November 2017 – Paraffinalia

November 29, 2017

Bath? Campus protest in Bath?

Later today, 30 November, there will be a protest on the University of Bath campus against the terms of departure of the current Vice-Chancellor, Professor Dame Glynis Breakwell, demanding that she go now, and that she be accompanied out the door by the Chair of Council, the university’s governing body, by the Remuneration Committee, and by select individuals who would already have gone if they had any wit.

Bath has a well-deserved reputation for quiescence. It has never been one of the great rebel campuses; its disciplinary mix does not lend itself to political ferment; it’s in Bawth, for God’s sake. In less than ten days, a HEFCE report on governance has led to hundreds of staff raising their hands to vote no-confidence in the Vice-Chancellor and the Chair of Council, to a vote of no-confidence nearly being carried in the university’s Senate, and to the rushed resignation of the boss.

How did it come to this?

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November 19, 2017

Origins of the present crisis: The strife of Bath

Over the summer, Professor Dame Glynis Breakwell, President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bath has brought the university she leads to a hitherto unthinkable prominence. Her pay and perks, and the tin-eared response of the university to public concerns, have made Bath notorious for extravagance and gross inequity. Indeed, reporting on the story has made the Bath Chronicle the only local newspaper to be nominated for the Scoop of the Year Award.

Like many such stories, however, this one goes back a long way, with a decade or more of mismanagement and poor governance to blame for the crisis in which the university now finds itself. Indeed, if the governing body had done its job properly, and not indulged the greed of the Vice-Chancellor, it might have been possible to save what she is pleased to call her soul. Can any of us say that we would behave any better if we spent our days surrounded by sycophants giving us hundreds of thousands of pounds a year, and telling us we’re worth every penny.

So, some highlights from the public record of the governance of the University of Bath. Today, how the University of Bath fired someone who had done nothing at all wrong on no grounds whatsoever and decided to back up the friend of the Vice-Chancellor who had done it, rather than the member of staff they had wronged.

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November 19, 2017

University of Bath: when did the rot start?

Robert McKie was a member of staff fired by the University of Bath in 2008. For reasons explained below, he sued Swindon College over his sacking, and won. The judge, in finding against Swindon College, had some hard words for the University of Bath. When these concerns were raised within the university, the response of the governing body was to ignore them.

The case of Robert McKie raised a number of serious questions about management processes at the University of Bath, and about the operation of disciplinary and grievance procedures. An account of the actions taken by University of Bath management follows. The questions which arise from these actions are at the end of this paper. These questions have not been satisfactorily answered and there is no reason to believe that appropriate action has been taken to ensure that no member of staff will ever be treated in this manner again.

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