Up and nowhere seems an odd way to talk of institutions ranked 3rd and 4th respectively in a poll of the world’s best universities. And the [Times Higher Education Supplement](http://www.thes.co.uk/current_edition/story.aspx?story_id=2024693 ) findings endorsed a similar [survey](http://www.economist.com/index.html ) recently in the Economist which also put Cambridge in 3rd place. In this second list of the world’s top 20 universities Oxford was placed 8th. However, it’s a source of wonder that they’re there at all given the phenomenal pressures on both these institutions. Political pressures exist of course, the Government’s attempts to increase the intake of state school pupils apparently regardless of academic considerations. But there are also serious internal contradictions which, unless resolved, are even more life-threatening.

Oxford along with Salerno, Paris, and Bologna were the first European universities to be established 700 years ago. While the others have withered on the vine it’s remarkable that Oxford is still going so strong. In the Economist top twenty Oxford and Cambridge are the only European representatives. Apart from Tokyo the others are all American and it is the lure of America that is now the biggest threat to Oxbridge. Andrew Wiles, solver of Fermat’s last Theorem, is at Princeton. Simon Schama is at Columbia, Niall Fergusen and the medievalist James Simpson at Harvard; the list goes on and on, the well known and less well known. These are often clear academic stars who might, a generation ago, have settled their whole careers happily in the UK at Oxford or Cambridge. Money is part of the problem of course. Academic salariesin the UK have slipped inexorably and disastrously. New Labour is quite happy to pay the ’super-heads’ of state schools £100,000 a year and equally happy to ignore the demands of their colleagues in Higher Education. But there’s another reason to do with the quality of academic life and that may be even more of an issue. Take a young, early-mid career academic whose main raison d’etre is research. They already happen to be one of the best in the world in their field but they still have lots more in them. Windmills to tilt at, books to write, a reputation to cement. What then is the point of lumbering this promising individual with vast amounts of administrative work? Yet this is what routinely happens within the cheese-paring, dispiriting, Oxbridge collegiate system. Inevitably, when the call comes offering to treble their salary, provide loads of research time with tenure and susbsidised accommodation thrown in, the answer is:’ when can I come?’

The Government has so far got away with presiding over this waste of talent, this new brain drain, because academics are considered a pretty supine lot and anyway part of the natural New Labour constituency. This is a mistake. The UK clearly has a world class resource here. If these institutions were in any other country they would be encouraged and nurtured as national champions. The target ought to be a fair reciprocal balance where Americans - of the calibre of the people we’re losing - are prepared to travel in the other direction. We’re a very long way from that happening.

Labels: Turn Left...back there

[ 0 comments ]