AUS Submission on the College of Arts Change Proposal

We will make a difference by…the inclusiveness and transparency we bring to our decision-making
University of Canterbury Charter, p. 3

Introductory Statement

The Association of University Staff (AUS) makes this submission to the review panel of the College of Arts Change Proposal without prejudice to any legal question or issues that arise in relation to the legitimacy of substance or procedural issues arising from the College of Arts Change Proposal.

The AUS represents the single largest voice of staff at the UC. A product of the trade union movement, the AUS is part of the constant advocacy and championing of social change. We are therefore not frightened of change nor resistant to it.

What appears to be change is sometimes just the opposite: the use of privileged positions within society or an institution to effect agendas held by a minority that are themselves not open to inspection of their views. In a university, such tactics are countered by the establishment of a Council that has the power to investigate management decisions and has an obligation to seek advice from a properly constituted Academic Board.

In the Vice-Chancellor’s letter to the AUS [6 March 2008. Addressed to AUS legal council Peter Cranney. Sharp: “I will be following my normal well-established process of taking those parts of the draft implementation plan which need Council approval to Academic Board and then on to Council.”], he makes two claims. We agree with one and disagree with the other.

The first claim is that Council is the ultimate decision-maker with regard to disestablishing academic programmes, namely in this case Amercian Studies (AMST) and Theatre and Film Studies (TAFS). We agree with this claim. In so doing, we think that the Vice-Chancellor has conceded the point that this consultation process is irrelevant and should only be being conducted at the request of, and by, the Council. How has the Vice-Chancellor established his right to engage in a consultation process on issues for which he is not the legal decision-maker?

The practical implications for this procedure are illustrated by the following example. The Vice-Chancellor, as the employer, presumably does not require Council approval to disestablish the positions held by those currently in AMST and TAFS and has indicated that he can act on this matter separately from Council approving aspects of an eventual implementation plan. However, should Council find that it has no desire to disestablish these programmes, the Vice-Chancellor would then have to re-appoint these staff, or appoint new staff. In light of the order in which these actions would therefore be taken, this action would appear, at worst, as a constructive dismissal of twenty-one members of staff, and at best as a counter-productive use of managerial time and resources with the consequence that Council might retrospectively approve the Vice-Chancellor’s Proposal to avoid the larger embarrassment to the University.

The second claim is that the Vice-Chancellor only requires Council approval of particular elements of an eventual draft implementation plan, and that he may carry the advice of the Academic Board to the Council. We disagree with this claim. How has the Vice-Chancellor established:

1. the right to initiate a consultation on a change to academic departments and programmes, when this type of decision is within the exclusive purview of Council, and
2. the right to initiate a consultation with Academic Board for advice to Council without such a request for consultation coming from Council?

We believe that this consultation process is invalid because it has evaded proper review by Council, and that this Change Proposal is an example of the unilateral decision-making produced by such an evasion. We interpret this proposal as management-initiated changes on academic matters rather than management-initiated changes to the number of established positions without affecting the delivery of an academic programme. We believe that only Council can lawfully initiate a Change Proposal where change refers to the disestablishment of academic programmes, and only they can conduct a lawful consultation.

Whole-University Solution
The AUS has consistently questioned the University management’s policy of financially isolating colleges from one another. In this respect, the AUS membership sees the current financial crisis in the College of Arts as at odds with the surplus in the wider University and holds firm to the belief that radical academic restructuring such as the Change Proposal puts forward is not appropriate when the University is in a healthy financial position. In short, members regard the Change Proposal as evidence that the current accounting model, called the contribution margin, is itself failing the University – by creating the appearance of a need for such extreme measures when no such need exists. We suggest that this Proposal is not a solution, but a symptom of a failed accounting tool.

Members express their sense of commonality and collegiality, and a desire to find whole-university solutions for problems that may affect specific colleges. The current process is contrary to how AUS members see themselves and their interconnectedness as colleagues working at the University.

The Arbitrary Context of the Change Proposal
AUS has identified four main drivers and justifiers of the Change Proposal, each of which is arbitrary and none of which has been determined through consultation or justified to the University community in a coherent manner. These four arbitrary drivers and justifiers are considered in more detail in Section One; in Section Two their tangible influence – creating policy without consultation – is outlined; in Section Three they are viewed in the context of our more specific and/or philosophical objections to the Change Proposal; and in Section Four we make recommendations based on an understanding that these arbitrary drivers and justifiers have created the unnecessary proposals outlined in the Change Proposal.

Section One

Analysis of the change proposal reveals a series of drivers and justifiers of the proposed changes. These are all arbitrary, of dubious and unclear provenance, and have been presented to the University community without consultation or credible rationalisation.

• Contribution margins have created the appearance of a financial necessity or drive for the Change Proposal. However, as the AUS and others have consistently pointed out, the setting of the contribution margins within the University is not transparent, is apparently fluid from year to year and even within years, and appears to be not well understood even by those who are required to operate within this system. For these reasons, the contribution margins are met with deep suspicion by AUS members and are seen as a means by which management is able to effect de facto academic policies using financial manipulation rather than openly submitting to the governance of Council. Whenever it appears that academic policy is the consequence of the contribution margin and not the directive of Council informed by the Academic Board, the AUS believes that it has the legal mandate to oppose it.
  
  
• A major justifier for changes in the Change Proposal is a desired staff-to-student ratio (SSR) within programmes in the College of Arts. Again, this represents an arbitrary financial or ideological driver and justifier of the changes proposed. The intellectual justification for this ratio is unclear and groups the needs of different disciplines within the college as one, evoking a bogus idea of “fairness” that fails to take account of the manifold differences between disciplines and the other ways in which colleges and colleagues support one another. Furthermore, it is not consistently applied even within the same college. For example, the Change Proposal does recognise the need for one-on-one teaching in the Music and Fine Arts programmes. Whenever it appears that academic policy is the consequence of SSR targets and not the directive of Council informed by the Academic Board, the AUS believes that it has the legal mandate to oppose it, consistent with its belief in the invalidity of the Change Proposal.
  
  This policy also rides roughshod over the notion of there being inherent value in maintaining specialist areas of knowledge regardless of their immediate marketability. The establishment of SSRs as a basis for academic policy and staffing decisions is a dangerously short-sighted way to plan staffing at a university and creates a precedent for ongoing uncertainty and intra-institutional conflict. The membership is unconvinced that there is an internally consistent (ie non-arbitrary) rationale for this approach.
  
  
• Such concerns also inform the AUS members’ attitudes to the proposed ratio of administrative-to-academic staff, which appears similarly arbitrary, has been introduced without prior consultation, and does not take into account the particular needs of different programmes for different kinds of administrative support. Further, it does not take into account the actual number of casual and temporary academic staff, all of whom have administrative support requirements. Other significant measures not taken into account in this model include the ratio of postgraduate to undergraduate students or the number of courses. There is further concern about the role played by this new ratio in determining the composition of the proposed new schools within the College. Once again, the contention of the membership is that academic policy is being driven by the tools used by management and not the direction of Council. Moreover, these tools are based on arbitrary figures and ratios, and these have had insufficient consultation, transparency, and attention to the long-term impact of such policy. It is the opinion of AUS members that it would aid the decision-making process to include an administrator's perspective on the review panel, so a recommendation to this effect is made in Section Four, below.
  
  
• Finally, AUS members are particularly concerned by the rhetoric of “core” disciplines, by which the proposed programme and staff cuts have been justified. More than simply arbitrary, this notion can only reflect an ideological position on the part of management that is not only well outside their legal authority but is also outside their competence. It is in the first instance incidental whether a programme is or is not core, as the maintenance of other programmes also tagged as not core would demonstrate [For example, the VC describes Astronomy as not core to Physics in his meeting with AUS executives on 21 February, 2008. Furthermore, Ken Strongman, PVC of the College of Arts, described Mass Communication and Journalism as “not central to the arts” and Physics and Chemistry as “more basic than Astronomy” in an interview with bFM. (http://www.95bfm.com/default,186229.sm)]. It is in the second instance not the role of management to determine the fate of academic programmes, because the statutory power to do so is held by Council and then only under specified circumstances.
  
  Members strongly assert that the very notion of a core of disciplines is ill-applied in the arts. Arts research of the last thirty years or more contests the notion of a privileged core or a centralised body of knowledge supporting an expendable periphery, and considerable work in many fields has gone into exploring the ways in which the apparently peripheral orients and defines the supposed core. In the particular context of Aotearoa New Zealand, and given the Change Proposal’s citing of the “‘National Identity’ strand of the Government’s Tertiary Education Strategy” (p. 27), the introduction of core as a determinant of academic value at Canterbury University is alarming and suggests an ideology that is unnecessarily divisive, elitist, stifling to open academic discourse, and ignorant of current research practices within the arts. Ironically, the cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary nature of the programmes identified as not core (or expendable) by the Change Proposal makes them, in fact, true vanguards of arts research. While rejecting outright the notion of core disciplines in the College of Arts, the AUS further notes that any such evaluations can only be made through meaningful, long-term consultation with the entire academic community.

Section Two

AUS perceives that the four arbitrary drivers and justifiers of the Change Proposal outlined in Section One effectively position the University’s management to initiate and implement academic policy changes without appropriate directions from Council and without proper academic consultation. Such consultation, whereby the future research and teaching body of the University would be appropriately determined by the University community itself, requires that members of that community are

1. adequately briefed on current management thinking, and
2. able to contribute to the determination of figures relating to contribution margins, staff-student ratios, administration-to-academic staff ratios, and the identification of what programmes are essential at the University of Canterbury.

While submissions to the Change Proposal represent an opportunity to react to management decisions in respect to these questions, as long as the rationales for those decisions are not shared, only the decision-making outcomes – rather than processes – can be debated. This effectively leaves members of the community unable to engage in the debate because they are denied access to information that would make them informed.

Cycles of restructuring: financial and quantitative data
The AUS has experienced first-hand that each cycle of restructuring under the current management has been based on “shonky” financial and other quantitative data. Despite claims by management that by the time of the release of a change proposal all the data have been accurately assembled and thoroughly verified, we can recall no single example of a process that went unchallenged on these data and which did not require some retraction and re-figuring from management. This restructuring is no different. The cumulative effects of these inaccuracies is to undermine confidence both in management and their processes, and to create evidence that management is incapable of making accurate financial summaries, at the level of the colleges and below. In the view of the members, all this has the effect of invalidating the consultative process, because the time of consultation is given over to resolving these inaccuracies rather than providing staff the opportunity to consider proposed changes and make sensible counter-proposals in reasonable and sufficient time.

The outcome of this process is determined by a power imbalance, not a partnership. Furthermore, the consultation process has lost additional credibility because it is presented as a fait accompli. AUS members contend that it is reasonable to conclude that management has been acting to prepare for the implementation of this proposal during the consultative period. An example of this can be seen in the delay in registering PhD students in TAFS on the basis that there may not be the necessary staff expertise to support their studies. This goes well beyond the claim that students are only being advised that they may not be able to continue their studies in these subjects. This has the effect of lowering the financial health of TAFS, contributing to the basis on which closure of the programme was recommended. At a time when the figures for TAFS are also disputed, such effects make a significant difference.

In putting forward the Change Proposal, management has not provided any alternatives, or an evaluation of the merits of possible alternative actions. Since there is an asymmetry in access to knowledge about finances and spending priorities set by senior management, staff cannot be expected to provide alternatives that hinge on solving a putative financial deficit.

Furthermore, by constructing as unchallengeable the contention that the University has a financial problem close to $2.5 million that must be solved, management places staff in the invidious position of solving the problem on management’s terms: through some form of workforce downsizing. AUS believes that restricted access to knowledge about how spending priorities and contribution margins are set, and the fact that management’s estimates of staff-student ratios and finances are so mercurial, combine to make it impossible for staff to enter into informed consultation. As such, this process appears designed to force agreement rather than seek counsel on alternative solutions to problems perceived by management.

This general mistrust in the credibility of the processes, procedures and determinations underlying the Change Proposal is of particular concern in respect to the AUS's more specific and/or philosophical objections to the Change Proposal. These objections are outlined in Section Three below.

Section Three

In this section we outline a number of specific and/or philosophical objections to the Change Proposal, with ongoing reference to the four arbitrary drivers listed in Section One.

• It is strongly asserted that the closing of programmes that were created under the direction of the then-Council following consultation with the Academic Board must only be undertaken after due regard to established academic processes and appropriate consultation. We have argued that the drivers and justifiers of the proposed programme cuts are arbitrary, have not been initiated by the Council and consulted on by the Academic Board, and now are being opened to a sham consultation processes with the wider community. The AUS is steadfast in its position that management has not established a prima facie case for this Change Proposal. These proposed cuts are a reactive and permanent solution to what may be short- or medium-term or even non-existent problems, and the scale, swiftness, and irrevocability of the proposed changes is imprudent.
  
  
• In addition, members are concerned that such dramatic policy decisions being made on the basis of arbitrary, debatable figures and assessments that may be ideologically driven creates an environment in which the possibility of other ideologically-driven decisions taken by this and subsequent administrations are a constant threat. It is not unprecedented for the ideologically-minded to curtail academic freedom through ambiguous threats (eg job insecurity). Given the failure of management to maintain a proper tenure system at UC, it is incumbent upon them to act in no way that could be perceived to undermine academic freedom.
  
  
• While AUS recognises the need for robust accounting systems, these need to be based on information that is transparent, rigorous, and internally coherent. In the current instance, members find themselves responding to policy initiatives that are driven by speculative and arbitrary information and feel that if these initiatives proceed it will create a precedent that is dangerous for the academic integrity of the University.
  
  
• Of widespread concern to members across colleges is the way in which arbitrarily-determined contribution margins focus on only one instance of the many cross-subsidisations that are characteristic of the operations of a university. This modular isolation of finances ignores the daily inter-college collaboration, subsidisation and mutual help that characterise the professional activities of our members. This cross-subsidisation exists between colleges, between colleges and service centres, and between service centres themselves. To isolate the College of Arts by characterising it as in unique financial crisis elides the financial, intellectual, and collegial connections that always exist, unquantified, between the College and other parts of the University.
  
  
• The timing of the Proposal’s release is also of particular concern to members. Coming close to enrolment, when students are engaged in course selection and staff are particularly busy with administrative duties, this timing is seen by many members as a strategy to limit the effectiveness of the consultation period. To begin the academic year by proposing the cutting of programmes and staff appears as a deterrent to students who wish to enrol in those programmes and also sends a particularly negative message to new students about the extent to which the university values its existing programmes and staff.
  
  
• Whereas AUS members accept that there is no ideal time of year for this Proposal, they simultaneously wonder whether reasons to avoid other times for this process relate to the University’s ability to implement the plan on a pre-determined timeline.
  
  
• There is scepticism among members over the arbitrary use of “international” models that appear in the Change Proposal as justifications for the merging of certain programmes. In particular, the assertion that “Art History is internationally more typically aligned with History than Fine Arts” (p. 15) is vague: in what international context? By what basis of comparison is this conclusion reached? Such a generalisation supports the rationale by specious means alone. A subsequent assertion that “Political Science and Philosophy are commonly aligned internationally e.g. Philosophy, Politics and Economics, Oxford University” (p. 18) is even more dubious: by such a rationale, should Economics itself then be moved from its college at Canterbury, the better to sit alongside those programmes with which it is joined at Oxford University? Moreover, a small amount of investigation reveals that Oxford University also boasts the Rothermere American Institute for American Studies, which is “an international centre of excellence dedicated to the interdisciplinary and comparative study of the United States.” [“Rothermere American Institute”, http://www.rai.ox.ac.uk/institute/index.htm] Here is an international model that the Change Proposal conveniently ignores. More generally, members are sceptical of the implicit notion that international models and overseas examples are “best”, noting again the Change Proposal’s inconsistency in terms of valuing national identity and contending that the University should organise its programmes and staff around models that best suit its people, time, and place.
  
  
• As well as being arbitrary, the concept of a core in the arts – or any of the colleges – is antithetical to the raison d’être of intellectual inquiry in the modern university and imposes outmoded values on pursuits that are required to challenge old ways of thinking and that take knowledge into new ground. Perhaps in this regard it is not surprising that the areas being targeted are disproportionately composed of staff who are women and members of the Union.
  
  
• The Change Proposal is at odds with the claim in the University Charter that “The University’s strengths in the visual and performing arts, including the fine arts, music, theatre and film, contribute to the cultural vitality of the Canterbury region, to the construction and projection of New Zealand’s national and cultural identity, and to providing intellectual energy and content for New Zealand’s creative industries.” (p.9)
  
  
• Members further question the assumption that students unable to study in the disciplines and programmes targeted for elimination will simply take other courses. Removal of disciplines and programmes changes the overall character of the College’s course offerings, and AUS is not satisfied that students whose choices are affected by elimination of the targeted disciplines and programmes will not simply enrol at other universities (as those who are currently postgraduate students in affected programmes may presumably have to do). In addition to this, members question the effect of the proposed staff and programme cuts on students in other colleges who wish to cross-credit or take non-major subjects from the arts programme. It is not only the options of students in the College of Arts that will be affected by the proposed changes in this way. To remove whole programmes and disciplines is to change, permanently, the unique character of arts at the University of Canterbury.
  
  
• This Proposal has not considered the impacts on the AUS and the University’s obligations to the AUS. We have analysed the staff who are affected by this Change Proposal and note that one hundred percent of staff in American Studies and TAFS are members of the AUS and 84% of those directly affected by the proposals are members of AUS. This striking proportion is worrisome, particularly as at least two very senior members of the SMT have openly expressed antipathy to unions in general. We remind the Vice-Chancellor that he has signed an agreement between the Government, AUS and the University declaring that he believes in the validity of the Union and pledges to support a strong and vital AUS on this campus. We could find no analysis in the Change Proposal of the effects of this restructuring on his pledge to support a healthy union.

Section Four: Recommendations

The AUS recommends in accordance with our fundamental position that:

1. the current consultation process be stopped. If Council has a view that the academic programmes in this Proposal should be reviewed, then Council should minute its discussion on this matter, issue a directive for the matter to be investigated, and make it a priority to consult on the matter with the Academic Board. Proper consultation must also include the broader community and take into account the Tertiary Education Strategy and the national interest.

In accordance with the premise under which we are making this submission we make the following recommendations:

2. that management open its contribution margin model to our independent analysis, including providing sufficient information to make fully transparent how the various margins are set, which units are required to make contributions, and for what purpose funds are being ring-fenced away from directly supporting the colleges.
   
   
3. that student-staff ratios be fully discussed by the academic community, both within Canterbury and at the national level
   
   
4. that a departmental or school administrator from another College is appointed to the Review Panel
   
   
5. that there be consultation and discussion about the proposed general-to-academic staff ratio with particular attention to the differing administrative support needs of different programmes
   
   
6. that meaningful consultation and discussion take place concerning an epistemologically-appropriate model to determine which programmes within the College best serve the arts
   
   
7. that senior management provide alternatives to the staff cuts in the College of Arts and an analysis of the merits of these alternatives, including their impacts on AUS membership
   
   
8. that management have urgent meetings with Government to discuss special funding opportunities for strategically important programmes.

We agree to our submission being made available on the University of Canterbury internet for others to read

Professor Jack Heinemann
AUS Canterbury Branch President
on behalf of the AUS Canterbury Branch Committee and members