Why the audit culture made me quit

Liz, you write with superb clarity. I know students will be missing you greatly.

This should become the mission statement of all Universities...

The word that really resonates with me is 'empowerment'. I was told being put in the Underperformance Improvement Procedure was ... empowerment!

Liz, greetings from Mexico City. When my former department at Queen Mary University of London dismissed in 2009 my next-door-neighbour - who was the best intellectual mind amongst all of us & the harderst worker, but one who had not gained a large grant during his "probation" - I collected in his defence 53 signatures from within a department of 62 and 40 letters of support (including a couple from colleagues who did not sign the petition). Seeing that almost unanimous support of Robin didn't save his position, I resolved to resign in protest. So I understand your decision. In my case, the most supportive colleagues talked me out of quiting on two arguments: 1) that we should not surrender to the managers, who only gain more personal power/money as the university loses its academic credentials & 2) a promise to keep up the fight for a collegial department despite the terror that ensued from this - first of its sort in our microenvironment - dismissal. Then a new management team arrived and in 2012 to "restructure" the department. As an outcome, little over 20 members of staff from the 62 are still present. I am the only one who is still fighting (5 years later) at an employment tribunal to formally show that my dismissal was unlawful. This has meant a personal toll, however it has also meant that I can appreciate in a different way the dilemma whether to quit or fight, having chosen the latter (I note that you chose a combination and I congratulate you for sticking to your promise to continue exposing the horrors of the corrupt managerial establishment on the day you departed). One case I feel should be listed next to the ones you name; that of my colleague, friend, collaborator & mentor, John Allen, Professor of Biochemistry. His major "crime" was to support me and others when we were being faced with retrospectively applied (nevermind their insulting nature) "criteria" for redundancy. Employment tribunals have already shown that John's dismissal was unfair. My question is what are the consequences for the Queen Mary managers responsible? I suppose the same question lingers in my mind for those overseeing the culture that lead to Stefan Grimm's suicide and the few other stories you list above and the thousands of others that go untold publicly. UK higher education is dying under the present regime, even if it is allowed to keep its fancy name. I look forward to you and others taking the lead to remove the parasites from within.

I write from the perspective of one who doesn't know it all and never will, and the more I read the less I know. I have spent 30 years teaching and the same number of years taking different courses at postgraduate level. I have attended 4 different universities over my time and I am current undertaking postgraduate Law courses at a university at the moment. We in schools and colleges have a true independent inspector from OFSTED watching us teach. This can happen at a moments notice. Further all documentation associated with a course has to be inspection ready at all times. Each lesson has to be inspection ready with a lesson plan in place. We have to teach the whole class, groups, and one to one within the same session. At the end of the class we have to ask questions of the class to ensure that each member of the class has understood the aims and objectives of that lesson. In addition we have to ensure notes are taken and that homework is set and marked by the very next time we see that class. I can tell you now that very very few class based sessions at a university have had any thorough teaching content. I have also worked as a researcher within a university and know well from being a qualified teacher that the skills required to teach and those with regards to research are quite different. I have taught throughout all phases of education, so I understand this well. University staff are merely witnessing the reality of checking that public money is being used well. However I can say that despite the audits in place, poor teaching is rampant and the only way for university staff to move forward is to split the skill sets. Researchers attract research grants which are audited using a variety of methods and teaching staff stand in front of an OFSTED inspector. Only then can prospective private clients be assured that good quality teaching is taking place and that the private paying client is going to feel satisfied. The often awful use of statistics to hide raw scores simply will not wash any more and fools nobody. My last university trumpeted its statistic that 71% thought the teaching at the university was excellent, what it failed to say was that only 4% bothered to fill in the form and I was one of those 4% and I have the email on that. I had to run a complaint against that university and received half my money back but it took my time, and I am not pleased. My current university is a teaching university and that choice was deliberate, my experience there has been good but the impersonal way education is delivered at university level is off putting and could be addressed. Further lecturers from overseas must be able to both speak and write English fluently and must not make up the majority within a Department. I did not turn up to a university to struggle through broken English delivered with a thick accent when attempting to understand the technicalities of English Law. Please remember I am the private customer paying very hard earned money for a course on English Law. Keep the customer satisfied or forever earn their wrath.

Liz, Just to suggest how much support exists by "white males" for you and the road you traveled, I resigned last year form a university where sexual harassment was rampant, and no matter how hard I worked, the senior administrators could get away with whatever they wished. I was asked by faculty and staff to represent them in sexual and gender harassment proceedings against the university. Then became the target, and after 8 years of teaching and research, receiving a scholarship award and some of the highest ratings from my learners, I had my heard earned sabbatical taken away from me and given to a totally incompetent colleague. I took a one year leave of absence without pay, and then resigned after 9 years with the institution. The stress of ostracization by many of my colleagues was something I just could no longer tolerate. Your critical work in your discipline is most appreciated by folks like myself, who no longer have ANY faith in a system bent upon self destruction.

This piece resonates with my own experience in academia. Targets shift on a daily basis. Even sustained good quality performance is judged to be inadequate. The system is self-destructing because of punitive responses by senior and middle managers who fear being seen to fail. It will shorten careers and blight mental health.

An excellent article far too many overpaid managers using the REF to hit academics on the head with for not getting enough 4 star papers and enough research grants. Academics should refuse to participate in the REF or get involved in assessing the submitted research as it is just giving managers the tools to bash academics with.

Thanks to Liz Morrish and Times Higher Education for this powerful and illuminating essay. Liz Morrish, your work makes a difference, and the more you publish, the more you help others caught in the system. As one who retired in the U.S. before these developments became as egregious as they are now, it's distressing to realize what has happened to the great academic institutions. I'm sure that many of us-- even those of you who are quite young-- entered academic careers because of a great love for learning and the sharing of knowledge, understanding, questions and ideas. For me it was perhaps too much of a romance-- the lawns and trees of a university campus, the libraries, the classrooms full of students both indifferent and eager, all represented the hopes of humanity. Certainly in my 35 years of teaching there was great frustration at administrative mediocrity and incompetence, at lack of imagination, at lack of diversity, at favoritism for toadies and not-so-subtle discrimination against innovators and questioners. And yet the remnants of the ideal were enough there, and Academic freedom was enough there, that one could still thrive and teach and encourage inquiry and creativity in students. How sad and disturbing it is to see what young academics today are going through or have gone through--not just for yourselves, but for the future of higher education. It's very interesting to read the comments of many here, who speculate on how to rebuild or create a better system, and whether or not that is possible. With such minds as These, there seems to be a great deal of possibility--and it's exciting to imagine what very different ways of learning thinkers like you may bring into being in the coming years. Please keep writing! Charlotte

Thank you THE and Liz Morrish for a powerful, insightful analysis of the sad state of higher education in UK and too many other places, including the US. When talented, skilled, experiences faculty members must leave to write and save their souls, universities are clearly in crisis from the same ideology that has whipped non-profits, health care, K-12. K.O'Mara, SUNY-Oneonta, NY.

Brilliant. The problem is that rational and honest people know this is true but rational dishonest managerial project parasites have got hold of our universities and taken them over completely. They make the rules now. They have enslaved intellectuals and are driving out the best so that they are left with a zombie horde supported by a terrified cadre of junior intellectuals who are rendered powerless to change things. The dogs may bark but the train moves on. We now need solutions, not lamentations. Perhaps we just wait for the immement AI intellectual deep learning holograms to replace all teaching staff and the collapse of all but a few massive online institutions to change everything? Perhaps this is just heralding the end of the brick-built university. Neoliberal polices began the farce. It is playing out now like a Tom Sharpe novel. In the ot to distant future top academics will no longer be employed, they will licence their AI avatars to the highest online institution bidder.