Following items in Times Higher Education, good friends currently correspond on Twitter concerning first-hand experiences working in different universities in the USA, Germany, and the UK.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve long thought that what is missing from discussion of topics such \u201cmanagement\u201d and \u201cvalue for money\u201d is an agreed description of what is a university\u2019s output or \u201cproduct\u201d. \u00a0Without this, how can we have any idea of effectiveness in deployment of input? \u00a0There seems to be some confusion. I can recall the question going back to to the first UK Research Assessment Exercise in 1986, which followed The Jarratt Report<\/a>. \u00a0I seem to recall Jarratt being quoted as saying that the loudest objections to the idea of university \u201cmanagement\u201d came from departments notorious for \u201cold Spanish practices\u201d. \u00a0I think good and honest Spaniards might well have a phrase about \u201cold English practices\u201d with equal justification, and this is not just my attempt at being PC. \u00a0Anyway, in the department where I worked at that time, I felt I could see exactly what Jarratt had in mind, whichever nationality he chose to sleight. \u00a0Public money was underwriting personal fiefdoms, thinly disguised protection rackets, and arms for endless and pointless wars over who owned which particular piece of academic territory \u2013 what should be taught and researched, and by whom. \u00a0I was temporarily away in a superb US university, and wished my own UK institution would just grow up and get on with the job.<\/p>\n But what exactly is the job?<\/p>\n A decade later than Jarratt, and in Sweden where the same confusion and waste seemed to hold sway, I found that an eminent German visitor had had exactly the same thought as mine. \u00a0\u201dWell, what is all this actually for?\u201d I asked rhetorically. \u00a0\u201dWhat is our product?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe have a product\u201d he replied with conviction. \u00a0\u201dIt is knowledge<\/i>\u201c.<\/p>\n Back in the UK, I more recently wrote the following as a sort of short manifesto. \u00a0It didn\u2019t command much support. Another candidate had read my piece, I think, and his own popular manifesto was emphatic that a university does not have a product. One gathered that it was somehow degrading to think so. He was elected with a clear majority. \u00a0I didn\u2019t mind. He seems to be doing good job to this day.<\/p>\n So, brief manifesto, as follows. \u00a0What is so controversial?<\/p>\n Universities have a product. This product is knowledge. Research produces new knowledge. Teaching distributes it. Successful universities produce and distribute a quality product at a competitive price. Research requires freedom, supportive infrastructure, cooperation, communication, trust. Teaching requires the promotion of existing knowledge within an open society where nothing is beyond question.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Following items in Times Higher Education, good friends currently correspond on Twitter concerning first-hand experiences working in different universities in the USA, Germany, and the UK. I\u2019ve long thought that what is missing from discussion of topics such \u201cmanagement\u201d and \u201cvalue for money\u201d is an agreed description of what is a university\u2019s output or \u201cproduct\u201d. … Continue reading What do universities actually do?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-universities"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jfallen.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jfallen.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jfallen.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jfallen.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jfallen.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jfallen.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":438,"href":"https:\/\/www.jfallen.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions\/438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jfallen.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jfallen.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jfallen.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}