Funding and regulation are slanted against Birkbeck, so we must adapt

Birkbeck’s the Vice Chancellor and Deputy Vice Chancellor’s attempt to defend the proposal to cut up to 140 posts seeks to justify this by reference to changes in government higher education policy and the operation of market forces in the sector. But the overall strategic response of Birkbeck’s senior leadership is not a neutral factor in Birkbeck’s current crisis. Crucial internal decisions have contributed to the financial crisis and collapse of student numbers. An understaffed registry has meant that acceptances have failed to be converted into enrolments, with academic staff being enlisted over the summer in a desperate attempt to contact potential students. Birkbeck’s attempt to create new teaching spaces has been dogged by expensive vanity projects. Birkbeck Stratford in east London, developed at great expense over a decade ago to cash in on government money allocated to specific localities, misjudged the desires of students to study in Bloomsbury. The conversion of a former car showroom on the Euston Road, garnered architectural awards for its expensive high tech gloss, but is located almost 20 minutes from the main campus in Bloomsbury. Birkbeck’s publicity campaign, with cartoon owls, looks more like an advert for a children’s Tv show that an pitch for London’s prestigious night time university. The slogan: “Plan B: B for Birkbeck” while alliterative, suggests an offer of second best education. Staff at Birkbeck have complained for years about the narrow basis of decision making, the top down imposition of changes after bogus consultations. The latest plans are a pure cost cutting exercise to manage Birkbeck's decline rather than programme for recovery. They neither give Birkbeck’s current and future students nor hard working staff any hope for the beginning of Birkbeck’s third century.