12/09/95 Academics spurn painful lesson: Outgoing LSE director enhanced
university's status but has paid the price
The Financial Times [London] December 09, 1995 815 Words
London Edition Page 4 Fair Use reprint for Scholarly use only
No group bridles more at the smack of firm management than university
academics. That, says one insider, sums up this week's decision by the
governors of the London School of Economics not to renew the contract of Mr
John Ashworth, their forthright director.
Yet as he prepares to transfer the helm of Britain's leading social science
university to Sir John Bourn, the head of the National Audit Office, next
October, the LSE is probably as strong as it has ever been. In part, at least,
that is due to Mr Ashworth's efforts.
There have been some obvious failures. Mr Ashworth's campaign - almost a
personal crusade - to move the LSE from its cramped Aldwych premises to
County Hall, home of the abolished Greater London Council, came to nought
after ministerial refusal of countenance the idea.
Ironically, Sir John may find himself similarly preoccupied in his early
years. For the likely closure of Barts Hospital raises the prospect of another
prime institutional site in central London becoming available. If it does,
once again the issue of funding the LSE's relocation will rear its head.
Without external support a move is unlikely to be viable.
Mr Ashworth's other significant failure was on the issue of student fees.
Two years ago he floated a plan to charge LSE students a fee in addition to
that paid by the government for all home undergraduates. These 'top-up fees'
were to be means-tested, and the income used to enhance the LSE's resources.
Many LSE lecturers believed the scheme failed the acid test of safeguarding
access to students from low-income families, and it was rejected by the ruling
academic board.
Yet few believe the current student funding regime is sustainable into the
medium-term, and the Ashworth initiative may come to be seen as a harbinger of
national reforms.
However, Mr Ashworth's five years as director have witnessed undoubted
achievements. He has succeeded in enhancing the LSE's status as an
international research university, and in diversifying its income to reduce
reliance on direct Whitehall funding.
The LSE has been especially effective in attracting European Union research
contracts. Contract research income reached Pounds 8.9m last year, 23 per cent
up on the previous year. Although the UK's research councils continued to be
the largest funding source, the EU took second place accounting for Pounds
1.9m.
The LSE has a particular strength in research projects spanning the social
sciences. One of its largest EU contracts last year was for a study of the
socio-economic impact of projects funded by the EU's 'cohesion fund' in Spain,
Portugal, Greece and Ireland. The work embraces the LSE's prestigious Centre
for Economic Performance and a number of politics and sociology departments.
The past five years have seen the LSE's research income nearly double - a
far faster rate of growth than its income from grants and fees.
Mr Ian Crawford, the LSE's communications director, said: 'Barely a week
passes without someone from our contracts and research office scouting around
Brussels.'
Enterprise LSE, the university's new unit for generating income from
activities such as consultancy, emerging markets and software, has also made a
notable start. Last year it made a profit of Pounds 45,000 on turnover of
about Pounds 330,000.
The quip that 'LSE' stands for 'Let's See Europe' remains as true as ever.
Only a third of the students now come from the UK. One in six are from the
rest of the EU, with the rest drawn from the US and almost every other country
on the globe.
Yet the LSE's emphasis on post-graduate study continues to mark it out from
most other British universities. Last year post-graduates accounted for about
40 per cent of the LSE's full-time students, more than twice the national
average.
This is the LSE's centenary year. . A centenary history by Lord Dahrendorf,
a former director and now warden of St Antony's College, Oxford, highlights
one dominant theme in the university's history - 'the forever explosive
relationship between social science and public policy'.
Lord Dahrendorf notes a 'fault-line' between 'wanting to know the causes of
things and wanting to change things'. The division runs through the LSE's
academic staff as strongly today as it did in 1968. As he remarks: 'The very
location of the School defines the fault-line', situated as it is on the edge
of Bloomsbury, Theatreland, Whitehall and Westminster.
Nor is Mr Ashworth the first director to leave after a period of serious
academic tension. When Lord Beveridge, author of the famous welfare report,
resigned as director in 1937 the senior professors of the day - include Laski
and Robbins - were glad to see him go. His parting lecture was a homily on
the need for total political detachment on the part of social scientists.
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Sincerely,
Sharon D. Michalove
Assistant to the Chair for Undergraduate Studies, Dept. of History, UIUC
309 Gregory Hall, 810 South Wright Street, Urbana, IL 61801
217-333-4145 mlove@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu
http://www.spcomm.uiuc.edu/history/fac_dir/mlov_dir/michalov.html
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Observe a cat entering a room for the first time: it searches
and smells about . . . it trusts nothing until it has
examined and made acquaintance with everything.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)
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