Stop standardising universities or risk threatening academic autonomy, warns former Warwick head

Nigel Thrift, who served as Vice-Chancellor of Warwick for ten years, has warned that the “standardisation” and “industrialisation” of universities could threaten their “very nature”.

Highlighting the warning in his new paper, Thrift, who left his role at Warwick in 2016, blames governments for the bleak outlook, stating they have “starved universities of funds and choices”.

He also argues that universities have too much regulation placed upon them by institutions such as the Office for Students (OfS).

The OfS regulates over 400 higher education providers in England. Registration to OfS is required to qualify for student loans, and for universities to award degrees, receive teaching grants, and sponsor international student visas.

University leaders have expressed concerns that smaller institutions will be financially harmed by OfS’s increased costs. Their annual fees are based on the number of students at an institution.

A small institution, for example, the National Film and Television School, has over 400 full-time students for whom it pays £100 per student. On the other hand, large institutions such as the University of Manchester pays less than £5 per student.

The OfS is “seemingly intent on turning universities into large schools or colleges”

Nigel Thrift, former Warwick Vice-Chancellor

Moreover, Thrift claims that OfS is “seemingly intent on turning universities into large schools or colleges”. He states that because universities are increasingly getting more student-focussed, they risk becoming “the next step up in [the] school system”, driving their focus away from the research they are renowned for.

Another point of regulation comes from UK Research and Innovation, a government body which directs research and innovation funding for universities.

Thrift says that the body is “seemingly intent on smothering initiative by producing more and more initiatives that limit the ability of academics to follow their own star.”

He goes on to add that the consequence of these regulations is institutions “that increasingly look like clones of each other.”

[Thrift] also warns that academics are at risk of becoming “drones” due to bureaucratic overload, increasing teaching demands, and the decline of intra-university institutions

In his new paper published in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Thrift also expressed concerns over the “industrialisation” of academia. This encompasses an increasing division of labour which means that “actual producers [of knowledge] have increasingly little control of the production process and have become increasingly distant from management”.

He also warns that academics are at risk of becoming “drones” due to bureaucratic overload, increasing teaching demands, and the decline of intra-university institutions, like senates and semi-autonomous departments.

Thrift criticised university leaders of “meekly ceding” their institutional autonomy to the government, in a method compared to Stockholm syndrome. He accused university management of largely having “done as it has been told” in the desire of gaining “a tiny bit more money”.

As a solution, Thrift suggests an “inclusive deliberate process”, like a citizen’s jury or a royal commission as a method for academics to “thrash out a common platform that would revive the idea of the university”.