My erstwhile nemesis, Lord May, Unhappy with Gordon Brown, has begun to make some becomingly Tory like noises in Nature :
Even more important, in my opinion, than higher teaching loads and the increasingly fierce competition for grants, is the extreme growth of bureaucracy... universities have matched or exceeded the growth in bureaucrats seen in the civil service. This growth is only partly justified by need.
One issue that Brown might address is that the current number of central administrative staff is roughly equal to the number of faculty for four major UK universities
A rather different issue that has emerged during the Blair decade is the tendency to invite people from the world of business to advise on the management of universities... I think there is an important lesson to be learnt here.
Comments