Listening to Administrators about the Future of Universities

At a recent team meeting, my head of department pointed out that the University of Westminster was unusual in that the ratio of academics to administrators fell in the academic’s favour.

Now I can hear academics everywhere starting to spin at the suggestion that they do not universally dominate the staff at Higher Education Institutions. There would be multiple reasons for this not least that they are the intellectual capital in terms of research and teaching. And in many ways it surprised me in that I have always believed that we cannot deliver projects as that is the role of the academic.

However, perhaps I am being a little unduly subservient. The reason that there are often more administrators is partially down to the changing roll of academics: as Bruce Macfarlane points out much of the soft skills (‘careers advice’, ‘study skills’, ‘counselling’ etc.) is being heavily supported by non-academic staff. Also, much of the mark processing, research administration and financial work which used to be primarily focussed on the academic now needs to be supported. Also, society more widely has become more bureaucratic and to ensure legal compliance, Quality/Standards Assurance, Human Resources and Finance Departments have needed to expand. However, not least of this is that we are asking academics to do more as new areas within the university have also grown up, not least my own of research/enterprise/knowledge transfer/business development which requires specialist support. All of this requires detailed knowledge and understanding of universities, how they work and knowledge across a whole host of different disciplines which an individual academic or administrator cannot hold.

And yet, both professionally when discussing projects (‘you can’t understand you’re not an academic’) and academically (‘you struggle to move between your professional and academic lives’), I have been criticised for seeing the world through an administrator’s eyes. Whilst I would agree that I have to be careful in how I see the world, not allowing me to see it and analyse it as an administrator is almost impossible. Just, as I argued at a recent seminar, as it is impossible to ask a Muslim student not to see the world, universities and research through the paradigm of their faith so it is impossible to see the world through anything but the paradigm of an administrator. Humans cannot easily compartmentalise like that. By condemning the administrative aspect of my work, people are limiting the world I can analyse and participate in by reducing and condemning the field within which I operate.
Not only is not possible, it may not be desirable. One of the best academics I know founded the academic enterprise department at Roehampton and has gone on to internationalise Fontys OSO whilst not sacrificing her academic values or quality. By limiting the perspectives with which the world is analysed we risk cutting out cross-sector work and really seeing how Higher Education could work. At a time of budget cuts perhaps all visions are needed rather than one particular type of vision. I have been lucky to be listened to but perhaps this antagonism between academic and non-academic needs to move forward: both sides need to learn.
So, as part of my research I need to find a paradigm that allows for individual perspectives and views of the world, that allows and acknowledges me as a researcher and administrator. In my last blog I mentioned Newman’s ‘Idea of a University’ and he said in this work:

“Nothing is more common than for men to think that because they are familiar with words they understand the ideas they stand for.” (Newman)

Perhaps with some re-thinking I can show that academics alone are not the right people to decide what words stand for.