Who we are
The funding and practical support for this project have generously been made available by the HEFCE Leadership, Governance and Management Fund and our project partners, Leeds Metropolitan University, Staffordshire University, the University of Wolverhampton, the Higher Education Mediation Service of the Oxford Centre for Higher Education Policy Studies, Martineau, Eversheds and Mills & Reeve and the Consortium on Negotiation and Conflict Resolution, College of Law, Georgia State University, USA.
You failed the examination? You are line-manager to someone who is late four mornings a week? There is a demonstration going on outside the lecture-room windows? You have still had no response to the complaint you made six months ago? You've got the sack? Students and employees commonly feel helpless when a dispute emerges because they do not know the rules of engagement. Managers can also find it hard to know where to begin, especially when they do not hear about the problem until it has already become complicated and entrenched.
Universities and other institutions of higher and further education are prone to disputes of extreme complexity and long duration. Such disputes are expensive, and whether the cost is in administrative time or in legal advice, it can escalate alarmingly. They are damaging to reputation, for it is not uncommon for them to get into the newspapers. Students and employees of universities and colleges can spend many years trapped in such situations.
We plan to create through this website a 'project handbook' of which the material made available at the beginning of the project forms a first draft.
Who should read this website?
Anyone likely to become involved in trying to resolve such disputes may find it helpful to use this resource:
- managers and administrators
- students both undergraduate and postgraduate
- academics
- researchers
- other employees
- union representatives
How should this website be used?
- As an aide-memoire. Disputes are less likely to begin if those in positions of authority have certain basic rules in mind and do not make the kinds of mistake which frequently trigger long-running disputes. Learning these rules may be well worth the effort.
- For reference
- For sharing
Contributions and suggested corrections to this website will be welcome at any time. Please contact us making it clear whether you are willing for your comment or correction to be placed on the website and whether you would like acknowledgement and in what form. Please make it clear whether you write as an individual or on behalf of an institution. Responsibility for ensuring that you have authority to represent the views of your institution on the website lies with you as contributor. Contributions may appear anonymously by agreement but we will not accept submissions unless the source is identified.
NOTE TO PRACTISING MEDIATORS
We hope this material will prove useful to experienced mediators too. Mediation is a 'general transferable skill'. It works best if the mediator keeps things simple. But an understanding of the special characteristics of the university environment, the diversity of their contractual relationships with their students and staff, their 'habits' when it comes to the handling of disputes, is likely to enable any mediator to get a better sense of what lies behind the presenting positions of the parties in any dispute. Unless the mediator can do that the mediation is unlikely to succeed.