as those of higher-education teaching personnel. It ensures that higher-education teaching personnel who secure continuing employment following rigorous evaluation can only be dismissed on professional grounds and in accordance with due process. They may also be released for bona fide financial reasons, provided that all the financial accounts are open to public inspection, that the institution has taken all reasonable alternative steps to prevent termination of employment, and that there are legal safeguards against bias in any termination of employment procedure. Tenure or its functional equivalent, where applicable, should be safeguarded as far as possible even when changes in the organization of or within a higher education institution or system are made, and should be granted, after a reasonable period of probation, to those who meet stated objective criteria in teaching, and/or scholarship, and/or research to the satisfaction of an academic body, and/or extension work to the satisfaction of the institution of higher education. C. Appraisal 47. Higher education institutions should ensure that: (a) evaluation and assessment of the work of higher-education teaching personnel are an integral part of the teaching, learning and research process, and that their major function is the development of individuals in accordance with their interests and capacities; (b) evaluation is based only on academic criteria of competence in research, teaching and other academic or professional duties as interpreted by academic peers; (c) evaluation procedures take due account of the difficulty inherent in measuring personal capacity, which seldom manifests itself in a constant and unfluctuating manner; (d) where evaluation involves any kind of direct assessment of the work of higher-education teaching personnel, by students and/or fellow colleagues and/or administrators, such assessment is objective and the criteria and the results are made known to the individual(s) concerned; (e) the results of appraisal of higher-education teaching personnel are also taken into account when establishing the staffing of the institution and considering the renewal of employment; (f) higher-education teaching personnel have the right to appeal to an impartial body against assessments which they deem to be unjustified. D. Discipline and dismissal 48. No member of the academic community should be subject to discipline, including dismissal, except for just and sufficient cause demonstrable before an independent third-party hearing of peers, and/or before an impartial body such as arbitrators or the courts. 49. All members of higher-education teaching personnel should enjoy equitable safeguards at each stage of any disciplinary procedure, including dismissal, in accordance with the international standards set out in the appendix. 50. Dismissal as a disciplinary measure should only be for just and sufficient cause related to professional conduct, for example: persistent neglect of duties, gross incompetence, fabrication or falsification of research results, serious financial irregularities, sexual or other misconduct with students, colleagues, or other members of the academic community or serious threats thereof, or corruption of the educational process such as by falsifying grades, diplomas or degrees in return for money, sexual or other favours or by demanding sexual, financial or other material favours from subordinate employees or colleagues in return for continuing employment. 51. Individuals should have the right to appeal against the decision to dismiss them before independent, external bodies such as arbitrators or the courts, with final and binding powers. E. Negotiation of terms and conditions of employment 52. Higher-education teaching personnel should enjoy the right to freedom of association, and this right should be effectively promoted. Collective bargaining or an equivalent procedure should be promoted in accordance with the standards of the International Labour Organization (ILO) set out in the appendix. 53. Salaries, working conditions and all matters related to the terms and conditions of employment of higher-education teaching personnel should be determined through a voluntary process of negotiation between organizations representing higher-education teaching personnel and the employers of higher education teaching personnel, except where other equivalent procedures are provided that are consistent with international standards. 54. Appropriate machinery, consistent with national laws and international standards, should be established by statute or by agreement whereby the right of higher-education teaching personnel to negotiate through their organizations with their employers, whether public or private, is assured. Such legal and statutory rights should be enforceable through an impartial process without undue delay. 55. If the process established for these purposes is exhausted or if there is a breakdown in negotiations between the parties, organizations of higher-education teaching personnel should have the right to take such other steps as are normally open to other organizations in the defence of their legitimate interests. 56. Higher-education teaching personnel should have access to a fair grievance and arbitration procedure, or the equivalent, for the settlement of disputes with their employers arising out of terms and conditions of employment. F. Salaries, workload, social security benefits, health and safety 57. All financially feasible measures should be taken to provide higher-education teaching personnel with remuneration such that they can devote themselves satisfactorily to their duties and allocate the necessary amount of time for the continuing training and periodic renewal of knowledge and skills that are essential at this level of teaching. 58. The salaries of higher-education teaching personnel should: (a) reflect the importance to society of higher education and hence the importance of higher-education teaching personnel as well as the different responsibilities which fall to them from the time of their entry into the profession; (b) be at least comparable to salaries paid in other occupations requiring similar or equivalent qualifications; (c) provide higher-education teaching personnel with the means to ensure a reasonable standard of living for themselves and their families, as well as to invest in further education or in the pursuit of cultural or scientific activities, thus enhancing their professional qualifications; (d) take account of the fact that certain posts require higher qualifications and experience and carry greater responsibilities; (e) be paid regularly and on time; (f) be reviewed periodically to take into account such factors as a rise in the cost of living, increased productivity leading to higher standards of living, or a general upward movement in wage or salary levels. 59. Salary differentials should be based on objective criteria. 60. Higher-education teaching personnel should be paid on the basis of salary scales established in agreement with organizations representing higher-education teaching personnel, except where other equivalent procedures consistent with international standards are provided. During a probationary period or if employed on a temporary basis qualified higher-education teaching personnel should not be paid on a lower scale than that laid down for established higher education teaching personnel at the same level. 61. A fair and impartial merit-rating system could be a means of enhancing quality assurance and quality control. Where introduced and applied for purposes of salary determination it should involve prior consultation with organizations representing higher-education teaching personnel. 62. The workload of higher-education teaching personnel should be fair and equitable, should permit such personnel to carry out effectively their duties and responsibilities to their students as well as their obligations in regard to scholarship, research and/or academic administration, should provide due consideration in terms of salary for those who are required to teach beyond their regular workload, and should be negotiated with the organizations representing higher-education teaching personnel, except where other equivalent procedures consistent with international standards are provided. 63. Higher-education teaching personnel should be provided with a work environment that does not have a negative impact on or affect their health and safety and they should be protected by social security measures, including those concerning sickness and disability and pension entitlements, and measures for the protection of health and safety in respect of all contingencies included in the conventions and recommendations of ILO. The standards should be at least as favourable as those set out in the relevant conventions and recommendations of ILO. Social security benefits for higher-education teaching personnel should be granted as a matter of right. 64. The pension rights earned by higher-education teaching personnel should be transferable nationally and internationally, subject to national, bilateral and multilateral taxation laws and agreements, should the individual transfer to employment with another institution of higher education. Organizations representing higher education teaching personnel should have the right to choose representatives to take part in the governance and administration of pension plans designed for higher-education teaching personnel where applicable, particularly those which are private and contributory. G. Study and research leave and annual holidays 65. Higher-education teaching personnel should be granted study and research leave, such as sabbatical leave, on full or partial pay, where applicable, at regular intervals. 66. The period of study or research leave should be counted as service for seniority and pension purposes, subject to the provisions of the pension plan. 67. Higher-education teaching personnel should be granted occasional leave with full or partial pay to enable them to participate in professional activities. 68. Leave granted to higher-education teaching personnel within the framework of bilateral and multilateral cultural and scientific exchanges or technical assistance programmes abroad should be considered as service, and their seniority and eligibility for promotion and pension rights in their home institutions should be safeguarded. In addition, special arrangements should be made to cover their extra expenses. 69. Higher-education teaching personnel should enjoy the right to adequate annual vacation with full pay. H. Terms and conditions of employment of women higher-education teaching personnel 70. All necessary measures should be taken to promote equality of opportunity and treatment of women higher-education teaching personnel in order to ensure, on the basis of equality between men and women, the rights recognized by the international standards set out in the appendix. I. Terms and conditions of employment of disabled higher-education teaching personnel 71. All necessary measures should be taken to ensure that the standards set with regard to the conditions of work of higher-education teaching personnel who are disabled are, as a minimum, consistent with the relevant provisions of the international standards set out in the appendix. J. Terms and conditions of employment of part-time higher-education teaching personnel 72. The value of the service provided by qualified part-time higher-education teaching personnel should be recognized. Higher-education teaching personnel employed regularly on a part-time basis should: (a) receive proportionately the same remuneration as higher-education teaching personnel employed on a full-time basis and enjoy equivalent basic conditions of employment; (b) benefit from conditions equivalent to those of higher-education teaching personnel employed on a full-time basis as regards holidays with pay, sick leave and maternity leave; the relevant pecuniary entitlements should be determined in proportion to hours of work or earnings; (c) be entitled to adequate and appropriate social security protection, including, where applicable, coverage under employers pension schemes. X. Utilization and implementation 73. Member States and higher education institutions should take all feasible steps to extend and complement their own action in respect of the status of higher-education teaching personnel by encouraging co-operation with and among all national and international governmental and nongovernmental organizations whose activities fall within the scope and objectives of this Recommendation. 74. Member States and higher education institutions should take all feasible steps to apply the provisions spelled out above to give effect, within their respective territories, to the principles set forth in this Recommendation. 75. The Director-General will prepare a comprehensive report on the world situation with regard to academic freedom and to respect for the human rights of higher-education teaching personnel on the basis of the information supplied by Member States and of any other information supported by reliable evidence which he/she may have gathered by such methods as he/she may deem appropriate. 76. In the case of a higher education institution in the territory of a state not under the direct or indirect authority of that state but under separate and independent authorities, the relevant authorities should transmit the text of this Recommendation to institutions, so that such institutions can put its provisions into practice. XI. Final provision 77. Where higher-education teaching personnel enjoy a status which is, in certain respects, more favourable than that provided for in this Recommendation, the terms of this Recommendation should not be invoked to diminish the status already recognized. 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