Poetry superstar! Here!

18th April 2012, 6-8, in MC001:

Fred d'Aguiar!

 This is a very big deal: internationally renowned poet, novelist, playwright and critic, coming to The Hegemon! Much of his work centres on Guyana, the slave trade and postcolonial conditions.

Here's what to expect:

Storm clouds gather…

As is traditional on strike days, the weather is going to be awful: cold, wet and gloomy. Tonight, however, the sunset is spectacular. Even The Hegemon looks good:

Fighting your corner

Thousands of students are converging on London to speak up for the poor and young who want to better themselves.

Except from The Dark Place:

London Demo 2011: Find out why we're not supporting it, as we present our Alternative to the National London Demo...

They're putting on a Question Time debate tomorrow (I'm on the panel), but I have to say that this is disappointing. Sometimes, mass numbers on the street focus the minds of the public and politicians in a way that polite letters just don't.

I do worry about our SU: it's under the thumb of the university executive and seems to have lost all confidence in asserting the rights of its student. They've got shiny offices and ranks of computers, and seem to think that that's enough.

We have 23,000 students: 99% working-class, 45% mature students: exactly the kind of people who are already suffering. Their voices should be heard.

Dumb Britain round-up

In a bold move which blithely ignores the actual, y'know, academics who work here, The Hegemon hosts a series of poll questions for webpage viewers to vote on. They are, of course, insulting to any first-year student who's been to a lecture on methodology.

For instance:

Can you measure happiness?

• Yes: 33%

• No: 59%

• Don't know: 8%

Perhaps not - but you can always ask an uninformed public about whether you can run polls on it. I suspect my colleagues in Psychology would be hard-pressed to find an objective, meaningful definition of 'happiness', let alone 'measure' it.

How's this one?

Will Britain become a nation of renters rather than homeowners?

• Yes: 68%

• No:  23%

• Don't know: 9%

Unless all the respondent are housing economists (not that they've got a clue either), the only honest respondents are those who clicked 'don't know'.

This one just makes me angry:

• Is the current big freeze in the UK a sign of climate change?
• Yes - 46%
• No - 47%
• Don't know - 7%

It panders to the kind of arseholes who write Daily Express front pages. Again, only a climate scientist can have a reasonable opinion. It implies that it's OK to blithely link local, limited events to systemic shifts. It encourages the culture of 'what I reckon'. I know that's a bit rich coming from a blogger, but I tend not to spout off about stuff of which I know nowt. Ahem.

My favourite is this one:

Do you understand the 'Alternative Vote' system?

• Yes: 54%

• No: 39%

• Don't know: 7%

The result doesn't tell you what percentage understand AV. It tells you the percentage of voters who think they understand AV. Which isn't the same thing.

I'm hosting a poll of my own:
Should poll questions be written by people who understand statistics and research methodology? 

• Yes:
• No:  
• Don't know: 

The internal market… FFS

The insane and discredited idea of 'internal markets' has reached us. If you're not sure what it is, here's how it works. Different departments in an organisation no longer work together, but are given budgets to spend within the organisation. 


So in the NHS, a dermatology department would 'pay' a ward for a patient's bed. It was imaginary of course - the hospital's money stayed in the bank the whole time. The idea was that these virtual budgets would make departments efficient, e.g. by not booking a bed for a dermatology patient if there was any way around it. The virtual nature of the system only lasted until the dermatologists wanted an emergency bed for an extra patient, and was told to get lost by the ward, even though the beds, nurses and buildings were all there.


It's insane. It replaces institutional planning with a free-for-all based on a concept ('efficiency') which may well have nothing to do with the organisation's - or user's - needs. 


Now it's being applied to the university's timetable:

This year the School will be subject to a fine for each module change made after the 15^th of August (even if we are giving rooms back).  Therefore, please check your timetable carefully, and read the two attached PDF documents together with P. T’s email which explains in more detail about potential fines and the reasoning behind the new system.

As part of the drive to change behaviour at the planning stage of timetabling, financial penalties will be applied to Schools that cancel teaching events after the publication of the timetable.

The following penalties will be applied where rooms are booked to modules pre-publication, and later cancelled.

Lecture theatres and PC Labs: £200 per hour

Other spaces: £100 per hour

PENALTIES FOR OBSERVED NON-USE OF A BOOKED TEACHING ROOM WILL BE APPLIED IN ALL CASES IDENTIFIED. THERE WILL BE NO EXCEPTIONS. 

Bonkers. It's not my money, so I won't care about one part of the university 'fining' another part of the university. If they fine us for offering back rooms we find we don't need, I'll just keep the room unused, leading to a loss of amenity. If I decide that a class needs to walk outside to illustrate a point, we'll be fined. 

Some decisions show us where the institution's priorities lie:

Learning Pod 2 will be opened up as social learning space to encourage students to stay within the building between teaching events and to improve use of the Go Eat facility 

Nice. So classes are now 'teaching events' and students are now captive customers. We lure them in with degrees and sell them fizzy drinks. 

Emergencies will be chargeable too:

If notification of the cancellation is received via the helpdesk at least two working hours before the event is due to take place, a 20% discount will be applied if any cancellation penalty is to be incurred. 

Fascinating. So some money is moved from the school's budget to… where, exactly? What's it spent on? Will it benefit the students? Will departments charge staff? How do I avoid the 2 hour cutoff if I'm teaching at 9? There certainly won't be anyone in their office at 7 a.m. What's the point anyway? It's not as if another class can be given that room - there aren't crowds of lecturers and students cruising the campus in the hope of commandeering a classroom for guerrilla teaching.

I see. So we're to be subject to discipline, rather than offered guidance and explanation (or indeed more - and more suitable - classrooms so that we can cater for the huge number of students we recruit. 

This, readers, is the way that universities will all be coping from next year: reduced space, increased class sizes, fewer staff, managerial pressure on academic standards, and 'retail opportunities' deployed to capture whatever spare cash the students have. 

This is management gone mad: they've forgotten that we're people, not work units to be moved around on a chess board.

The Pink Polytechnic

Something to celebrate at last: The Hegemon has been judged by Stonewall as one of the 4 most gay-friendly HE institutions in the country.

It's quite a good result: the student body includes a large number of conservative religious people - of various faiths - who are less than fond of homosexuals. I expect an evangelical backlash forthwith.

Going cheap! Hurry hurry hurry! Get your degree at a discount

As I may have mentioned in passing, the government has a nasty little scheme to reserve 20,000 student places for universities which promise to charge £7500 or less, considerably below the £9000 that most universities have decided they need.

The drawbacks are obvious: corners will be cut, in class sizes, staff qualifications, marking time, equipment, buildings, administration - no doubt to be outsourced - etc. ad infinitum. And of course it means expensive courses (lab work, travel etc.) won't be done.

These institutions will gain a reputation as bargain basement, pile-em-high places.

And it looks like we're going to be one of the first. Oh joy.

The Sun Sets On The Dark Place

I took these from my living room window the other night. I'm so tied to my work that the ugly buildings in the background are The Hegemon. It gives me an enormous sense of peace to gaze out on my place of work before I go to sleep.

I was playing with long exposures - a faster road where cars didn't stop would be better

More photographs of the miserable metropolis are here.

Bah Humbug!

Now you know me, and you'd trust me never to say anything critical about my august employer, The Hegemon.

So like me, you'll read its annual report with drooling and fervent admiration. You won't mentally footnote every claim, and you certainly wouldn't choke on the proud references to our sterling work on behalf of various repressive dictatorships (for a cynical, carping, nitpicking attitude towards this country - which very sensibly bans academic freedom of speech and the right to free assembly, and allows close relatives of our friends to film themselves torturing and murdering business rivals with impunity - you might like to click here, or here).

The growing profile we enjoy in the United Arab Emirates is apparent from the relationships we have developed there. In February 2010, senior staff from the University visited Abu Dhabi to present an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Social Science to Deputy Prime Minister, His Highness Lieutenant General Sheikh Saif Bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

The award was presented in honour of His Highness’s considerable contribution to urban development, in particular his leading role in designing security and safety measures for the protection of residents of, and visitors to, the UAE.

What do we mean by 'security and safety measures'? Well, we mean sending troops to crush the disenfranchised citizens of Bahrain, and we mean death threats, the state kidnapping of  academics, the closure of civil society groups and a range of oppressive activities.

'And the award for most academics arrested in a term goes to…'

Should a university really be supplying courses to - and giving awards to - people who lock up my colleagues? This is what Human Rights Watch says about NYU and the Sorbonne, who have failed to protest the imprisonment of their employee, Nasser al-Ghaith:

As partners of the UAE government, these non-profit institutions are not only well-placed to condemn these outrageous attacks but have a responsibility to do so. These public institutions claim to be doing more than turning a pretty profit with their glamorous, starchitect-designed outposts in Abu Dhabi. They promised the world that they will serve the public good by creating a powerful UAE center of "ideas, discourse, and critical thinking" and that their branches will serve as a "bridge between civilizations," as the Sorbonne Abu Dhabi motto says.

The Hegemon certainly doesn't have 'star architects', but we do seem to be advising and training the security apparatus, so we're morally culpable for what's going on.

(Mind you, what to expect from an institution whose billionaire tax-avoiding Chancellor was suspended from the House of Lords for fiddling his expenses to the tune of £41,000?).

Every penny well-deserved

The 2009-10 University Vice-Chancellors' pay figures are out, and - as we suspected - our Dear Leaderene has received a whopping 3.07%: rather more than our own 0.4%, and a proper recognition of her leadership skills, including, of course, the redundancies which saw 150 (and counting) of her staff forced out of their jobs because she and her executive 'didn't understand' the rules about what counts as a student, and had to repay the government £millions.

For the record, she got £201,824 and £33,176 in pension contributions. She won't be darkening the door of Lidl anytime soon. I wonder what the 2010-11 pay scales will reveal…

At least we're near the top of one league table, eh readers?

My Cup Runneth Over

Here at the Hegemon, one of the hegemonic institutions is an electronic magazine called The Insider, which is ironic because we're always the last to be informed of anything and we're certainly never consulted about academic decisions.

The latest edition of Pravda is a delight: an invitation to a 'celebration' of the Vice-Chancellor as she retires - not that I can see much to celebrate given that 160 people lost their jobs because she and her highly-paid monkeys misled the government about how many students we had, leading to a multimillion pound fine, a disastrous restructuring of the academic provision, and our huge pay cut (balanced out by her £7000 pay rise last year). Cheers!

There are exciting developments highlighted though. If I click this link, I reach the revelation that we have a New Colour Printer Installed! Not any old colour printer, but a Ricoh ProC901s, made in Telford! It's got an air-assisted paper feed! And it features 'excellent registration for duplex'!

What a shame we're banned from printing anything in my school. Still, perhaps we'll organise a trip over to print services, press our noses against the window and watch someone run off gold-edged performance bonus statements for the Executive, and our redundancy letters will be beautifully sharp.

Heady days, heady days.

Winterval fun

The snow is a source of considerable joy for some people; me and these delightful creatures, who are being reminded of home. Thanks to Ben.

Also experiencing joy at the moment are these students: University College London's occupation - still going strong.

Unlike the spineless weasels in The Hegemon's SU, who are refusing to support any proper activism.

Your tax pounds in action

If you want to see what a real-life near-billionaire tax dodger looks like in the flesh, turn up at The Hegemon's sorry excuse for a Students' Union on Friday November 26th, where Lord Paul (who has plenty of time on his hands, thanks to his suspension from the House of Lords) will open the Ambika Paul Student Union Centre (2.30-4.15).

The APSUC is an area with sofas and a coffee machine. The Union used to have a bar and put on events. The Ambika Paul foundation diverts profits from Caparo Plc, not Lord Paul's personal stash of £800 million.

It's currently unclear whether and from whom he'll claim expenses for this trip. Do feel free to inquire about his tax status and his views on whether the poor (for him, anyone with less than £100 million) should pay for their own education fees.

Last night, I was continually disturbed by the sound of big groups of students wearing matching t-shirts, marching in the street, banging drums, chanting slogans and blowing whistles, following some kind of leader. "At last", I thought to myself, the Revolution's here. Or perhaps the students are protesting the evil and socially damaging Tory Scum plans for education".

Alas no. Commercial, organised pub crawls have appropriated the signifiers of protest and these students were being herded like sheep from one corporate alcohol-monger to the next, on a strict timetable. I found it profoundly depressing.

In my day, we organised our own pub crawls, but that's a side issue. There's a nationwide student protest on November 10th: do you think more Hegemon students will attend that or the pub crawls?

Tweeting - not even yesterday's news

We all had a postcard in our pigeonholes today, with the cheery legend 'Think Twitter's a waste of time'.

As a new media lecturer, it's tempting just to say yes (the electronic equivalent of tugging on someone's sleeve repeatedly while shouting 'look at me') and not read on. But I do. And I'm informed that Twitter is the perfect medium for 'breaking news' and 'updates on service interruptions'.

Really? I head over to the IT services website on to find this:

• The IT Service Desk is closed between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. today, 13th October.

Very current. Let's have a look at their Twitter feed. Is there any indication that the entire Hegemon University webpage network was down for the whole weekend?

No. No there isn't.