Well that's all right then

Apparently, misreporting the number of student we have, leading to a clawback of £3.5m and a funding cut of £2m per year was all just a silly 'misunderstanding' which we'll all have a jolly good laugh about later, once lots of people have been sacked, according to the vice-chancellor in this report. It's all HEFCE's fault, for being 'arcane' old fuddy-duddys with their 'rules' and 'regulations' and 'definitions'.

"The university correctly recorded and reported the number of students enrolled and the modules they took," he said. "The problem was a misinterpretation of Hefce's arcane definition of 'completion' for funding purposes."

The 'misunderstanding' was that the government agency thinks people complete a year when they've done eight modules, whereas the university thinks that six out of eight is close enough! It also turns out that Performance-related pay is 'a contractual requirement' - even if the performance is damaging to the university. Thus is stunning: actually causing an £8m deficit and sacking 250 people gets you a bonus. Just like being a banker!

Cash back!

Neal has passed on this TED lecture on why bonuses don't work.

Executive here get Performance Related Pay (£11 million, in the last year for which figures are available). I wonder how a multimillion pound shortfall, 250 redundancies, reduced courses and bigger classes are calculated… they'll probably get a bonus for their genius (ahem) solutions to the problems they've caused.