Hood appointment causes ivory tower tremors

By ANNE McHARDY

The announcement by Oxford University on Wednesday that it had chosen Dr John Hood, vice chancellor of Auckland University, as its first non-British head in its 900 years of history put an unexpected cat neatly among Britain's academic pigeons.

Gossip in university circles across Britain had suggested that the new vice chancellor - who will be partnered when he takes up the post in October next year with new chancellor Chris Patten, the former governor of Hong Kong - would be a woman.

Other vice chancellors and university administrators will be gathering at conferences around the country this weekend at which Dr Hood's track record and intentions will be the great dinner table topic. Even among them Dr Hood is an unknown quantity, provoking a Dr Who? reaction from many when Oxford made its announcement.

The election of Chris Patten two months ago caused a huge media fuss in Britain, but the chancellor's election process is public, involving graduates of the university and therefore attracts external attention, particularly within the heavy newspapers and BBC, where graduates of Oxford and Cambridge Universities remain strongly represented.

The choosing of the vice chancellor, who has the real job of running the university while the chancellor is the figurehead, is an internal affair and interest is more muted in the outside world.

Dr Hood's appointment, which has to be ratified by the university council next month, attracted attention on Thursday morning only in the Times Higher Education Supplement and the broadsheet paper with which it shares a stable, The Times. The New Zealand perception of Oxford, and Cambridge, as pre-eminent in educational and social life is slightly at odds with the British view, where Oxford is seen as losing some of its lustre and to be approaching a critical stage in its history.

The THES set what will certainly be the tone of the British reaction in university circles. "Big shake up and new v-c could take Oxford from ivy-clad to Ivy League." In other words, he would move the university in the direction of the most prestigious of the United States universities, which are dominated by their postgraduate and research students, while Oxford, in the British tradition, remains dominated by the needs of its undergraduates.

The THES reported that Dr Hood had fought for higher fees and academic standards in Auckland. Its focus was on the political issues facing British universities; finance and the balance between teaching and research, between numbers of teaching-intensive, low fee-paying undergraduates and higher fee-paying, less teaching-intensive postgraduate students, who are also likely to bring kudos if their research has dramatic results.

Oxford has been slipping, albeit only slightly, in academic league tables, as have the other traditional universities, and is also facing an inevitable reshaping. The relationships within and between its colleges is Byzantine, having grown over centuries rather than being designed. Its admissions processes are antediluvian and still leave room for personal patronage rather than fair standards for all applications.

Last year there was a huge fuss when it seemed that Prime Minister Tony Blair's oldest son, Euan, was being fast-tracked into an Oxford place. That storm blew over and he went to Bristol. However, if there had been no public scrutiny he might well have slid in under the wire, even though he did not make straight A school-leaving exam grades.

All the elite British universities attract a disproportionate number of students from middle-class homes, chosen on the basis of advanced level school-leaving exams, at which students from fee-paying schools do better than those from the state sector.

The universities have increasingly said that state sector pupils are often more creative and interesting than the over-tutored products of the private sector, and latterly the Government has been pushing to redress the balance to take more state sector pupils into the elite universities. While 3 per cent of British children are educated in the private sector, 40 per cent of students at all universities, with a higher percentage at Oxford and Cambridge, are from fee-paying schools.

The Blair Government has repeatedly said it wants to tip the balance, to see more less privileged students at the best universities, and it is looking at ways of linking the provision of financing to their percentages of non-private sector students.

It has also been seeking alternative ways of financing higher education - systems which will be familiar to New Zealand - moving away from the system of grants to loans, repayable by the graduate over anything up to 25 years, and charging fees, paid in part by the students, with foreign postgraduate students paying the largest part towards their fee.

The universities, to avoid limits on undergraduate numbers placed by the Government and also to seek alternative financing, have been looking abroad and heavily favour foreign postgraduate students. As one professor put it, the postgraduate students were valuable because more of the fees they brought were kept by the university, and also because high profile research attracted more students; the foreign students, although they are labour intensive if they do not speak English, often have a radically different range of experience and, therefore, mixing with them helped to mature the indigenous student body.

Oxford marked the announcement of Dr Hood's appointment with a series of papers put on to its website, including a lecture given by Dr Hood in 2000, the Sir Robert Menzies lecture in Melbourne University. The choice of lecture had the look of a personal statement by the new vice chancellor.

The tenor of the lecture was clear and its message unambiguous; here was a man who believed in the academic rigour of universities, particularly of the illustrious, old and research-based, but who also believed that they should be at the cutting edge of the development of industry and society. Some of the remarks produced a frisson in ivory towers.

"Research-led universities present an intriguing leadership challenge. The environment in which they exist is both complex and demanding. They are at the core of the knowledge society debate. There is extraordinary pressure to match the performance and metrics of wealthier models in other jurisdictions ...

"These institutions are charged with educating and training among the most intellectually talented ... Research sparks the innovation cycle as well as feeding it.

"Innovation is important for economic growth and social advancement. Intellectual property developed within once hallowed halls constantly begs to be capitalised.

"Universities are sponsors and nurturers of enterprises ... Distinguished scholars suddenly find themselves juggling lives as professors, chief scientific officers and major shareholders in enterprises of their own creation ... The pressure is intense to diversify funding streams in order to fund appropriately the core activities that are so important for enduring competitiveness.

"They should be, in the word that sets don against don in every university common room in Britain if not around the world, 'entrepreneurial."'

The immediate buzz Dr Hood's name was reported as having produced in the breakfast canteens and corridors of other universities reflected the information put on the Oxford website - a running chatter of "he is in favour of raising fees".

Even though Dr Hood did study at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar during the 1970s, his long career in industry and his track record at Auckland have started the buzz of bees in a well-stimulated hive.