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Apologies for Cross-posting. I've copied this to the admin-eo list as I know there are many on that list who will be interested (they'll have to pick up the debate halfway through!). Alison Goddard's article on page 3 of today's THES gives some of the background as well. I share some of Judy Evans's concerns (below) about the data that has been supplied by HESA to the THES to look at institutions profile of academic staff by gender/ethnicity, although I disagree with her about one aspect of whether the THES data is useful. I have no difficulty with the principle of comparing the SL and equivalent grades in the pre-1992 universities with the PL grade in the post-1992 universities. There are some marginal differences but in broad brush terms they can be considered the same thing, and the base of staff thrown up is quite significant in most institutions - typically of the order of 100+ staff. A reasonable number to look at. In terms of looking at gender of staff, I think there is considerable merit in comparing these 'senior' academic staff, because institutional equal opportunity commitment is likely to be most manifest in 'promoted' posts than in 'all' posts. We all know that far too many women academic staff are kept at the lower grades and are passed over for promotion, and the analysis commissioned by the THES is more likely to show such features than one that included all academic posts. The actual results in the table called 'SL/Researchers by Gender' are very revealing and show very marked differences across the sector I've sorted it by % female and there is a very noticable difference between the pre- and post- 1992 institutions. Of the 30 institutions with the highest proportion of females, for example, only 8 are pre-1992 and all of these are either University of London colleges or ex-CATs or the Open University. Indeed you have to get down to 50th position to find an institution that is not either post-1945 in its creation or a college of the University of London (Manchester Vic). Broadly speaking the 'older' (and more revered?) a university is, the worse it appears to be in getting women into senior academic posts. There are of course exceptions, and some may be created by data classification problems (eg Bournemouth looks anomalous and too low a base, so I presume they have used different codes) but the general trend is undeniable. There are however some minor problems with this analysis not taking any account of the subject base of the institution - obviously an institution with a heavy weight towards science and technology is likely to show a different gender balance to one with a high proportion of social science, nursing or education, but in large multi-faculty institutions these differences tend to iron out anyway (but that's why one needs to be cautious about University of London colleges). These figures are so interesting I've pasted them below this e-mail so that everyone can see them and spot the guilty! - apologies to Bournemouth if their data was wrong! Judy's institution and my own are in the top 10, so while I'm sure we won't be resting on laurels, they do show that some institutions at least have made some progress on breaking through the glass ceiling, although much more needs to be done. Where I agree with Judy is that the use by the THES of the Professors' grade and the restricting of ethnicity solely to UK nationals is wrong. The post-1992 institutions did not have a Professor grade and those awarded the title tended to be paid either as PLs or Management grades (Heads of Department/Deans etc). Thus because field 25 in the HESA staff return is generated from a payroll/grading record, the data is likely to be meaningless for the post-1992 institutions. A few of us have modified our rewards system since 1992 and make use of code 71 - 'locally determined contract - Professor' - in the HESA return (I have to say I went through all of ours this year to make sure they were coded properly - in anticipation of the data being used in this way!!). But for the vast majority of post-1992 institutions the data is useless. Likewise the ethnicity data is useless. By excluding non-UK nationals, the THES are tacitly discriminating against people who have lived in the UK for decades, may have families at school here, etc, etc. They are also excluding 'not-knowns'. This affects us particularly. For many years we refused as a matter of principle to supply nationality of staff as we didn't believe it served any useful data collection purpose (there is some codswallop about measuring the impact of widening EU membership in the coding manual but that's just nonsense) and in our view it represented an unnecessary intrusion into privacy. We were told a couple of years ago we were the only institution with 100% unknown nationality and so reluctantly agreed to start supplying the data since everyone else seemed to be doing it, but still have a high proportion of unknown. [We didn't ask people their nationality on our application form - only 'Do you need a Work permit?' which is all you need to know in appointing them]. So I'm afraid the two tables on Professors are rubbish and the one on 'SLs by ethnicity' is also quite useless. As newspaper league tables go though, one out of four variables being reasonably meaningful is probably well above average!! Comment and brickbats welcome! Mike Milne-Picken Head of Planning & Performance Review University of Central Lancashire [log in to unmask] www.uclan.ac.uk/planning ---------- From: Judy Evans To: [log in to unmask] Cc: [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask] Subject: Supply of academic staff data to the THES Date: 29 March 2000 16:28 Members of the hesa-pr list will already be aware of the data requested by the Higher on academic staff that HESA have supplied, for a presumed publication date of April 7th. I trust that members of this list will have been alerted to it. It would appear that there are a number of problems with the data as it is currently provided, and I would welcome comments from other list members. The data provided by HESA focusses on professors, senior lecturers and researchers only. However, definitions of what IS a professor, senior lecturer and researcher differ between the pre-1992 universities and the post-1992 universities grading structures, and under the current HESA coding structure the post-1992 universities are potentially being disserved by the HESA analysis. As the HESA blue Reference volume confirms (page 240 of the 1997/98 volume), there is a clear problem with analysis by staff grade when post-1992 universities grading structures do not easily map to pre-1992 structures, but the HESA analysis uses the pre-1992 structures to determine definitions, thereby potentially skewing any analysis of the sector as a whole. Thus, for our university, although we have some 40+ professors, we do not appear at all in the data provided to the Higher, as we have not coded them in any of the categories HESA have chosen to use as indication of Professor status (codes 04, 34, 39, 42, 63 and 71 from field 25 - Grade). Similarly, HESA have provided the Higher with two tables labelled 'Senior lecturers and researchers'. However, HESA's definition (codes 03, 33, 38, 41, 62, 72 from field 25 - Grade) serves to exclude all those actually coded as Senior Lecturer - 02 - the coding predominantly in force in post-1992 universities, as well as other codes which may have been used by post-1992 universities in the absence of anything more appropriate (for example, we have coded Academic Leader posts as 99, following HESA guidance). HESA's definitions would therefore appear to be very selective in what they have decided actually REPRESENTS a professor, senior lecturer or researcher. Mike Milne-Picken, in an email on the data to hesa-pr suggests that it has been based on some notion of 'seniority' and senior salary level. But whatever the reason it is still selective, and hence misleading. For UNL this again results in the exclusion from the data supplied to the Higher of some 280+ Senior Lecturers for a start, and depending on how the Higher decide to present this information is misleading and mis-informing. And finally, ethnicity data is provided, but filtered to ONLY include UK nationals. This is apparently what the Higher requested, so we can only assume that the resulting article will make this clear, but on the face of it the data is again incomplete and therefore mis-representative. In our case, having lost 280+ Senior Lecturers in the analysis due to the selective nature of the definition of a senior lecturer (a proportion of whom will be from ethnic groups), we loose a further 17 from the resulting dataset of 82 because they are not UK nationals - and end up with NO senior lecturer or researcher who is 'non-white', as far as HESA is concerned! I am sure colleagues will understand our concern. I would appreciate comment! Judy ---------------------- Judy Evans Head of Management Information University of North London 166-221 Holloway Road London N7 8DB tel : 0171 753 5146 fax : 0171 753 5049 email : [log in to unmask] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------- Senior Lecturers (pre-1992)/Principal Lecturers (post-1992) ranked by % female, 1998-99 Institutions with more than 500 Academic staff in total Source: HESA Pasted by Mike Milne-Picken, University of Central Lancashire Rank Institution % female 'senior' lecturers and researchers 1 Goldsmiths College 42.6% 2 University of Derby 41.3% 3 University of Hertfordshire 38.1% 4 University of London (Institutes and activities) 38.0% 5 The University of North London 37.8% 6 The University of Central England in Birmingham 37.2% 7 The University of Central Lancashire 37.0% 8 The London Institute 36.8% 9 The University of Westminster 35.4% 10 City University 34.2% 11 Oxford Brookes University 33.9% 12 The Open University 33.3% 13 Middlesex University 32.9% 14 St George's Hospital Medical School 32.8% 15 Leeds Metropolitan University 32.4% 16 Coventry University 31.9% 17 Anglia Polytechnic University 30.8% 18 The University of Greenwich 30.3% 19 The University of East London 29.3% 20 The Robert Gordon University 28.9% 21 Staffordshire University 28.9% 22 Royal Holloway and Bedford New College 28.8% 23 The University of Wolverhampton 28.7% 24 The University of Brighton 28.4% 25 Napier University 28.2% 26 Glasgow Caledonian University 28.0% 27 The University of Salford 28.0% 28 University of Luton 27.8% 29 The University of Northumbria at Newcastle 27.0% 30 King's College London 26.8% 31 The University of Teesside 26.4% 32 Sheffield Hallam University 25.9% 33 University College London 25.7% 34 The University of Essex 25.5% 35 Liverpool John Moores University 25.5% 36 University of the West of England, Bristol 25.5% 37 The University of Huddersfield 25.4% 38 Queen Mary and Westfield College 24.9% 39 The Manchester Metropolitan University 24.8% 40 South Bank University 24.8% 41 The University of Keele 24.2% 42 De Montfort University 24.0% 43 Brunel University 22.5% 44 The University of Sunderland 22.5% 45 The University of Bradford 22.2% 46 London School of Economics and Political Science 22.2% 47 The University of Warwick 22.2% 48 University of Wales College of Medicine 21.7% 49 Imperial College of Science, Technology & Medicine 21.2% 50 University of Manchester 20.9% 51 The University of Lancaster 20.8% 52 The University of East Anglia 20.7% 53 The Nottingham Trent University 20.4% 54 The University of Sheffield 20.2% 55 The University of Portsmouth 20.2% 56 The University of Sussex 19.7% 57 The University of Surrey 19.5% 58 The University of Aberdeen 18.3% 59 Southampton Institute 18.2% 60 The University of York 18.2% 61 The Queen's University of Belfast 17.9% 62 The University of Strathclyde 17.8% 63 University of Glamorgan 17.6% 64 The University of Dundee 17.5% 65 The University of Glasgow 17.4% 66 The University of Kent at Canterbury 17.3% 67 The University of Birmingham 17.2% 68 The University of Stirling 16.8% 69 The University of Nottingham 16.8% 70 The University of Oxford 16.7% 71 The University of Southampton 16.7% 72 The University of Leeds 16.6% 73 The University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne 16.2% 74 The University of Bristol 16.2% 75 University of Ulster 16.0% 76 London Guildhall University 15.7% 77 The University of Edinburgh 15.5% 78 The University of Hull 15.1% 79 The University of Leicester 14.7% 80 The University of Reading 14.5% 81 The University of Liverpool 14.5% 82 Loughborough University 13.8% 83 The University of Plymouth 13.7% 84 The University of Exeter 13.7% 85 University of Wales, Bangor 13.3% 86 University of Wales, Aberystwyth 13.0% 87 University of Wales, Swansea 12.5% 88 The University of Cambridge 11.6% 89 University of Durham 10.8% 90 The University of Manchester Institute of Science & Technology 10.2% 91 Cranfield University 10.1% 92 The University of St Andrews 9.3% 93 Cardiff University 9.0% 94 The University of Bath 8.6% 95 Heriot-Watt University 4.7% 96 Bournemouth University 4.2% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%