An address to members by John Freeman-Moir

from today's rally and industrial action:

Everyone knows that salary levels for staff cannot be addressed with the current model of university funding.

We know this, which is why we are here today.

Students know this.

Our Vice-Chancellor knows this: he said as much in his email to us on the twenty-seventh of July.

Roy and his deputy Ian Town, who is an AUS member, should be down here with us, instead of up there on the sixth floor where the air is thin and political thinking is clouded.

Over fifteen long years the current model of funding, a little tinkering to one side, has proved to be decisively incapable of meeting the needs of staff and students. Its defects are as glaring as they are debilitating.

The model is unjust and clumsy and has compromised the development of our universities for more than a decade, weakening that sense of community that brings us together around the goals of education and research.

As an educationist, I deplore a process that continuously undermines teaching, that puts profit before everything else, that so single-mindedly pursues debt reduction that the real purpose of the institution is jeopardised, that has us all, more and more, working for an administration shaped by the chronic over-regulation of chronic under-funding.

The position of our Vice-Chancellor would have us all whimpering that we must accept the regime imposed on universities by successive National and Labour governments.

There are times that call for educational leaders to think intelligently and to display cool determination.

The time is now, for each Vice-Chancellor, for our Vice-Chancellor, for the Vice-Chancellors’ Committee to show what has scarcely been in evidence over the past decade and a half.

In respect of the issues before us, this is the time for them to demonstrate educational imagination, political initiative and administrative creativity: to act as a critic and conscience of university education.

Roy has said that his hands are tied in the matter of salaries.

He writes, “I know that academic staff salaries have fallen behind those in other countries.” He also knows but did not write that the salaries of general staff are falling far behind acceptable levels.

He goes on to say: “I have to be realistic about what this University can afford to pay staff. This is limited by both the level of resourcing that Governments are prepared to commit and also by the ability of students to pay more.”

To which I reply, “bugger realism.”

If universities know one thing it is this: Creativity, initiative, imagination mean being doggedly unrealistic.

Roy must say to government as we say to government, the resources you provide us with are inadequate; the indifference with which you regard the staff of our universities compromises the education of students.

Roy says he has to be realistic. In fact this means caving in, accepting the status quo as if it is a given.

It means adopting the pessimistic position that there is no alternative. We do not believe this; we do not accept this. And neither should Roy.

The consequences of not acting will be to support a future that further weakens the university sector. To enter a MECA, to engage seriously in the Universities Salaries Group, to push the Government hard are the means by which the universities can confront the failure of the current system. The system must go.

Our Vice-Chancellor and his Vice-Chancellor colleagues have an opportunity:

To speak to a vision of resources, funding and remuneration that will strengthen the universities.

This is a historic moment for our Vice Chancellor and for the Vice-Chancellors Committee.

They can choose to pick up the ball and race for the line. Or they can allow themselves to be swamped by short-term pragmatism and wasteful competition.

Roy, as a Vice-Chancellor you are well placed to play a key role in the changes that need to be made. We are well placed to support you in this.

Untie your hands and persuade the other VCs to untie their hands. Give up the idea that nothing can be done; that all is limited.

Drop the defeatist image of the Government defined status quo. Instead, join hands and voice with your staff, and with other Vice-Chancellors, in working for a national solution to salaries. The ball is yours to carry.

For if nothing is done the universities will continue to decline.

And all we will be left with is a share in the common educational unhappiness, and the knowledge that we have betrayed the very people we are here to serve, our students.

It’s time to sharpen up Roy.