Members have asked for regular updates on the unfolding situation at
Leicester and Birmingham, where departments have been reconstructed
(closed, remodelled, or reconstituted, depending on which version of
events you accept).
At Leicester interviews are being held on July 7th for a newly created
Chair in Mass Communication. The person appointed will become Director of
the Centre for Mass Communications, which will now be ‘virtual’ in that the
Director will be placed in a subject department suitable for their
discipline, and all staff currently in the Centre, or involved in future
teaching programmes in mass communications, will be placed in various
departments, mainly but not solely within social sciences. After
consultation with our members at Leicester (i.e. the current centre staff)
Peter Golding, Hon. Sec. of MeCCSA, will be one of the external assessors
for the Chair. The university’s approach to the future of mass
communications at Leicester has been set out in a letter we have received
from the Vice Chancellor, Professor Robert Burgess. The following
paragraphs are the contents of that letter.
RESTRUCTURING OF THE CENTRE FOR MASS COMMUNICATIONS RESEARCH
In the last year the university has reviewed all academic departments and
centres following the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise. The reviews of
the Centre for Mass Communications Research concluded that significant
structural reorganisation was required if research was to be developed.
The Centre is to be remodelled on the lines of the highly successful Centre
for American Studies in the Faculty of Arts.
The key features of these arrangements will be that:
(a) academic staff will transfer to the departments which can best
support the development of their research;
(b) a Professor who will be the Director of Mass Communications will be
appointed, who will lead a Centre for Mass Communications which will
provide all teaching using existing staff;
(c) the Centre’s clerical and academic staff will be based in the
Attenborough Building [meccsa note - this is on the university main site;
the Centre currently is the sole occupant of a detached Victorian house off
site];
(d) research students will continue to be registered for and awarded
degrees in Mass Communications and will formally transfer to the Department
in which their supervision is to be based.
No changes to degree course provision are proposed and all current students
will progress through their programmes as planned. Undergraduate and
postgraduate admissions for 2003 are proceeding as normal.
Inevitably, some matters of detail remain to be resolved, but the
university hopes to be in a position to publish full details of the new
arrangements early in the summer term, in good time for their
implementation in September 2003.
We would note that students at Leicester have, through a number of detailed
letters to us, made clear their continuing opposition to the main thrust of
the changes, their fears about the nature and effectiveness of future
teaching, and the form of their supervision in a ‘virtual centre’.
Leicester students have been in liaison with those at Birmingham, where a
public meeting was held on May 10th. The following report on that event is
provided by MeCCSA member Dr. Michael Green of the university.
This day school at Birmingham was organised jointly by Birmingham AUT and
Guild of Students, and by the campaign group on behalf of
the 'restructured' Birmingham Cultural Studies and Sociology, with
representation from the Leicester group opposing a rather
different 'restructure' there of Media studies, on a different timescale.
The day attracted a good turnout from a variety of universities and
disciplines, marking the absence of spaces for critical reflection on what
is happening to higher education (though it was clear that universities are
placed and managed differently).
A
major theme in panel discussion and in a workshop led by Miriam David
(Keele) and Deborah Steinberg (Warwick) concerned the implications of the
White Paper. These included a focus on research as 'big' projects in
science; a willingness to contemplate a steeper hierarchy of universities,
many losing a research function altogether; student fee issues; and a
variety of attacks on the professionalism of academics. Miriam and others
are preparing a critique of the White Paper and an alternative paper.
Meanwhile Richard Johnson (Nottingham Trent) and Ann Gray (now of Lincoln)
led a workshop on the situation and future prospects of work in cultural
studies.
Closing plenary speakers included sombre accounts by students and parents
of their treatment by Birmingham, and Dr Lynne Jones M.P. (Birmingham Selly
Oak) recounted her attempts to question university management and to seek
answers from HEFCE, QAA and most recently the National Audit Office. It
emerged from a thoughtful but sobering day that universities are in no
clear way accountable for their actions (despite the plethora of 'quality'
and 'audit' trails), and that the new managerialism is now prepared to act
in ways which offer severe challenges both to trades unions and
associations and to professional bodies such as MeCCSA itself.
Subsequently the new Birmingham external examiner for MCS (Dennis Cosgrove,
Geography, UCLA) has said he will withdraw after this summer after being
briefed by his own professional bodies; the Birmingham AUT has called for
an independent inquiry into events; and in a surreal twist, the staff team
dismembered and dispersed by Birmingham last summer achieved Birmingham's
only 1st place (Sociology) and only 2nd place (Media) in Education Guardian
league tables of the kind so cherished by managers. This development is
being taken up in letters to the E G and on its website.
