What is a university for and how should it be run?
Governance structures of the three kinds of university briefly compared
(for differences in Scotland see Scottish Funding Council website - http://www.sfc.ac.uk/)
The 'new' ( post-1992 ) universities
The 'post-1992 universities are creations of the Further and Higher Education Act 1992. Under this Act the former polytechnics became statutory corporations. Their instruments of government were made by the Privy Council.
Membership of the corporation is restricted to 'not less than twelve and not more than twenty-four', so the new universities did not include among their members their students and graduates and so on.
No more than two of these are allowed to be members of the academic staff and only two may be students. Up to thirteen shall be external members from industry, commerce or the professions or have some knowledge of employment matters. The academic influence is therefore small and most of the governing body may have no insider knowledge of the university.
The Vice-Chancellor is normally present at their meetings, which can make it difficult for the governing body to call him to account or to discuss sensitive issues concerning his conduct in office.
Power in the new universities is concentrated in the hands of the Vice-Chancellor as Chief Executive Officer and he is the only executive member of the governing body.
The Chartered Universities
The second category of university embraces the 'old' ( pre-1992) universities, which were constituted as corporations by charters at various dates from the late nineteenth century but none after the passing of the Further and Higher Education Act, 1992.
Charters:
- Incorporate the university
- Say who its members are
- State who is to be its Visitor
- Establish its structures for purposes of governance
- Explain how its statutes may be changed
- Authorise it to award degrees
For example, the University of Liverpool was first constituted in 1881 by a royal charter creating a college to be known as ‘University College, Liverpool'. In 1903 a second royal charter reconstituted it as ‘the University of Liverpool'. In 1961 and 1969 a new charter reconstituted it once more, removing some 'restrictions'.
The membership of this kind of University corporation includes individuals who stand in varied relationships to it:
'The University shall consist of the Chancellor for the time being, the holders for the time being of the offices of Pro-Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor, President of the Council, Vice-President of the Council, Treasurer, Deputy-Treasurer, Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Dean of a Faculty of the University, the members for the time being of the Court, the Council, the Senate, the Boards of the Faculties and the Convocation of the University, the undergraduates of the University and all others who shall pursuant to this Our Charter and the Statutes of the University for the time being be members of the University, and shall from henceforth for ever be continued and confirmed as one body corporate and politic by the name of ‘The University of Liverpool' .
The structures for governance include a series of stipulated senior postholders:
- a Chancellor
- a Vice-Chancellor (' who shall be the principal Academic and Administrative Officer of the University and ex-officio Chairman of the Senate')
- a President of the Council of the University
- a Treasurer
- a Dean of each Faculty of the University.
There is a Court of the University which elects the Chancellor and three members of the University Council and shall have the right to receive reports on the working of the University.
There is a Council of the University which is its governing body in charge of the management and administration of the whole revenue and property of the University and the conduct of all the affairs of the University.
There is a Senate of the University consisting of the Vice-Chancellor, the Pro-Vice-Chancellors, the Deans of all the Faculties, all the Professors of the University and such other persons as may be prescribed by the Statutes, which has a duty to regulate and superintend the education and discipline of undergraduates and other students of the University.
There are Faculties of Arts, Science, Medicine, Engineering and Veterinary Science etc., and a Board of each Faculty.
There is a Convocation of the University consisting of its graduates who have representatives in the Court.
There is a Guild of Students and a Representative Council of the Guild.
Oxford and Cambridge
Oxford and Cambridge set themselves up as universities eight hundred years ago. They were not founded or created by any outside agency. The teaching Masters (lecturers) constituted themselves a corporation (universitas) in the same way as the merchant and manufacturing guilds did. Universitas simple meant 'guild'.
They came under the jurisdiction of statute law only in the sixteenth century. Since then the state has progressively taken powers to intervene in their affairs, for example, the Oxford and Cambridge Act, 1877, made it possible to require college trusts to make money available for purposes other than those for which they were set up.
Oxford and Cambridge are now civil corporations, subject to the Oxford and Cambridge Act 1923., which means that neither University has a Visitor. Cambridge has a Commissary who acts as a final court of appeal in disputes involving a member of the University, but a high proportion of such matters are expressly excluded from his jurisdiction.
The Colleges remain autonomous bodies. They are run by their Fellows, who elect new Fellows to join them. Each College has a Visitor.
The relationship between the University and the Colleges is both constitutional and financial. The Colleges are responsible for admitting undergraduates, and the University matriculates the students they 'present' to it in a formal ceremony. They receive funding for each student through the University. When students at Oxford and Cambridge 'matriculate', they become members for life. Graduates of Oxford and Cambridge remain members with certain lifetime privileges, such as use of the Bodleian Library (Oxford) and the University Library (Cambridge).
Implications of the College-University duality for students: University and College both have student complaints procedures. In Oxford these are coordinated between University and Colleges. In Cambridge they are not.
The student's contract with the University is complicated by the fact that there is also a contract with the student's College and this can give rise to disputes about which has which duties to the student, and considerable difficulties in deciding which aspects of a complex complaint fall under the jurisdiction of the College and which under that of the University.
Implications of the College-University duality for employees: In Oxford most long-term academic posts are 'conjoint' appointments of the University and a College. In Cambridge there are separate University and College teaching posts, though the distinction is becoming blurred as a result of the introduction of 'affiliated' posts, which place a College lecturer partly under the supervision of a Faculty, with the salary partly provided by a charitable trust funded by Trinity College.
The employment relationship can become very complicated in the case of these affiliated lectureships, and non-renewal of a short-term contract can give rise to a dispute.
Areas of potential dispute may arise from the way contributions to the pension funds are apportioned ( USS for academics and the funds run for their non-academic employees by each University)
Some implications of governance by direct academic democracy
Oxford and Cambridge remain self-governing communities of scholars whose 'governing bodies' consist of several thousand academics and senior administrators, operating as direct democracies. In modern times their decision-making has largely been reduced to a power of veto with major as well as minor decisions being made in practice by senior officers of the universities and by committees to which powers have been delegated. The governing body can, nevertheless, call for a debate on any matter or require that it be put to the vote and it can initiate legislative proposals itself.
The legislative governing body with general powers of veto over the executive Council in Oxford is known as Congregation; its counterpart and in Cambridge is The Regent House.
In Oxford and Cambridge academic staff, senior administrators and Fellows of Colleges are members of the governing body and have the vote.
In Cambridge those holding posts defined as University Offices are automatically members of the Regent House. Others in posts not so designated but involving identical duties are not. This creates anomalies not only because one category of employee has the vote and the other does not, but because one group has procedural protections which are not available to the other.
Both Universities have executive Councils together with two (Cambridge) and four (Oxford) external members.
In both Universities the administration is in principle run as a civil service and is not a 'management' with line-management powers.
So what are universities allowed to do?
The boundaries of autonomy in universities are set out in their charters and in statute. They chiefly concern:
- their right to admit their own students and design their own courses and run their own examinations and award their own degrees
- their right to administer their estates and spend their money as they see fit
- their right to hire and fire their staff.
- their right to form and terminate other contracts
- their right to form partnerships for various purposes.
Disputes can arise if there is abuse of these powers through:
- ultra vires actions
- failure to follow agreed or statutory procedures
- delay
- other forms of mismanagement and maladministration
If it is not made clear to senior managers/administrators and to academics where the powers of decision-making in the university lie and what are the limits of their own authority, they may act in a way which leads to dispute.