Report of Discussion

Tuesday, 7 November 2023

A Discussion was convened by videoconference. Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Dr Mike Rands, DAR, was presiding, with the Registrary’s Deputy, the Senior Proctor, the Junior Proctor and eighteen other persons present.

Remarks were made as follows:

Remarks on the Report of the Council on an additional office of Pro‑Vice‑Chancellor

(Reporter, 6715, 2023–24, p. 69).

Dr S. Pidgeon (Head of Environmental Sustainability):

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, please can it be confirmed that the remit of the new PVC role will be sustainability in its broadest sense, which includes people as well as environmental considerations, rather than environmental sustainability, which is a sub-set of broader sustainability. The announcement in the Reporter used the terms sustainability and environmental sustainability interchangeably but they are different in execution. It is important to clarify the remit of the new role before the appointment process gets underway.

To date, the University’s approach to sustainability has focused on the environmental performance of its estate. To develop a more mature approach the University needs to broaden its definition of sustainability, and its application, to everything it does, including its research, education and operations.

Ms V. G. Mandapati (Murray Edwards College):

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I am speaking today as a member of Cambridge Climate Justice, a group of students who are worried about the climate crisis and its impact on people around the world.

Earlier this year, the University-commissioned report by Mr Topping was published. Within this report were a series of clear steps the University needs to take to preserve its academic integrity, international standing, and social obligations in the face of the climate crisis. The process of appointing a new Pro-Vice-Chancellor is welcome, but it must not delay implementing these recommendations.

Since 2022, Cambridge University has taken nearly £3 million in fossil fuel funding. Since 2017, it has taken nearly £15 million. This is funding which has been shown to bias research and lead to outcomes which favour the fossil fuel industry – the same industry which is driving the climate crisis.

This is funding that the University can easily replace through fundraising by CUDAR, as recommended by Mr Topping. This body already exists; a new Pro-Vice-Chancellor is not required to implement this change. This change would also be one of extensive impact: showing the world that Cambridge takes the climate crisis seriously and is willing to act for the good of the planet, not profit. An end to fossil fuel funding at Cambridge is not simply desirable, it is necessary. By continuing to accept this funding, the University implicitly endorses climate destruction, knowingly contradicts its own academic standards, threatens academics’ freedom to speak their mind, and goes against the plan set out in the report it itself commissioned.

All of this comes within the context of the delays of divestment. This process still has yet to be completed. The 2020 divestment decision1 was a huge win for students, academics, the community and the planet alike, but Cambridge is once again dragging its heels. It would be unacceptable for this to continue, especially when the imperative to act originates from the University itself. Not to mention the ongoing relationship with SLB, the world’s biggest oilfield services provider, which, despite being rated red by CBELA, continues to enjoy pride of place on the University’s West Cambridge site despite its complete disregard for the future of the planet.

If the process of creating a new post is so essential to carrying out the Topping report and meeting the demands of the future, this should be explained through a roadmap which entrenches the University’s commitment to fulfilling its sustainability obligations and commitments. The lack of any such timetable in the public sphere is worrying. Further, it is essential that the student body be involved in the selection policy in a meaningful way, to give the governing body of the University some accountability to the students they serve. At present, there is nothing to stop this process stagnating for years, or for the new Pro-Vice-Chancellor to be someone entirely unwilling to implement the changes Cambridge wants and needs.

Cambridge University commissioned the Topping report, and it has been clear in its moderate and modest findings, even though some loopholes in its recommendations remain. Continued delay in implementing the report’s recommendations would be nothing more than a distraction to avoid facing the reality of fossil fuel influence in our educational institution.

Mr S. Hutton (Selwyn College):

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I am the chair of the Cambridge Students’ Union Ethical Affairs Campaign, and, having discussed the new PVC role with other students, I wish to relay some thoughts. Broadly it is promising that the University wants to take action on the climate crisis, but I wish to raise a number of concerns.

The first of these is the word ‘sustainability’, which is a limiting framing of the issue around the climate. Sustainability implies a continuation of ‘business as usual’ rather than a holistic approach to not sustain the current destructive practices that have led to the climate crisis. Environmental justice is so much more than sustaining the operation of the University, and in those terms, the University has not, so far, taken adequate action.

As previously raised, since the original Grace asking for the University to condemn and remove fossil fuel funding for research it has been over a year, and in that time, the University Council has continued to delay on implementation of this crucial step. Every time students have been given a deadline on this issue, it has been broken, up until the latest, in which we were told a consultation framework on the recommendations of Mr Topping’s report would be communicated, which it has not yet. We hope this consultation will be concluded and communicated promptly and that recommendations will be implemented quickly.

The appointment of a Pro-Vice-Chancellor does not meaningfully hasten the conclusion of this critical climate policy, and I believe that, as a student and a student representative, this announcement of a new PVC comes in place of meaningful reports on the policy that students believe should have already been implemented.

Dr W. J. Astle (MRC Biostatistics Unit), read by the Senior Proctor:

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, this Report proposes that the maximum number of Pro‑Vice-Chancellors should be raised from five to six. In January 2003, the Regent House approved a proposal of the Council to increase the maximum number of Pro‑Vice‑Chancellors from two to five (Reporter, 5912, 2002–03 p. 543). At the time of that proposal, the University employed approximately one administrator (n=443) for every three academics (n=1,514) (Reporter, 6189, 2009–10, p. 869). Twenty years later, when we might have expected computerisation to have improved the productivity of administration, the University employed approximately one administrator (n=1,869) for each academic (n=1,898; although only n=1,597 academics were in established posts).1 Notwithstanding this trend, the University is apparently unable to recruit the staff it requires to fulfil its core administrative functions (Reporter, 6714, 2023–24, pp. 52–63). My own experience suggests that the problem of understaffing and overwork in the Research Operations Office is so severe that it can take over eighteen months to complete a collaboration agreement required by a research funding agency.

We are told that an increment to the number of Pro‑Vice‑Chancellors allowed by Ordinance will ‘enable the Council to appoint a Pro‑Vice-Chancellor with specific responsibility for supporting all activities related to environmental sustainability across the University’. Will this worthy choice of brief suffice to placate a Regent House with reasonable suspicions about administrative bloat? Perhaps we shall find out in a ballot, but before casting your vote it is worth reading the small print, which implies a desire for managerial expansion going beyond the fulfilment of the role described:

The Council is committed to reviewing the effectiveness of the role before the end of the second term, in its usual way, to determine whether this approach is still appropriate once sustainability is more embedded within the University’s core activities. At that time, the Council will consider whether the role will continue in that area or whether the role needs to move across to another area that requires leadership.

In June, the Regent House was asked to approve ‘changes to the reward scheme for all academic-related staff at Grade 12, including Directors of Divisions in the Unified Administrative Service (UAS) and some Grade 12 staff in other Non‑School Institutions’. (Reporter, 6706, 2022–23, p. 780). These changes relaxed the rules for awarding pay rises to senior administrators. Now the Regent House is asked to allocate further resources, this time to senior academic management in the form of an extra Pro-Vice-Chancellor. Where is the evidence that problems of the University will be solved by more investment in senior administration or senior academic management? The Board of Scrutiny tells us that the Estates Division cannot recruit staff (Reporter, 6714, 2023–24, pp. 52–63). How will our new Pro‑Vice‑Chancellor for Sustainability deal with the problem of the energy inefficiency of buildings without staff in the Estates Division?

In last week’s Discussion, Professor Anderson suggested that if the University’s administrative bloat continues a vote should be called on the next Allocations Report (Reporter, 6717, 2023–24, p. 105). Before the Regent House approves a new Pro-Vice-Chancellor it surely needs to see convincing arguments and empirical evidence that the benefit will be worth the cost.

Professor G. R. Evans (Emeritus Professor of Medieval Theology and Intellectual History), read by the Junior Proctor:

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, recommending the creation of a sixth Pro‑Vice‑Chancellor this brief Report argues not for an Office but for a ‘role’, though even the role is not clear. Only ‘if the change is approved’ will the Council ‘give detailed consideration to the title and remit of the new role’. So it cannot be known whether one of the existing Pro‑Vice‑Chancellors could have taken on this role or several of them share it, because it has not yet been fully defined.

The Council first discussed the Topping report1 at its meeting on 17 July 2023. Minute 836 says that the Vice‑Chancellor ‘proposed that the Council establish a small informal Working Group’ to consider ‘whether, and if so how, the recommendations might be implemented’ and report back to the Council in October.2 The resulting Report for Discussion today says that when it met on 16 October, the Council decided on a much wider remit ‘encompassing’ the University’s ‘educational offerings, operations, and outreach activities’. This is said to require a ‘reset in approach’ and a whole new Pro-Vice-Chancellor to ‘make sure it receives the attention it needs’, though the Council admits it may find later that it has not been clear about that.

There is further confusion between role and Office. When Statute C III 16 fixes the ‘term’ of a Pro‑Vice‑Chancellor at three years with a possible second three and up to eight in ‘exceptional circumstances’, it refers to the person not the Office. The ‘role’ may change but the Office continues. This Report says that by the end of the holder’s ‘second term’ the Council ‘will consider whether the role will continue in that area or whether the role needs to move across to another area that requires leadership’. But what is to ‘move across’ is not the ‘role’ but the ‘Office’. How did this Report come to be published in such a hurry that this constitutional muddle was not noticed?

This hasty Report says nothing about what this new permanent Office will cost. The Notice in the Reporter of 25 October 2023 for a replacement ‘Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Innovation’ puts the stipend at up to £185k (Reporter, 6715, 2023–24, p. 68). That could mean £200k including USS and National Insurance. Pro-Vice-Chancellors also need support staff, in the form of ‘Executive Assistants and Teams’.3 Six sets of those must represent a considerable chunk of the University’s budget. What happened to the principle that the Office of Pro-Vice-Chancellor was intended to be part-time and that a Pro-Vice-Chancellor should keep an existing University Office and give only 80% of his or her time to the additional role?4

How has the Office of Pro-Vice-Chancellor evolved to create what increasingly looks like ‘sofa government’ (though the Vice-Chancellor’s office may need a larger sofa)? During the Discussion of the Wass Report in 1989, T. J. Smiley said he feared that under its proposals ‘the real ... power’ would come to lie with an ‘informal group of senior members with whom the Vice-Chancellor can share some of the burdens of office’.5 Despite this warning, the argument that Vice-Chancellors needed such support proved convincing, and during the 1990s successive pairs of Pro-Vice-Chancellors were appointed by Council on the nomination of the Vice-Chancellor, though with as yet no portfolios.6 In 1998, the salary was £25,000.

In his Review of University management and governance, after the CAPSA scheme for reform of the University’s accounting system became a disaster, Mike Shattock suggested the ‘establishment of four Pro‑Vice‑Chancellor posts, instead of the current two, each with a clearly defined portfolio’ though he did not ‘support the idea’ that they ‘should become executive Pro‑Vice‑Chancellors with administrative staff formally attached to their Offices’.7 However, the Report of March 2001 on the Unified Administrative Service had already placed these Pro-Vice-Chancellors in ‘the senior management team of the University’. It suggested that this ‘management team’ was ‘still under strength and that its capacity can and should be enhanced perhaps by the appointment of one or two more additional Pro‑Vice‑Chancellors’.8 A parallel system of governance began to form, with this ‘team’ publishing no Agendas or Minutes of its meetings and conducting its discussions without reporting on them to the Regent House.

A year later it was argued that Pro-Vice-Chancellors, who should be ‘appointed from inside the University’, should have portfolios, so as to ‘serve in defined areas’. They should ‘derive their duties and authority by delegation from the Vice-Chancellor, and also by appointment by the central bodies as chairs of key committees’,9 though the University already had Deputy Vice-Chancellors to chair committees on the Vice-Chancellor’s behalf.10

A Consultation Paper on University Governance of 200211 suggested that Pro-Vice-Chancellors should be ‘appointed from inside the University’, active academics with experience of running a Faculty, Department or School. In order to tempt active academic researchers to give up the time while remaining working academics, it was intended that it should ‘be possible for a Pro‑Vice‑Chancellor to be offered provision for the appointment of a research assistant, or similar assistance, to help maintain his or her research activity’.

On 26 June 2002 the Report of the Council on governance (the Regent House, the Council, the Vice-Chancellor, and the Pro-Vice-Chancellors)12 proposed an increase in the maximum number of Pro-Vice-Chancellors from two to five ‘in order to support the Vice-Chancellor and to give greater opportunity for senior academic leadership in the overall running of the University’. In 2003, the number of Pro-Vice-Chancellors was duly increased to five, and a ‘Nominating Committee’ was created to replace nomination by the Vice-Chancellor. A three-year period of office was retained but it was agreed that the maximum period of service for any one Pro‑Vice‑Chancellor was to be six years (eight in ‘exceptional circumstances’).13 It was felt at the time that

although it would not be appropriate to establish a separate office of Senior Pro-Vice-Chancellor, the title of Senior Pro-Vice-Chancellor should be conferred on one of those appointed to the office, in recognition of that individual’s responsibility for leading and co‑ordinating the work of the team of Pro-Vice-Chancellors.14

Pro-Vice-Chancellors were to ‘have access to the full range of administrative support available through the Unified Administrative Service’ but ‘not be line managers for parts of the Service’:

Pro-Vice-Chancellors will thus either lead activity or will help ensure that it goes forward under other academic leadership. In the latter case Pro-Vice-Chancellors will co-ordinate, participate, and provide support as necessary.15

They were to have provisional ‘portfolio areas’, though these were ‘likely to evolve over time, in response to changing needs and priorities’, but they would ‘also function as a team’ and expect to discharge the traditional duties of Deputy Vice-Chancellors (mainly the chairing of committees) if needed. However their focus was not to lie in membership of a ‘Senior Leadership Team’ for the Vice‑Chancellor, but in working closely with the ‘committees and other bodies in the University relevant to their portfolios’. They would thus provide a key means of liaison between the University’s institutions and the central management and administration.15

In September 2014, in published reflection on the Office and its purposes, the ‘leadership’ role was emphasised:

The general role of the Pro-Vice-Chancellors is to take forward strategy and policy development and to support the Vice-Chancellor in providing institutional leadership to the University, particularly in their areas of responsibility.16

In the Reporter of 16 December 2020 the need for a new role for a Pro-Vice-Chancellor was explained in a Notice also stressing ‘leadership’: ‘the Council wishes to appoint a Pro-Vice-Chancellor to provide senior academic leadership on matters relating to the University’s community, with an emphasis on its staff and public engagement’, because that represented ‘a priority area for the University’s development going forward’. The intention was to combine this with the role of Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research) from 1 September 2021 in a new portfolio incorporating that of Institutional and International Relations.17 There has therefore been no lack of former reconfiguration not been deemed to justify a whole new Office.

The current definition in the Notice in the Reporter of 25 October 2023 giving a ‘revised brief’ for the Office of Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Innovation and Impact) is strong on ‘academic leadership’, so as to ‘ensure that the University maintains and enhances its contribution to society and its global academic standing’.

Is it not high time for a Report to allow Discussion of the constitutional place of that ‘Team’ to allow the Regent House to say what it wants by way of a published record of its activities before the attempt to rush the current muddled proposal to add yet another Pro-Vice-Chancellor goes any further?