I've been alarmed by news coming from the University of the West of England, for whom I work as an external examiner. It appears that all Professors, Readers and Principal Lecturers are having to reapply for their jobs, a situation that has led the local branch of the Universities and College Union to call a strike.
It appears that the affected staff members have had to apply for new "roles" and it is no longer enough to "merely" lecture and research. Some staff are likely to be demoted as a result of the exercise. Furthermore, after the process has been completed for Principal Lecturers, a similar reassignment of "roles" will be carried out for the rest of academic staff. Philosophy is under particular pressure as a small subject area with further threats to close the MA despite its attracting EU students and the work produced being, to my certain knowledge, of very high quality. This attack on the working conditions at UWE is likely to be replicated elsewhere. The Guardian meanwhile has been publishing articles about what university staff can do after being made redundant. There is little doubt that the situation in UK academia is worsening daily.
On 10th November in London the University and College Union are holding a joint demonstration with the National Union of Students to put pressure on the coalition government concerning the cuts in higher education: details here. Given the publication of the Browne report last week and the up-coming Comprehensive Spending Review this coming week it is essential that there is as large a turnout as possible for this march. Only by means of a show of strength such as a big march can we signal that we do not accept the positions of Browne and that we wish to defend higher education. The threats to higher education set out in Browne are real enough but when the figures currently being indicated as forthcoming from the spending review are added we are looking at the worse possible outcome. Higher education is threatened in a manner not seen even during the years of Thatcher: please come along and persuade others to do so also.
Sally Hunt, the general secretary of the main lecturers' union here in the UK, the University and Colleges Union has a piece in this week's copy of Times Higher Education. As she points out the campaign thus far against the notion of impact assessment has been very successful but with time running out for the gathering of responses to this idea it is all the more important that there is a last push against it. For the record, it remains true that acceding to it, in whatever small degree (and currently it is far from being a small degree taking up, as it will, 25% of the final score of a research assessment of any unit being assessed) is something that makes little, if any, sense in relation to philosophy in particular.
Since the last posting on this topic linking to the petition to the UK Prime Minister I have become aware of extensive discussion of this question to which I would like to draw readers' attention. In addition to the petition mentioned in the previous posting there is also a separate one launched by the University and College Union, which is the main lecturers' union here in the UK. Their petition is slightly differently worded and is available here.
There has been some disquiet indicated concerning the wording of the original petition linked to in the previous posting which has prompted a certain amount of debate over at Leiter Reports. There is also a serious discussion being conducted concerning the notion of "impact" assessment over at Crooked Timber.
By contrast the Arts and Humanities Research Council contains a number of pages on its site that discuss ways of applying the notion of impact within the area of humanities research which you can find here. The basic justification of inclusion of the notion of impact is also set out by the Higher Education Funding Council for England on its site here.
The question also arises as to whether the opposition parties here in the UK have different views on this from the present governing Labour Party who, in their website statement of policies on education, make no mention of the Research Excellence Framework or the policy on "impact".
